The Trump administration announced a new annual levy of one hundred thousand dollars on H-1B visas last Friday. This fee applies to companies that hire skilled foreign workers through the program, which allows eighty-five thousand people to enter the United States each year, primarily for the technology sector.
Veteran venture capitalist Michael Moritz has strongly criticized the move. In a new op-ed for the Financial Times, the former Sequoia Capital executive compared the White House to Tony Soprano’s pork store, calling the levy another brutish extortion scheme.
Moritz argues that the administration misunderstands why technology companies hire foreign workers. He states the reason is to acquire specific skills and fill labor shortages, not to replace American workers or reduce costs. He warns that the policy will backfire by encouraging companies to move jobs to locations like Istanbul, Warsaw, or Bangalore instead of keeping them in the United States.
According to Moritz, engineers from leading universities in Eastern Europe, Turkey, and India are every bit as qualified as their American counterparts. Instead of restricting H-1B visas, he suggests doubling or tripling the number available. He also proposes automatically granting citizenship to foreign nationals who earn STEM PhDs from top US universities. He cites foreign-born leaders like Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Google’s Sundar Pichai as examples of the program’s success.
Michael Moritz himself came to the United States on the precursor to the H-1B visa in 1979. The billionaire writes that he has always felt grateful to the country that welcomed him.