, Columnist
Trump's H1-B Squeeze Threatens U.S. Tech Leadership
Global competitors can rise the same way as Silicon Valley: by attracting immigrant entrepreneurs who hire the best talent in the world.
Is POTUS ready to take a backseat to Europe and Asia?
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
It's hard to calculate the effect of H-1B visas -- which the U.S. government is now making it harder to obtain -- on the U.S. technology sector, but it's likely rather large. If restricting H-1B visas is a Trump administration goal, and there are reasons to believe that is the case, then it's time to imagine a world in which the U.S. has lost its technological leadership.
The U.S. government is supposed to only issue 85,000 H-1B visas a year. In reality, it issued 172,748 in fiscal year 2015, and 140,000 a year on average between 2006 and 2015.