Clément Garnier earned his computer engineering degree in France, grabbed an internship in Montreal, and finally, a full-time job in San Francisco with a coveted H-1B visa.
The papers allow Garnier, a 25-year-old software engineer, to work with a health care start-up and help it grow from 5 to 50 employees. Until the election of Donald Trump, he saw his visa as the start of a long and perhaps permanent stay in the U.S.
“Now, I’m even worried about being able to stay here in the very near future,” Garnier said. “I’m worried that these things will maybe disappear.”
He’s not alone.
Silicon Valley companies, long dependent on foreign workers to fuel tech growth, are bracing for changes to immigration policy that could impact a vast workforce. About two-thirds of the workers in computer and mathematical professions were born outside the U.S., according to the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies. And although the federal government does not release H-1B visa holder population data by region, a Brookings Institution study found the Bay Area had about 27,000 H-1B visas approved in 2013, trailing only the New York metro area.
Tech lobbyists say the industry remains committed to its core goal — more liberal immigration policies for skilled workers — and has bipartisan support. FWD.us, a tech industry lobby backed by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is focused on building grassroots organizations around the country to tell immigrant success stories.
Still, after years of legislative threats and criticism of the visas, experts and analysts agree the H-1B program will likely change, given the position of the Trump administration. Trump made immigration central to his campaign, and has occasionally singled out the H-1B program for high-skilled workers, albeit with conflicting messages.
During a March GOP presidential debate, Trump said he was softening his position on allowing skilled workers into the country. But his campaign later issued a statement re-affirming his opposition to the program.
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“The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay,” the statement read. “I remain totally committed to eliminating rampant, widespread H-1B abuse.”
Two California lawmakers are introducing plans to revamp the H-1B program, which allows about 85,000 highly skilled foreign workers to enter the country every year. Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from San Diego, introduced a bill that would raise the minimum salary from $60,000 to $100,000 for the workers, eliminating the lower pay that attracts U.S. companies.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, is planning a bill that would push for higher salaries for visa-holders and require companies that rely heavily on H-1B employees to prove they recruited U.S. workers for certain positions.
Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, also plans to introduce a bill to reform H-1B and other visa programs.
Ron Hira, an immigration policy researcher at Howard University and critic of the H-1B program, believes the new political environment could allow for H-1B reform. Other efforts failed, he said, because Democrats insisted on broad immigration reform.
“The landscape has changed,” said Hira. “This is not a partisan issue.”
Hira said the H-1B system has changed from its origins — to help U.S. companies hire a limited number of specialized talent from overseas — to an oversubscribed lottery dominated by a handful of employment agencies.
David North, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., said Indian outsourcing companies are more likely to feel a legislative pinch to curb their businesses.
A report by the Department of Homeland Security found that 70 percent of H-1B visas in fiscal year 2014 went to Indian workers. Two leading Indian employment firms, Tata and Infosys, declined to comment on the issue. A third, Wipro, did not return a message seeking comment.
Regulations could be changed through other avenues. William Stock, an immigration attorney and president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said administration lawyers could issue new legal opinions and guidance for enforcement officers, effectively tightening scrutiny of applicants and companies using the system.
Even as lawmakers and new political appointees angle for a curbs on immigration, Silicon Valley lobbyists remain focused on loosening limits on high-skilled foreign labor and updating policies that have been largely intact since 1990.
They note that several of the Bay Area’s largest start-ups — including Uber, Palantir and Tesla — were co-founded by foreign-born entrepreneurs. Immigrants have founded or co-founded about half of U.S. start-ups valued at more than $1 billion, according to a study by the National Foundation for American Policy.
Todd Schulte, president of the tech industry lobby FWD.us, acknowledged that some proposals being considered could be “incredibly problematic,” but felt optimistic that immigration reform could still secure U.S. borders while allowing new, high-skilled workers to fuel the economy. Schulte said new members of Congress have already approached the group seeking input on immigration policy.
Trump has called for immigration reform in the first 100 days of his presidency. The visa program was discussed at his meeting last month with tech leaders, according to a report by Reuters.
All this could mean four years of uncertainty and peril for some Silicon Valley tech workers.
Gabriel Jack, an immigration lawyer in San Jose, said many of his clients have asked about settling in Canada, Australia and more recently, India.
“The more extreme the restrictions we place on this program and others,” Jack wrote in an email, “the more likely it will have the unintended effect of Silicon Valley tech companies sending more professional service positions to be performed overseas.”
Garnier loves the risk-taking, entrepreneurial culture of Silicon Valley, a contrast to the more conservative French business customs.
“I’ve been working hard and I’m absolutely certain I that I didn’t take anyone’s job,” he said. “I really consider this place home.”
