A few days ago, Vice President JD Vance posted on X that “[i]f an American corporation needs workers, it should hire and train Americans” while promoting DHS’s proposed $103,265 H-1B fee. Ankit Gupta, general partner at Y Combinator (described by Breitbart’s Neil Munro as “a leading investment firm for emerging tech companies in Silicon Valley”), snarkily posted that the vice president’s post was “a win for the woke left” and “DEI is back”
Following Gupta’s ham-fisted attempt at a retort, he put his foot further in his mouth, posting: “[W]hat elements of H1B immigrant culture do you not like? [I]s it the willingness to work long hours? Or perhaps the education focus of their children?” Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson then slammed Gupta on X, writing “I’m deeply uncomfortable with wealthy investors attacking American workers like this. I’m afraid it’s increasingly obvious to many people that individuals such as this guy do not have the best interests of America and her citizens in mind.” Of course, Gupta has since taken down his posts.
I have no issue with H-1B immigrant culture. What I do have a problem with is H-1B employer culture, which encourages “deliberately exploit[ing the H-1B program] to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor” (to quote from President Trump $100,000 H-1B entry fee proclamation).
Gupta is not alone. Many in the H-1B employer community don’t have the best interests of America and her citizens in mind. Ferguson’s critique applies to employers whose solution to their mass layoffs is to hire more H-1Bs. And it applies to employers whose conception of “compassion” is to come to the aid of laid-off H-1B workers while ignoring laid-off American workers.
Case in point was the sad spectacle of major corporations and civic organizations in Chicago banding together into the “Chicago H-1B Connect Coalition” (“H-1B Coalition”) to facilitate the hiring of more laid-off H-1B workers to keep them from having to return to their home countries, and then congratulating themselves for valiantly fighting for diversity and inclusion. Talk about the woke left!
As Ferguson stated in his post, “The purpose of the American economy is to promote the general welfare of American workers, not provide jobs for the rest of the world.” The purpose of corporations and civic organizations in Chicago should be to facilitate the hiring of more laid-off American workers.
The H-1B Program
The Immigration and Nationality Act makes available H-1B visas for aliens “coming temporarily to the [U.S.] to perform services … in a specialty occupation”, defined as requiring “theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge” and “attainment of a bachelor’s or higher degree in the specific specialty (or its equivalent) as a minimum for entry into the occupation”. In fiscal year 2025, 46 percent of approved H-1B petitions for initial employment were for aliens in computer-related occupations, as were 68 percent of extensions of H-1B status.
While the H-1B program caps the number of available H-1B visas at 65,000 a year, the cap applies neither to aliens who will work for higher education institutions, related/affiliated nonprofit entities, nonprofit research organizations, or governmental research organizations, nor to the first 20,000 approved aliens with advanced degrees from U.S. schools. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services estimated that, in 2019, the population of authorized-to-work H-1B workers was approximately 583,420 (as aliens can stay in H-1B status for six or more years).
As I have written, employers of H-1B workers and program boosters have long proclaimed that the program serves to provide visas for “the best and brightest” from around the world. The website of the Chicago H-1B Connect Coalition stated that “From corporate to startup — these Chicagoland companies are eager to employ the best and brightest in tech.”
However, few H-1B visas actually go to “the best and brightest”. Ronil Hira, associate professor of political science at Howard University, and Bharath Gopalaswamy, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, concluded in 2019 that “most H-1B workers have no more than ordinary skills, skills that are abundantly available in the US labor market”.
The “best and brightest” talk itself seems to be just for show. On the very same day in 2025 that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce published a story on its website lauding the H-1B program and proclaiming that “Retaining the best and brightest, many of whom trained in highly respected U.S. universities, will help America innovate and compete globally,” the Chamber proclaimed in a court filing that “reducing the pool of H-1B applicants to ‘the best of the best’ is flatly contrary to Congress’s directives” and “the imposition of … a ‘best of the best’ requirement on the H-1B program would trample Congress’s duly enacted policy choices”. I am not making this up.
Many H-1B employers are in fact eager to employ H-1B workers, eager because they can pay them substantially less than American workers. The prevailing mythology about the H-1B program is that its prevailing wage requirement offers real protection for American workers. However, the late Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, and advocate for U.S. citizen and legal permanent resident workers and students, long contended that the prevailing wage methodology was fundamentally flawed, that employers could and did perfectly legally “pay[] H-1Bs less than comparable Americans” and “hir[e] younger, thus cheaper, H-1Bs in lieu of older, thus more expensive (age 35+) Americans”.
Last year, I compared the salaries employers paid H-1B workers in computer-related occupations over the previous two decades with the salaries that software developers had been paid in the overall American economy over the same period. Among my findings was that for H-1B petitions approved in 2023, the average promised salary for new H-1B workers in computer-related occupations was 25 percent less than the average software developer’s salary that year.
Earlier this year, George Borjas, research professor of economics and social policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School and who until recently was a senior policy advisor at the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, published a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper concluding that “The average H-1B worker earns about 16 percent less than a U.S.-born worker in the same metropolitan area and with the same education, age, gender, occupation, and industry.” Borjas’s research actually understates employers’ financial incentive to hire H-1B workers over Americans since, as Matloff concluded, many of them “hir[e] younger, thus cheaper, H-1Bs in lieu of older, thus more expensive … Americans”.
President Trump’s $100,000 H-1B worker entry fee proclamation from last year emphatically agreed with these concerns about the impact of the H-1B program on American workers:
The H-1B … program … has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor. [This] … has undermined both our economic and national security. Some employers, using practices now widely adopted by entire sectors, have abused the H-1B statute and its regulations to artificially suppress wages.
Among computer and math occupations, the foreign share of the workforce grew from 17.7 percent in 2000 to 26.1 percent in 2019. And the key facilitator for this influx of foreign STEM labor has been the abuse of the H-1B visa.
The high numbers of relatively low-wage workers in the H-1B program undercut the integrity of the program and are detrimental to American workers’ wages and labor opportunities.
Further, President Trump stated that “abuses of the H-1B program present a national security threat by discouraging Americans from pursuing careers in science and technology, risking American leadership in these fields”.
Layoffs
Contrary to popular belief, there is (in the vast majority of cases) no legal prohibition against an employer laying off American workers and replacing them with H-1B workers. In 2020, the Department of Homeland Security stated that “U.S. companies such as The Walt Disney Company, Hewlett-Packard, University of California San Francisco, Southern California Edison, Qualcomm, and Toys ‘R’ Us have reportedly laid off their qualified U.S. workers and replaced them with H-1B workers.”
For years, waves of layoffs have buffeted technology workers. According to Layoffs.fyi, technology companies laid off 127,180 employees so far in 2026, 122,606 in 2025, 152,922 in 2024, 265,660 in 2023, and 165,269 in 2022, for a total of 833,637 layoffs during this period. According to TrueUp, the total number of such layoffs was approximately 1,340,000.
And it is an uphill struggle for laid-off technology workers to find new jobs. An August 3 Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (FRBSF) Economic Letter by Marianna Kudlyak, Ingrid Chen, and Riva Mikhlin, all with the FRBSF’s Economic Research Department, concluded that:
[T]he decline in job finding from unemployment is particularly large for those of prime working ages 35–54 and primarily concentrated in college-educated groups. … College-educated individuals saw a decline of 30% [from January 2023 to January 2026], those with some college degree declined 18%, while workers with less than high school saw their job-finding rate increase.
The authors noted that their “findings go against typical expectations for a recovery”, elaborating that:
The current decline from unemployment is concentrated among groups that typically have the highest job-finding rates: prime-age and college-educated workers. They normally find jobs quickly even in weaker labor markets. The drop in their job-finding rates is particularly surprising and suggests something other than a standard cyclical slowdown.
They speculated as to the cause:
These patterns suggest that the current slowdown may reflect structural forces rather than being a signal of a cyclical downturn. There may be several contributing factors for future research to consider, including immigration-driven changes, sector-specific slowdowns in technology and government contracting, policy uncertainty, or early signals of broader labor market deterioration.
As I mentioned, to many employers utilizing the H-1B program, the solution to their mass layoffs is to hire more H-1Bs. President Trump’s proclamation concluded that “many American tech companies have laid off their qualified and highly skilled American workers and simultaneously hired thousands of H-1B workers”. It noted that:
One software company was approved for over 5,000 H-1B workers in FY 2025; around the same time, it announced a series of layoffs totaling more than 15,000 employees. Another IT firm was approved for nearly 1,700 H-1B workers in FY 2025; it announced it was laying off 2,400 American workers in Oregon in July. A third company has reduced its workforce by approximately 27,000 American workers since 2022, while being approved for over 25,000 H-1B workers since FY 2022. A fourth company reportedly eliminated 1,000 jobs in February; it was approved for over 1,100 H-1B workers for FY 2025.
And, as I mentioned, to many employers utilizing the H-1B program, “compassion” means to come to the aid of laid-off H-1B foreign workers while ignoring laid-off American workers. I learned of the Chicago H-1B Connect Coalition through a misguided Administrative Law Judge’s decision in US Tech Workers v. Boston Consulting Group, Inc. (OCAHO Case No. 2024B00040 (Aug. 12, 2026), which I will address at a later date).
On January 23, 2023, P33 and World Business Chicago issued a press release “announc[ing] that they have formed” the H-1B Coalition. P33 is “a privately-funded non-profit focused on driving inclusive, global tech and innovation leadership in Chicago” with a “mission … to help Chicago become one of the most inclusive technology hubs in the U.S.” World Business Chicago is “the City of Chicago's economic development agency”, “serv[ing] a critical role in driving inclusive and equitable recovery throughout the city’s 77 neighborhoods”.
What exactly was the H-1B Coalition? It was “a united effort to assist current H-1B visa holders who have been impacted by layoffs in the tech industry”, bringing “together the city’s leading civic organizations … along with Fortune 500 corporations and rapidly scaling, well-funded startups to help support and to retain highly skilled and valuable international talent”. The press release explained that these efforts included launching “an employment portal featuring over 900 job openings from over 35 Chicago-based employers already sponsoring H-1B visa holders”.
The press release explained that “[L]aid off H-1B workers have 60 days to pinpoint a new employer willing to transfer and to sponsor their visas. If they are unable to find a new job, they must switch their visa status or leave the U.S.” This is true, as DHS regulations provide that:
An alien admitted or otherwise provided [H-1B] status … and … dependents shall not be considered to have failed to maintain [their] status solely on the basis of a cessation of the employment on which the alien’s classification was based, for up to 60 consecutive days or until the end of the authorized validity period, whichever is shorter, once during each authorized validity period.
The press release stated that “Until now, H-1B visa holders have had an incredibly difficult time identifying career opportunities where employers are willing to sponsor or transfer their visas.” It lamented that “These are difficult and turbulent times for anyone to lose a job, but it is especially challenging for foreign workers on H-1B status as it also threatens their immigration status, and potentially their family’s status too.”
Michael Fassnacht, then World Business Chicago’s CEO/president and the City of Chicago’s chief marketing officer, Siddharth Mehta, a former CEO of TransUnion, and Jennifer Scanlon, then CEO of UL Solutions, wrote in a January 25, 2023, op-ed in Crain’s Chicago Business that the H-1B program can “create stress and uncertainty for H-1B visa holders and their families, especially those impacted by recent job cuts in technology and adjacent industries”, and that they wanted to “promote awareness of the plight of H-1B visa holders”.
Nuwan Samaraweera, COO and executive vice president, workforce systems, at P33 wrote in a LinkedIn post that “The combination of a #techlayoffs and having an #h1bvisa is devastating. You have 60 days to find another job or leave the country, upending your life and that of your family.”
The H-1B coalition’s press release trumpeted Chicago as “the first city to collectively band together around this issue to support and attract H-1B professionals.” It quoted Brad Henderson, P33’s CEO, as stating that:
Our message to laid off H-1B holders is to consider the ever welcoming City of Chicago and our burgeoning technology ecosystem that fosters diversity and inclusion[. ]I am proud, though not surprised by the way our city’s leaders have come together to make this collaborative effort a reality in such a short amount of time.
And it quoted Fassnacht as stating that:
I am thrilled with the launch of this campaign, which brings together Chicago’s business community to support H1-B visa holders affected by job loss in tech and adjacent industries[. ]This initiative is a shining example of our city’s commitment to being a welcoming and inclusive destination for immigrants, where diversity and inclusivity are celebrated.
Fassnacht, Mehta, and Scanlon celebrated “the Chicago-area business community … leaning in to ensure our city and region remain a welcoming place for talented international professionals who wish to build a life and career here”. They explained that the H-1B Coalition’s goals were to:
- “connect impacted H-1B visa holders to available jobs and provide resources and opportunities for them to thrive in their careers”;
- “signal to current and potential H-1B visa holders, and their families, that they are welcomed and valued in the Chicago area; here, we are working to build a stronger and more inclusive community for all”;
- “provide support and resources for current H-1B visa holders who are seeking new employer sponsors”;
- “alleviate some of the cost and burden on employers and make the H-1B visa process more efficient for all involved”; and
- “address the skill gap that exists in some positions by connecting H1-B visa holders with these jobs that are harder to fill”.
In sum, they wrote that “We must do everything in our power to retain this highly skilled talent and ensure that they feel supported.”
The H-1B Coalition’s website included corporate/institutional logos for Avant, Boston Consulting Group, BMO, Calamos Investments, Cast21, Caterpillar, Chime, Cohesion, Discovery Partners Institute/University of Illinois, Discover, Edelman, Fifth Third Bank, G2, Gallagher, Gensler, Grainger, Illinois Institute of Technology, IODatasphere, Illinois Tool Works, John Deere, M1, Mesirow, Morningstar, Mycocycle, Northern Trust, Northwestern Medicine, Oak St. Health, Paylocity, Relativity, Reveal, Rheaply, Sharma Strategy Group, Slalom, Telnyx, TransUnion, UL Solutions, ULTA Beauty, the University of Chicago, Valkyrie, Vividseats, Walgreens, WaterSaver, and Zebra.
Did the H-1B Coalition express any concern whatsoever about laid-off American citizens and lawful permanent residents? Not that I could see. Did it express any desire or intent whatsoever to aid laid-off citizens and lawful permanent residents? Not that I could see. Did it acknowledge at any point that, as Ferguson stated, “[t]he purpose of the American economy is to promote the general welfare of American workers, not provide jobs for the rest of the world”? Not that I could see.
In fact, the H-1B Coalition not so implicitly belittled American workers, as when claiming that “Despite nationwide layoffs, companies are struggling to fill critical tech roles in Chicago.” So did Samaraweera, as when he wrote in his post that “the labor shortage for in-demand tech roles in America is still enormous despite layoffs in #bigtech”, and when he stated in an interview on National Public Radio that “the American economy needs to be more thoughtful about how it produces talent” and that “There’s a lot of open roles that can't be filled in America because we don't have enough people with those skills. H-1B visa holders in many cases have those precise skills.”
It is little solace to laid-off Americans and their families that laid-off foreign workers on H-1B visas have been “rescued” from having to return home — especially when those H-1B workers’ new job could have gone to them.