US-president Donald Trump just assumed office on January 20th, but already, his ‘America First’ agenda is sending a big chill through Silicon Valley and India’s biggest tech stocks. The US tech industry has long lobbied for an easier way to recruit talent from abroad and had expected Hillary Clinton to expand high-skilled immigration. However, under President Trump, it now appears highly likely there will be a new set of rules that will dramatically ratchet back immigration overall into the US.
White House officials say Silicon Valley chieftains and their suppliers of cheaper labor from abroad- are right to be nervous, especially about changes to the visa program. Chief strategist Steve Bannon and policy chief Stephen Miller are known to be deeply skeptical of the H-1B program and will have a strong, vocal ally when Jeff Sessions gets confirmed as Attorney General. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to ‘end forever the use of H-1B as a cheap labor program.’ He later signaled in a meeting with tech leaders that he’s most concerned about companies misusing the visas to displace lower-wage American workers.
Google, Apple, Microsoft and other tech giants have expressed great dismay over President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ policy. Aaron Levie, chief executive of cloud computing company Box, said seeing Mr. Trump win the elections for the presidency had been ‘incredibly stressful’ and ‘painful’ for many in Silicon Valley. ‘Given the rate of growth we are seeing in so many different tech companies from Facebook to Uber to Google or a company like Box, there’s simply a shortage of really great talent,’ Mr. Levie said. ‘When you have incredible talent that wants to work in your organization but you are preventing them from doing so, that is disastrous to innovation and competition.’
This post was published at FinancialSense on 01/31/2017.
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