What Is the H-1B Visa Program and Why Are Trump Backers Feuding Over It?

As President Trump embarked on a sweeping crackdown on immigration upon his return to office this week, he left unresolved a rift that surfaced last month among some of his most influential supporters about the role of skilled foreign workers in the U.S. labor market.

The split over the H-1B visa program, which allows skilled workers like software engineers to work in the United States, has pitted hard-line immigration opponents against some of Mr. Trump’s most prominent backers in the tech industry, who say they rely on the program because they can’t find enough qualified American workers.

It’s unclear where Mr. Trump will land. He pledged in his first term to discontinue H-1B visas, but last month he called it “a great program.”

How does the H-1B visa program work?

Congress passed legislation creating the H-1B program in 1990, as a labor shortage loomed. When President George Bush signed it into law, he said the program would “encourage the immigration of exceptionally talented people, such as scientists, engineers and educators.”

Employers use the visas — which are valid for three years and can be extended — to hire foreign workers with specialized skills, mainly in science and technology, to fill openings for which American workers with similar abilities cannot be found.

Employers submit a petition to the government on behalf of a foreign worker they want to hire, describing the job and the qualifications of the person selected to fill it.

The H-1B program confers temporary status in the United States, not residency. However, many employers sponsor workers with H-1B visas for a green card, which puts them on the path to U.S. citizenship.

Who are the workers?

Congress makes 65,000 H-1B visas available each year for workers with a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, and 20,000 more for those with a master’s degree or higher. Universities and research organizations are exempt from those caps.

Many of the workers who have received the visas are software engineers, computer programmers and others in the technology industry. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and I.B.M. were among the companies that employed the most H-1B visa holders last year, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

But it’s not just a Silicon Valley story. H-1B recipients work in other professions, including education, health care and manufacturing.

There is no cap for each country, and a vast majority — between about two-thirds and just over three-quarters — of recipients come from one: India.

Do H-1B holders replace American workers?

Employers must attest that they have searched for qualified domestic candidates, and that an H-1B worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of American workers.

The program requires employers to pay H-1B workers, at a minimum, either the average wage for the job and the city where it is based, or the average wage of American-born workers doing the same job. Companies are prohibited from paying H-1B workers less than other workers with similar skills and qualifications. Still, about 60 percent of the positions paid “well below” the local median wage for the occupation in 2019, according to the Economic Policy Institute, citing the Labor Department’s “broad discretion” to set H-1B wage levels.

Critics say employers often use H-1B visas to hire workers who are willing to accept lower salaries than Americans, and there have been episodes in which the program has been used to bring in immigrants to do jobs that American workers had been doing.

In 2015, about 250 technology workers at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., were told that they were being laid off, and that they would have to train their replacements — H-1B visa holders who had been brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Similar episodes that year affected employees of Toys “R” Us and the New York Life Insurance Company. However, some studies have shown that the visa program helps foster innovation and growth, leading to more jobs, including for U.S.-born workers.

How has the issue divided Republicans, and where does President Trump stand?

A rift erupted among Republicans in December how much tolerance, if any, the incoming Trump administration should have for immigrants brought into the country on H-1B visas.

Elon Musk, a former H-1B holder, wrote on X that the expertise U.S. companies need “simply does not exist in America in sufficient quantity.” Mr. Musk’s electric-car company, Tesla, obtained 724 of the visas this year.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Republican presidential candidate who recently quit a government cost-cutting initiative that Mr. Trump had asked him to lead alongside Mr. Musk, blamed American culture for creating people ill-suited for skilled tech positions.

Among those on the other side of the debate were Laura Loomer, the far-right activist, and Stephen K. Bannon, a longtime Trump confidant. Mr. Bannon hosted influencers and researchers on his popular “War Room” podcast in December who critiqued “big tech oligarchs” for supporting the H-1B program.

In 2020, Mr. Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending new H-1B visas, which he had said should go to “only the most skilled and highest-paid applicants and should never, ever be used to replace American workers.” After a federal judge struck that order down, the Trump administration tightened eligibility rules for the visas and required companies to pay higher salaries to H-1B holders. A federal judge also rejected some of those rules, including the salary requirement.

In late December, Mr. Trump appeared to weigh in on the debate, saying he had often used the program as a businessman. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B,” he told The New York Post. “I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”

In fact, Mr. Trump appears to have used the H-1B visa program sparingly. He has been a frequent and longtime user of the similarly named H-2B visa program, which is for unskilled workers like gardeners and housekeepers, as well as the H-2A program, for agricultural workers. Those visas allow a worker to remain in the country for 10 months.