Tech companies are telling employees on visas to avoid leaving the country over fears of being denied re-entry. Law firms have stated that denial rates for high-skilled visas such as the H-1B visa, could rise because of President Donald Trump’s stringent policies with regard to immigration.
There is also fear of birthright citizenship being revoked, causing the children of immigrant workers to be rendered stateless. The arrest of pro-Palestine protestor Mahmoud Khalil by ICE, despite his green card has also ignited fears among migrants.
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“What we’re seeing right now is just a lot of worry and panic,” said Malcolm Goeschl, principal attorney for Goeschl Law, a San Francisco-based firm focused on business immigration that serves clients in the tech industry. “It seems like [the administration is] just getting more and more momentum, and we don’t know what’s around the corner.”
These uncertainties and fears have affected Silicon Valley’s immigrant tech company. A 2018 study from the National Foundation for American Policy, a think tank focused on trade and immigration, found that more than half of U.S. startups valued at more than $1 billion had an immigrant founder or co-founder. The CEOs of Microsoft, Google, Uber and chip giant Nvidia are all immigrants. Experts claim that cutting visas for immigrants working in the tech industry could affect the industry’s ability to compete with China in the race to develop cutting-edge technology.
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Silicon Valley tech giants employ thousands of workers on H-1B visas, the visa category at the center of the debate. About 65,000 visas are approved each year via a lottery system, with people coming from India having the highest number of approvals, followed by China and Canada, according to data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Among Big Tech companies, Amazon had the highest number of H-1B visas approved, followed by Google, Meta, Microsoft and Apple. The H-1B visa can be used by a wide range of workers with specialized skill sets.
The H-1B visa has been a topic of much debate during Trump’s current term. While billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who is a close ally of Trump spoke in favor of the visa program, and Trump has also expressed his support recently, others associated with the Republican party have been staunchly opposed to it.