In an interview with the New York Times, Joseph Edlow said he would overhaul the H-1B visa program for skilled workers, which has been the subject of fierce debate among Republicans since Donald Trump’s second presidential campaign.
Edlow said that H-1B needed to be used to “supplement, not supplant, US economy and US businesses and US workers,” which, he added, was “one of [his] favourite phrases”.
His comments follow a proposal from USCIS and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish a “weighted selection process” for H-1B applicants, submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review on July 17.
It is understood that the proposals would replace the current random draw with a wage-weighted selection process, appeasing Republicans who argue the visa stream brings in workers who are willing to accept lower wages than US employees.
The plan echoes a proposal submitted during Trump’s first term that would have replaced the lottery system with a process awarding H-1B visas based on salary from highest to lowest and was eventually withdrawn by the Biden administration.
It is unclear whether the current plan is an exact replica of the 2021 proposal, but critics have said it would disadvantage recent international students and early-career professionals, as well as damaging lower-wage industries.
Currently in the US, a quarter of all startups valued at over $1 billion were founded by international students, a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed by tech industry leaders speaking out against the plans.
According to Doug Rand, former USCIS senior adviser under Biden, the wage-based proposal would be “disastrous” – not only for Apple, Amazon and Google, but also for the likes of Ford and Walmart, as well as startups, small businesses and community hospitals.
It is these employers that typically hire “early-career researchers, engineers, doctors, and other professionals, often fresh out of US graduate school”, said Rand in a post on LinkedIn.
“They may be well-compensated, but they wouldn’t hit the top quartile, so they would be effectively frozen out of the lottery,” he continued.
There are not enough American STEM graduates available to fill the jobs and drive the American economy forward
Ben Waxman, Intead
In 2024, over 50% of international students graduating from US institutions did so from a STEM field, with a growing number of students obtaining post-completion work experience in the US through Optional Practical Training (OPT).
With analysis by the Chamber of Commerce forecasting a continued decline in the US labour force participation by 2030, advocacy bodies such as IIE have emphasised the importance of international students to fill gaps in labour markets across the country.
“What we are talking about is a policy to determine how controlled immigration can support US companies and overall national economic growth,” Intead CEO, Ben Waxman, told The PIE News.
“There are not enough American STEM graduates available to fill the jobs and drive the American economy forward,” Waxman continued.
Under the current system, there is a statutory annual cap of 85,000 new H-1B visas: 65,00 for regular H-1B visas and 20,000 for individuals with advanced degrees from US institutions known as the master’s cap.
Each year, US employers submit registrations to USCIS for each worker they want to sponsor for a visa. Typically, this number exceeds the cap, in which case, applicants are placed into a random lottery which determines who is awarded a visa.
Amid recent scrutiny, there have been various suggestions about how to avoid the inflexibility and randomness of the current system, including by using labour data to identify sector-specific labour gaps and allowing states to manage their own visa allocations.
For Waxman, a “radical” new approach would involve enhanced use of education and labour market data to estimate the supply of domestic and international graduates, as well as unemployment data to identify American STEM degree-holders not in work.
This would be compared to data gathered by USCIS on employer hiring needs, differentiating between entry, mid, and senior level positions, to produce a new H-1B visa each year designed to meet employers’ needs at the three generic hiring levels.
“While the calculations will not align perfectly from one year to the next, they will level out and support visa allocations and employment needs consistently over time,” Waxman explained.
Now is not the first time the H-1B system has been called into question. Earlier this year, it was thrust into the limelight during a political row in which Trump sided with Elon Musk to defend the skilled worker visa against calls for its abolition from some MAGA hardliners.
At the time, Musk doubled down on the “essential individuals” on H-1B visas who helped build “Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that have strengthened the country”, he wrote on X.
