AI-Summary – News For Tomorrow
A WSJ article argues that the Trump administration’s increase of H-1B visa application fees to $100,000 harms the U.S. economy. The author contends that H-1B workers, brought in for specialized roles, boost the productivity of American-born workers through unique skills and collaborative innovation. This increased productivity leads to job creation for Americans. The author criticizes the administration’s economic nationalism, suggesting it will ultimately hurt American workers, the very group it claims to protect, by hindering this beneficial collaboration. The article contrasts with the economic interventionist policies enacted like tariffs and stakes in private companies.
News summary provided by Gemini AI.
WSJ
Updated on: Sept 22, 2025 12:51 pm IST
Foreigners often bring rare skills that boost the productivity of their colleagues and companies.
Once you let the economic-nationalist genie out of the bottle, it’s difficult to stop it from enveloping the entire economy. Since January, the Trump administration has pursued an aggressive tariff agenda, taken a 10% stake in Intel, and insisted that the U.S. government can tell Nippon Steel how U.S. Steel should run its operations. It was only a matter of time before the administration applied the same logic of economic intervention for ostensibly patriotic purposes to America’s labor market.
PREMIUM H-1B Visas Are Good for U.S. Workers
This is what lies behind the administration’s decision to raise the application fee for new H-1B visas to $100,000 for every new applicant. The program, created by the 1990 Immigration Act, allows companies to bring high-skilled professionals into America to fill significant gaps in “specialty occupations” in the U.S. economy.
Missing from this picture is appreciation of how H-1B visas benefit the U.S. economy, particularly the American-born workforce.
A foreign high-skilled worker may have rare skills different from those of an American high-skilled worker. But when the two employees are put together in an American business, the resulting collaboration translates into more creativity and output for the firm. In other words, H-1B workers complement and magnify the productivity of native-born Americans rather than nullify it. That means more jobs for Americans.
Unfortunately, in the upside-down world of economic nationalism in which we now live, different outcomes are more likely to be the case. The biggest losers, sadly enough, will be American workers—the very people whose interests economic nationalists claim to be protecting.
Get the latest headlines from US news and global updates from Pakistan, Nepal, UK, Bangladesh, and Russia get all the latest headlines in one place with including Nepal Protest and Charlie Kirk Funeral Liveon Hindustan Times. Get the latest headlines from US news and global updates from Pakistan, Nepal, UK, Bangladesh, and Russia get all the latest headlines in one place with including Nepal Protest and Charlie Kirk Funeral Liveon Hindustan Times.
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