The H-1B Visa Reset Will Crush America’s College Pipeline
Every fifth person pursuing a STEM career in the US is foreign-born. Many will be already weighing rival offers pitching for young talent.
New graduates will get elbowed out.
Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images
Before the ink is dry on his chaotic plan to charge employers a fat fee for hiring foreigners, President Donald Trump may end up choking off the very pipeline through which young overseas students trickle into the American job market: College education.
Last week’s hastily imposed Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers opened a new front in Washington’s increasingly ugly trade spat with New Delhi. Indian techies and doctors, who hold more than 70% of the existing visas under this category, read the move as an eviction notice from their careers and lives in the US. Or at least that’s how Trump’s proclamation was received, until the White House clarified that a one-time $100,000 fee on H-1B visas would only apply to employers of new applicants — and doctors may be exempt.