Trump has called the temporary nonimmigrant H-1B visa program, which allows foreigners with advanced degrees to be employed here, "a cheap labor program." Critics of the program say companies are replacing Americans with people hired from abroad, mainly young Indians with computer skills willing to do monotonous work for less pay than their American counterparts. Many tech giants rely on foreign talent. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in the computer and information technology field is projected to grow 12% from 2014 to 2024, faster than the average for all occupations. That amounts to 488,500 new jobs. What's more, researchers from the University of California, Davis and Colgate University found that temporary workers on these visas actually end up creating more jobs for American-born workers. Facebook (FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple (AAPL) co-founder Steve Jobs have both argued that the U.S. needs to be able to increase its supply of tech workers to Silicon Valley.
The issue came up during Trump's meeting with tech leaders lin December at the Trump Tower in New York City. According to Recode, Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella, who moved to the U.S. from India for grad school and was most likely on the H-1B visa program himself, stressed the need to bring in and keep talent in the U.S. Trump responded: "Let's fix that."
Submitted February 02, 2017 at 06:52AM by gambit270 http://ift.tt/2jA1Daa
