United States Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Tuesday called the H-1B visa program a “scam” and asked “all great American businesses” to “hire American”.“The current H-1B visa system is a scam that lets foreign workers fill American job opportunities,” he said in an interview to Fox News. “…Now is the time to hire American.”Lutnick’s criticism echoes the views of several influential figures in the Donald Trump administration, including White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller who is said to be the architect of Trump’s immigration policies. Forbes reported last month that the Trump administration plans to “end or significantly change the annual H-1B visa lottery”.The H-1B program has long been a highly desired pathway for Indians to migrate to the US — more than 70% of all approved H-1B petitions since 2015 have been from Indians, according to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data.For ‘skilled’ workersThe H-1B visa program allows American employers to hire immigrant workers in occupations that require “a high level of skill” and “at least a bachelor’s degree”, according to the US Department of Labor.The visa category was created by the Immigration Act, 1990, with the intention of helping “employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the US workforce by authorising the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorised to work in the United States”.The H-1B program was preceded by a long tussle between industry groups and workers’ unions in the US. Business groups such as the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Foreign Trade Council successfully lobbied Congress to loosen restrictions on hiring immigrant workers.Story continues below this adBig Tech was the biggest beneficiary. In the 1990s, as the technology sector boomed, companies like Microsoft and Oracle, and later Google and Amazon, needed specialised talent to fuel their growth but domestic supply was found wanting. The H-1B program allowed these companies to hire lakhs of highly skilled workers from countries like India and China to meet the shortfall.In an influential working paper published in 2004, economist Britta Glennon, who is currently at the Wharton School, argued that restrictive immigration policies pushed US firms to hire abroad, and programs such as H-1B were necessary for the US to gain and maintain a competitive edge in cutting edge tech research and development. (‘How do restrictions on high-skilled immigration affect offshoring? Evidence from the H-1B program’)In a more recent paper, Glennon said that “hiring skilled immigrants leads to positive performance effects… [on] both productivity and innovation for…a significant subset of large firms, and they are critical for start-ups, both as founders and hires”. (‘Skilled Immigrants, Firms, and the Global Geography of Innovation’, 2024)This has been at the heart of arguments made by proponents of the H-1B program. Trump’s former ally Elon Musk, whose companies hire thousands of H-1B workers, had promised to “go to war” to defend the program.Story continues below this adRight meets LeftThe H-1B program has had critics on both sides of the political spectrum — the pro-union, pro-worker American Left as well as the nativist American Right.Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, wrote in response to a pro-H-1B post by Musk on X in December: “The main function of the…program is not to hire “the best and the brightest,” but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad. The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make.”Sanders’ argument was similar to that of Steve Bannon, a prominent ideologue of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. He, however, was criticising Musk.“[Musk] will do anything to make sure that any one of his companies is protected or has a better deal or he makes more money… The American working people in this country are not going to tolerate it,” Bannon said in an interview to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in January.Story continues below this adThe rise of anti-immigration far right forces in US politics, which powered Donald Trump to the presidency, has renewed and strengthened such criticism.Trump’s campaign rhetoric targeted Mexicans and low-skill migrant labour which he claimed “stole jobs” from the American working class, which has long suffered due to high unemployment, low wages, inflation, a housing crisis, and other economic problems.In many ways, the criticism of the H-1B program is focused similarly, though in the context of higher-paying jobs. When a Musk or a Bill Gates flags the shortage of “excellent engineering talent”, these critics hear them saying, “Americans are too expensive to hire”.Indians and H-1BIndians have been the biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B program, accounting for more than 70% of successful H-1B petitions. The Chinese, who account for 12-13%, are a distant second, USCIS data show.Story continues below this adAn analysis by The Indian Express this January of salaries offered to approved H-1B petitions found that 25% of successful petitions were for salaries between $100,000 and $150,000 per annum, and only 5% were for more than $150,000. The vast majority of Indians going to the US were thus earning less than $100,000 per annum — below the median salary for IT professionals in the US ($105,990 as of May 2023, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics).In his interview, Lutnick noted that an average American earned $75,000 a year while the average green card recipient earned $66,000. “Why are we doing that? It’s like picking the bottom core,” he said. (Most H-1B visa-holders apply for a green card, or permanent residency in the US.)