CENTRAL TEXAS (KXXV) — The temporary federal visa program known as H-1B will soon see some changes but right now the decades old program sits at the center of controversy from MAGA supporters according to national reports.
This also following a report by the Austin American-Statesman of layoffs at Tesla with workers being replaced by H-1B workers.
President-elect Donald Trump and some of his top administrative picks, including Elon Musk, have shown support for the program intended to help advance and stabilize the country’s workforce through the help of skilled foreign workers.
H-1B is a temporary visa program created by congress in 1990 allows U.S. employers to hire skilled foreign workers for specialty jobs in fields like education, science and technology with a limited number of visas made available each year.
Last month, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a final rule for the program that they expect will “significantly enhance” U.S. companies’ ability to fill job vacancies by “modernizing” and “streamlining” the visa approvals process in hopes of better helping employers keep workers while improving the integrity and oversight of the program.
This comes at a time when some Texas economic expects and immigration advocates say more workers are needed in the U.S. and here in Texas.
"The bottom line is, for a long time, this country had a low birth rate and we've had fairly restrictive immigration," said Ray Perryman with The Perryman Group in Waco last year.
"Our workforce is not getting any bigger — the population of the U.S. that’s working will fall by six million over the next two decades if we don’t have a growing workforce," said State Director for the American Business Immigration Coalition, Juan Carlos Cerda"
Reports show the United States Citizenship and immigration Services estimates just over half a million foreign nationals are on H-1B visas as of September 2019.
Here in Texas, a Pew Research Center report showed that the East Coast and Texas metros had the most H-1B visas for skilled workers from 2010 to 2016 with many of them being in Dallas and College Station.
Texas employers such as Tesla, Amazon, The University of Texas at Austin and Waco ISD currently or have filed to be part of the program.
The new changes for the program take effect in just under two weeks on January 15.
To learn more about the changes and filing process, click here.
