The Trump administration’s new rules for a US visa program widely used for technology workers are getting cautious praise from Silicon Valley amid surging demand for high-skill employees. The H-1B visa program, which admits some 85,000 foreign nationals each year, will give higher priority to people with post-graduate degrees from US universities, under a final rule published in January by the Department of Homeland Security. “US employers seeking to employ foreign workers with a US master’s or higher degree will have a greater chance of selection in the H-1B lottery” under the new rule, said Francis Cissna, director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, in announcing the change on January 30. The changes come with the tech industry pleading for more immigrants to fill key skilled positions, and responds in part of concerns that the program has been exploited by some tech giants and outsourcing firms to depress wages and displace US employees. “The changes are, on the whole, a positive step in the right direction,” said Todd Schulte of the immigration reform group FWD.us backed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and others in the industry. Ed Black of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents several major tech firms, said the program has not always been administered as well as it could have been. “We are hopeful something in the newly announced revisions will improve efficiency, but it’s too soon to say what the impact will be in practice,” Black said. The H-1B program, in place since 1990, has been used for a variety of skilled occupations including nurses and pastry chefs, but in recent years two-thirds have been for computer-related jobs and three-fourths of the employees have come from India. Because visa-holders can stay up to six years, the number currently living in the United States is estimated at more than half a million. Pressing needs? Ron Hira, a Howard University political scientist who has followed the visa program for two decades, said it has been exploited by some large tech companies and outsourcing firms to keep wages down and in some cases displace American employees. Hira said the visas have not been allocated to the “most pressing needs” of the labor market and that “the typical H-1B employee is working in a back office through an outsourcer.” He said that the reform “inches us a little closet to a better quality pool, but it’s still not selecting the ‘best and brightest’ — you could reform it much better.” Published in Daily Times, February 11th 2019.