Trump's new H-1B policy caused short-term panic - and will cause long-term chaos

"Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump often claimed that his efforts against immigration were primarily against irregular or illegal immigration, and that he was happy to have people go through "proper channels." Those assurances got weaker as he moved into his first term, but he still made at least rhetorical overtures to legal immigration - he had to appease a business community that was still skeptical of his then-new political movement."

"This public perception of the H-1B visa system imagines bringing in cheaper (and, the stereotype goes, often lower-skilled) international labor, especially in technology spaces. This undeniably has happened; there have in the past been a few outsourcing firms hoovering up masses of the visas, and as there is research backing up that employers have behaved in exploitative ways toward workers that are effectively tethered to them by law and far less able to seek better conditions or organize."

"But this is only one piece of the puzzle - an increasingly small one in recent years, as the Biden administration took steps to rein in abuses, extending into the weeks leading up to Trump's inauguration. The other side of the coin is that H-1Bs are often used to populate the workforces of technical industries that simply cannot find domestic workers with the skills or expertise at the volumes they need,"

Donald Trump initially framed immigration enforcement as targeting irregular or illegal entry while expressing comfort with legal immigration pathways, but later weakened those assurances. Trump and anti-immigration allies targeted international students and H-1B visa holders, promoting a narrative that outsourced foreign workers displace native-born workers. Outsourcing abuses and employer exploitation have occurred, tethering some visa holders to exploitative conditions. The Biden administration implemented measures to curb those abuses. H-1Bs also supply skilled workers for technical sectors facing domestic labor shortages, supporting companies such as Amazon and high-tech manufacturing, similar to other industries' reliance on foreign labor for essential roles.

Read at The Verge