As a professor at Berkeley, I see the impact that H-1B and AI visas have on students’ job opportunities.

The H-1B visa program was intended to bring in specialized talent from abroad, but instead it has become a tool for employers to hire low-cost workers for regular jobs.

The result is a distorted labor market, where highly skilled workers are forced out of the H-1B visa program by spamming applications for regular workers who fill positions that are already in short supply. This misuse of H-1B visas has a negative correlation with the growing impact of AI on the job market and is part of a larger problem that needs immediate attention.

The impact of this visa farming crisis is particularly severe among teenagers and recent college graduates, who face a bleak job market despite moderate unemployment rates. According to government data, the unemployment ratio of college students under 25 to over 25 has risen to more than four to one. This means that entry-level jobs are already four times rarer than jobs that require experience or advanced skills.

I’ve seen firsthand the signs of the declining demand for entry-level tech jobs. These signs include several job postings from employers targeting CS grads, job fairs with several companies, and advice related to getting few offers at low pay or in some cases no offers at all. Granting H-1B visas to low-wage, unskilled workers exacerbates this shortage while doing little to fill the real need for skilled workers.

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The problem here is not about the number of visas issued, but rather how they are used. Applicants for the program should be people with special skills, and those special skills should not be easily found resident workers. However, the bureaucratic review process allows employers to exaggerate applications and hire workers with general skills at low wages. There’s an entire subfield of HR professionals and lawyers who specialize in dressing up pigeons to look like peacocks.

This manipulation of the application process has created a lottery system where workers with the required special skills often lose out to those without the special skills. As a result, new graduates find it difficult to find entry-level work, while at the same time companies that require certain specialized skills cannot obtain visas for those workers. Think of a person suffering from malnutrition and diabetes because instead of vitamins, they were taking sugar pills.

I want to emphasize that I am not advocating insular limits on the number of H-1B visas. The issue is about ensuring that people with the actual special skills needed are admitted through the H-1B program. If used properly, the H-1B visa brings in an additional workforce with necessary and specialized skills, potentially benefiting the entire country. Whether it’s retaining an international graduate student or bringing in someone from outside the country, the US has historically benefited greatly from immigrants with needed skills.

Many people invested in visa farming insist unconvincingly that H-1B visas are already going to skilled workers as intended, but statistics on H-1B visa recipients do not agree.

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According to an annual report from the US government’s Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services, approximately 63,000 H-1B visa recipients for 2023 were in “Computer-Related Occupations” and the median income for this group was $99,000 per year and 25% of them . earn less than $85,000. A salary of $99,000 or $85,000 a year is a good amount to earn, but it is far below what I would expect someone with exceptional skills in this field to earn.

One would think that people with special, hard-to-find skills would earn very good salaries, but instead the data shows the opposite. In fact, the more I dig into the data in the agency’s annual report, the more it seems that the approved applications are for special people for special jobs. It seems that some of the skilled workers are mixed in with a lot of regular workers who earn less than I would expect.

This observation is consistent with my own experience in hiring technical staff and advising CS students, what has been related to me first by others, and many analyzes that have been published later. The clearest explanation I see for this conflict is that employers are moving positions, not those that require special skills that are rare, that even at low entry levels, and those applications that do not match them are not rejected.

Looking at the bigger picture, the abuse of H-1B visas is not the only obstacle US job seekers face because AI automation is also eliminating jobs, including shortages. Currently, the impact of AI is disproportionate on entry-level jobs, which exacerbates the problems caused by abuse of the H-1B system. However, AI will continue to improve, both in power and ease of use, and its impact on the job market will increase as the range of tasks AI can perform expands.

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While AI and H-1B visa abuse may seem like separate issues, they interact in a way that many people don’t appreciate. Although it cannot completely replace the human worker, AI helps shift work from traditional workers to contractors or remote workers.

The explanation is that AI often removes the need for specialized advanced skill or knowledge, and replaces it with a minimal requirement of only needing the ability to review work for fairness. The result is that tasks that were once too complex to be outsourced to contractors or remote workers are now simplified thanks to AI and more suitable to be outsourced.

As AI technology continues to improve employers will find that more jobs can be done by low-skilled workers, and there will be a growing incentive to use H-1B visas to hire those low-skilled workers for less.

The review process for the H-1B visa program needs to be reformed to prioritize applicants with genuine special skills and to ensure that recipients do not compete unfairly with existing US workers We must also address the growing threat of AI automation and its growth. impact on the labor market.

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About 90% of all US tax revenue comes from taxing the income of working people, so if unemployment continues to rise then tax revenue will decrease significantly. At the same time, the number of unemployed people who need public assistance will increase. That combination is statistically inefficient and a clear recipe for disaster.

This situation requires a radical change to avoid a dystopian future. The overall unemployment figures may seem strong, but the high levels of unemployment and underemployment indicate that a much larger problem is growing.

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Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author as an independent individual. Nothing in this article should be construed as a statement made regarding the author’s professional position at any institution.