The myth of the H-1B foreign national replacing the U.S. worker reared its ugly head again yesterday, when President Trump signed a new Presidential Proclamation entitled “Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers.” The measure seeks to kill the H-1B visa program by making it prohibitively expensive for U.S. employers to hire foreign workers with university degrees, based on the misnomer that these workers are directly replacing U.S. workers.

The Proclamation is deeply flawed and uses the ageless “scapegoat the immigrant for taking American jobs” rhetoric to justify its extortive pricing-out of employment of foreign nationals under this program ($100,000 fees for processing their visas, per person, not per employer). This program is crucial to any company in the technology field—or that uses technology to grow and prosper—which is essentially any successful company.

While there is data showing that U.S. companies have laid off American workers during times they also filed H-1B petitions, the claim lacks nuance:

  • It often conflates transfers/extensions with new hiring.
  • It doesn’t differentiate job types or departments.
  • It ignores the legal obligations employers have (e.g., H-1B wage requirements, non-displacement attestations). This includes the Department of Labor, which is cited by the administration in the prologue of the Proclamation, yet simultaneously ignored. How? Because all H-1B cases must meet the DOL’s minimum salary requirements in order to be eligible for approval, through the Labor Condition Application, which must be certified before an H-1B petition can be approved.
  • It implies causality (i.e., “foreign workers are replacing U.S. workers”) without sufficient proof.

The world is evolving, and technological shifts are reshaping the workforce. Companies are changing their technologies and methodologies. New positions are being created while others are being outmoded.

The tech industry is undergoing a transformation—not just a contraction:

  • AI, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and automation are replacing older roles (like traditional system administrators and basic coding jobs).
  • Layoffs are often focused on:
  • Middle management
  • Legacy IT support
  • Sales and recruiting teams
  • At the same time, companies are aggressively hiring for new roles:
  • AI engineers
  • ML specialists
  • Cybersecurity analysts
  • DevOps experts

“Adapt or die” is the expression that applies to success in business, in any sector. Businesses are forced to do this in the AI-driven world we all live in now. They are not abusing the system by hiring skilled workers from other countries—something that is expressly allowed—when they are paying the salaries mandated by the federal government itself.