New H-1B Visa Fees

News:

The Trump administration last Friday announced a new $100,000 annual levy on H-1B visas, which allow 85,000 skilled foreign workers to enter the U.S. each year. The fee applies to companies hiring these workers, primarily in tech.

Veteran venture capitalist Michael Moritz isn’t having it. ...

Moritz argues that Trump fundamentally misunderstands why tech companies hire foreign workers, saying it’s about skills and filling labor shortages, not replacing Americans or cutting costs. The policy will backfire, he warns, by pushing companies to relocate work to Istanbul, Warsaw, or Bangalore instead of keeping it stateside.

“Engineers with undergraduate degrees from the better eastern Europe, Turkish and Indian universities are every bit as well qualified as their American counterparts,” Moritz writes.

If the workers are so valuable, then employers shojld be willing to pay a market rate for them. Eg, the 85k visa could be auctioned off to the highest bidders.

Moritz reveals the weakness of his position, when he says the American and Turkish college grads are equally qualified.

Sore, they are similarly qualified if they have similar degrees. That is because the qualification is the degree. But that does not mean that they are equally valuable as workers. And it certainly does not mean that they are equally desirable as American workers.

American policy should be for the good of Americans. Why import a Turk if it puts an American out of a job when he could do the work just as well?