China says it welcomes industry talent following President Donald Trump’s announcement of the introduction of a new hurdle to deter H-1B visa applicants.
On Friday, Trump issued a proclamation adding a $100,000 fee to H-1B visas, which employers are responsible for paying. Foreigners seeking to come to America to work in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math are commonly required to obtain a H-1B visa.
Until Sunday, the fee for an H-1B visa ranged from $2,000 to $5,000.
“The H-1B nonimmigrant visa program was created to bring temporary workers into the United States to perform additive, high-skilled functions, but it has been deliberately exploited to replace—rather than supplement—American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor,” according to the White House.
The new H-1B visa fee is higher than the average salary for a visa recipient, creating a significant disincentive for U.S. tech companies to hire foreign workers over Americans.
Following the move, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun was asked about the change to the U.S. visa program.
“China welcomes outstanding talents from all industries and fields globally to come to China, take root in China, and jointly promote the continuous progress of human society while achieving personal career development,” Guo said, according to a translation from China’s state-run Global Times.
On Oct. 1, Beijing’s K visa will take effect. The K visa aims to attracts young science and technology talent to China.
Though China is further opening its doors to foreign STEM talent, Jeff Smith, director of the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation, says he does not foresee young people who had planned to apply for a H-1B visa in the U.S. now seeking a K visa in China.
“If foreigners seeking a U.S. work visa lose access to that option or it becomes prohibitively expensive, they are likely to look to Canada, Europe, or Australia next. For most, China will not be their next option,” Smith told The Daily Signal.
About 70% of H-1B visa holders are from India, and China is not interested in absorbing millions of foreign workers, according to Simon Hankinson.
“The H-1B visa is far more important—politically, economically, and socially—to India than to the United States,” said Hankinson, who spent more than 20 years as a Foreign Service Officer serving in India, Fiji, Ghana, Slovakia, Togo, France, and Kenya.
“India’s labor market cannot absorb its millions of annual graduates,” he said, adding that the “majority of Indians coming to the U.S. are average workers and paid below-average wages. Only a few are exceptional and worth that extra money.”
“The threat of students or workers going elsewhere due to Trump tightening of rules is a tactic to try and keep the student-work visa-permanent residence pipeline wide-open,” according to Hankinson, who now works in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center.
The H-1B visa, which is valid for three years, was begun in the 1990s to bring top talent to America to work in the growing field of technology.
From 2000 to 2019, the number of foreigners working in the U.S. in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math has grown from 1.2 million to about 2.5 million, according to the White House, adding that “overall STEM employment has only increased 44.5% during that time.”
Over the years, the H-1B visa program “has been widely abused by major tech companies to misrepresent the labor market and import cheaper foreign labor for jobs that were never truly high-skill,” Wesley Hodges, acting director of the Center for Technology and the Human Person at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.
The “H-1B program has failed both American workers, who increasingly struggle to find jobs in technical fields, and genuine high-skill immigrants, who are crowded out by misuse of the system,” according to Hodges.
The rapid advance of artificial intelligence is also expected to “automate many of the low-skill information jobs that H-1B visas have historically filled,” Hodges said.
The average H-1B salary is $60,000, according to economist Peter St Onge, and because the salary for the visa has not been adjusted for inflation over time, he says, the program has gone from being an attractor of top talent to a “sweatshop” model.
The $100,000 H-1B visa fee will only be applied to new visas and not existing visas.
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