Donald Trump was certain to disappoint some of his most ardent anti-immigration supporters when he said a few days ago that he supports the federal law that allows high-skilled foreigners into the United States on a temporary work visa to fill job openings at technology companies.
From a man who over the last few years has railed about immigration of all kinds, and who has won two presidential elections in part by promising to do something about the number of foreign people in the country, his remark that “I have always been in favor of the visas,” may sound like a step back from his America First platform.
It really isn’t. What else was Trump supposed to say? The undeniable fact is that the United States currently is not producing enough high-skilled workers to fill all the available technology jobs, so we either have to bring in some people in from other countries to fill them — or slow down American innovation.
There are other undeniables on this topic:
• Anyone can be against illegal immigration while still supporting the federal H-1B program, which allows advanced foreign workers into the country. There is a Grand Canyon of difference between the two groups of immigrants. H-1B workers have many years of advanced education and enter the United States with permission. Those who cross the southern border are lesser skilled and, most importantly, they’re not supposed to be here.
• What did everyone think “tech bros” like Elon Musk were doing when they started vocally supporting Trump before this year’s election? They were talking up their business interests to him, and one thing they want is a larger supply of technology workers, whether American or foreign. Trump is undeniably a businessman at heart whose job as president is to make the economy grow. He listened to Musk & Co.
Trump’s current support for high-tech work visas probably is not his last word on the subject. He is famously prone to change his mind, and you can bet that some of his longest-running Make America Great Again supporters, some of whom think there should be no immigration at all, are already working on ways to get his attention.
Adam Lashinsky, a former Fortune magazine editor, had a good column about the topic on The Washington Post website, where he wrote, “Trump’s new tech backers harbor decidedly different — and much more establishment-minded — instincts about trade, tariffs and foreign policy than the folks between the coasts who gave Trump his start. The fissure between these two branches of Trump’s coalition is only likely to grow.”
He’s probably correct, and the argument between the two Trump-supporting camps should be interesting to watch in the coming months. However this debate plays out, though, it runs the risk of overlooking the simplest solution to the problem of a high-tech worker shortage: We need to encourage more young Americans to develop the skills for these high-paying jobs.
The difficulty is, everyone’s not cut out for this work. In the same way as doctors make up only a tiny percentage of the work force, you have to be really good at software programming or something similar to fit into one of these technology fields. If more Americans were willing and able, there would be no need for an H-1B program.
Fixing this will be a 10-year or 20-year project. The jobs are there, and their number probably will increase. We just have to figure out how to get more Americans into them.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
