Immigration Regulations Strangle American Businesses

Silicon Valley has a lot to worry about these days. Antitrust persecutions, tariffs that will heavily impact their ability to trade, endless regulations and government controls they must comply with.

To this list they must now add an increasing concern over the immigration status of their workers. The Washington Post reports¹  that tech companies are telling their foreign employees not to travel abroad, as there’s a non-trivial chance that they will have their visas revoked at the border and won’t be allowed to get back in — a risk that has increased under the new Trump administration.

All of this further cripples American businesses’ right to be free to hire and produce.

The maddeningly burdensome worker visa system far predates Trump. Businesses fear for their foreign employees in part because procuring visas has long been a Kafkaesque process that strangles their capacity to hire talent, one that further restrains hiring processes that are already too difficult even for workers who are citizens.

The most popular visa for hiring skilled workers, the H-1B, is an example of this bureaucratic nightmare. It subverts an employer’s freedom to act on her own best judgment at every step.

The H-1B is exclusively for hiring workers in “specialty occupations,”²  such as engineering, medical sciences, or technology, that require at least a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent. The government decides what is classified as a “specialty occupation” and whether the degree an individual holds matches the desired U.S. job. What if the new hire doesn’t fit the government’s categories? What if the brilliant coder a company is eager to bring on never finished college? Essentially the government has the power to dictate whom businesses are allowed to hire, and for what positions.

Very few visas are given out each year: 65,000, plus 20,000 for workers with a U.S. degree. Each year³  demand for the visas far exceeds their availability. In FY2024, there were 758,994 applications, and 470,342 in FY2025. Thus only a tiny fraction of the over 50,000 unique employers who requested those visas could hire the foreign talent they wanted.

Furthermore, the program utilizes a randomized lottery system⁴  that makes workforce planning unreliable, forcing hiring decisions to depend on pure luck instead of careful, rational planning. This makes a mockery of employer’s diligence and effort in recruitment, and treats potential employees as fungible commodities instead of as individuals with unique abilities with whom employers wish to contract.

That’s not where the difficulty ends. To hire foreign workers, employers must prove, among other things, that hiring a foreign worker won’t somehow negatively impact working conditions for U.S. workers. Between government and other fees, hiring a single worker can cost upwards of $8,000 and countless lawyer and personnel hours⁵  — an enormous burden, especially for small businesses.

Because H-1B visas are temporary, a company that wants to retain a worker for more than six years must also go through the expensive, bureaucratic and unpredictable process of applying for their green card. Due to country caps, for some nationalities there is a decades-long wait for employment-based green cards. Some workers from India will have to wait more than 100 years.⁶  This makes rational planning impossible for companies and workers alike.

The uncertainty this system brings to already difficult hiring decisions impacts businesses’ productivity and the quality of their products and services. Because of how difficult it is to hire a foreign worker, companies are understandably concerned about losing them. If a company loses a key employee, it can be disastrous for the business and for the employee, who’s trying to build a life in America.

Imagine a hospital that like many⁷  in America is understaffed and wishes to hire nurses and doctors from abroad, but is unable to do so due to immigration restrictions. As a result, current workers are overworked and see fewer patients. Consider the thousands⁸  of people in rural areas who can’t find an obstetrician or a cardiologist to deliver life-saving care. The doctors who could have treated them didn’t win the H-1B lottery, or hospitals simply can’t afford the process.

These policies imply that it’s better to let Americans die or go untreated than to allow an immigrant doctor to work. Imagine this scenario playing out across the whole country and multiple industries — tech, research, education.

Finding an alternative is imperative — one that will unshackle businesses instead of continuing to oppress them.

Businesses have a right to hire and retain foreign talent. This right must be respected. Respecting it allows them to provide the best possible service to their customers and so to maximize their productivity and profits. They also have the right to make decisions about their own workforce and to make long-term plans with as much certainty as possible about the future. They shouldn’t have to comply with absurd regulations to bring in a worker, and they shouldn’t be made to fear that a simple trip abroad might spell disaster for their company if a visa is revoked.

Instead of further restricting businesses’ right to hire, the current H-1B system should be reformed to inch closer to freedom, for example by eliminating the annual caps. But ultimately, a much freer immigration system should be built in its place. A freer system will respect producers’ right to plan and execute their work to the best of their ability by allowing them to hire the workers that they want. It will allow peaceful people to live and work where they want and empower Americans to trade with them. American tech companies are successful in part because of their ability to attract top talent from around the world. They will stay successful only to the extent that we allow them the freedom to do that.

A version of this article was originally published by the Southern California News Group on May 19, 2025.

1. Gerrit De Vynck and Danielle Abril, “Tech Companies Are Telling Immigrant Employees on Visas Not to Leave the U.S.” Washington Post, March 31, 2025, accessed June 9, 2025.
2. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “H-1B Specialty Occupations,” USCIS, last updated May 20, 2025, accessed June 9, 2025.
3. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “H-1B Electronic Registration Process,” USCIS, last updated May 16, 2025, accessed June 9, 2025.
4. Boundless Immigration, “The H-1B Cap Lottery, Explained,” Boundless Immigration, n.d., accessed June 9, 2025.
5. Beeraj Patel, “How Much Does It Cost to Apply for an H-1B Visa?” Pride Immigration, October 19, 2020, accessed June 9, 2025.
6. Alison Moodie, “Indian Workers Face Up to 134-Year Wait for a Green Card,” Boundless Immigration, updated August 9, 2024, accessed June 9, 2025.
7. American Hospital Association, AHA Center for Health Innovation, “5 Health Care Workforce Shortage Takeaways for 2028,” AHA Center for Health Innovation—Market Scan, September 10, 2024, accessed June 9, 2025.
8. Tanya Albert Henry, “All Hands on Deck Needed to Confront Physician Shortage Crisis,” AMA News Wire, June 10, 2024, accessed June 9, 2025.