President Donald Trump may have just built his most crucial wall yet. Project Firewall, the result of a Sept. 19 Presidential Proclamation, is an ambitious overhaul of procedures governing the application and entry of foreign skilled labor into the U.S.
Project Firewall modifies the H-1B visa program, which has granted “temporary status with the ability to apply for citizenship” to most of its nearly half-million yearly applicants since its creation in 1990. American employers seeking foreign employees must now pay an application fee of $100,000 — an astronomical jump from the previous fee of $10. Many have rightly deemed this move aggressive. The question, however, is whether this aggression is justified.
The H-1B program has become a personnel pipeline for America’s tech sector. This conduit for importing highly skilled labor has the stated purpose of “helping employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals.” The reality, however, lies far from this aim.
Soon after H-1B’s creation, the system’s flaws became apparent. As Kevin Lynn, executive director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy, explained, “Beginning in the early ’90s, ‘outsourcing’ companies began importing cheap labor from India, ‘leasing’ those workers to Fortune 500 companies and then profiting on the wage arbitrage.”
While the original intent of H-1B was to negate such an effect by requiring applicants to have either a college degree or significant technical experience in their field, these conditions soon relaxed.
An analysis of H-1B metrics from fiscal years 2020 through 2023 by the Heritage Foundation’s Alexander Frei concluded that “an astounding 17.1% of approved applications did not have any information about the applicant’s registration, suggesting that the federal government has not adequately compiled data on the education status of one in six H-1B recipients.”
In addition, as Frei documented, more than 90% of approved applicants came from just two countries: India, with 73.7%, and China, with 16.4%.
The effect of H-1B’s enactment on native-born workers was devastating. Employers began to favor the growing population of cheaper, less-skilled foreign laborers in their hiring processes — understandably so, from a utilitarian perspective. Even with their decreased productivity and creativity measured against them, foreign workers cost their employers far less overall. As a result, according to Rutgers University economist Jennifer Hunt, “The native-born workers most like their H-1B visa-holding competitors were most likely to be the losers from the H-1B program.”
The program’s effect has ballooned. In fiscal years 2021 and 2022, a Lynn Institute survey found the highest incidence of rejected H-1B applications among the top 15 employers was a mere 6%, while the average rate hovered closer to 2%. This number represents an absurdly low threshold considering the sheer quantity of H-1B applications approved in just those two years — 407,000 in FY 2021 and 442,000 in FY 2022.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis highlighted another factor in Project Firewall’s favor. Following several announcements of tech sector layoffs, DeSantis wrote on X, “The H1-B visa program is a scam. It’s been used to import cheap foreign labor at the expense of Americans. That is not justifiable in any event, but it is especially galling when artificial intelligence is forecast to reduce a significant number of white collar jobs.”
His observation is correct. AI’s mounting use will only compound the effect of decreased employment opportunities in Silicon Valley and across America’s tech landscape.
Immigrant labor reforms can and should continue. Lynn’s suggestion to abolish the permanent labor certification is an excellent proposal that also deserves implementation. But today, Project Firewall is the answer we need. It protects American families by shielding their providers from an unjust threat to their occupations. As a result, the important work American tech workers do will continue — by Americans, for Americans.
Frederick Woodward is a junior studying political economy.
