MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In recent weeks, U.S. conservatives have been debating the country's H-1B visa program. The program accounts for just over 45% of annual work visas. It authorizes temporary employment to foreign-born workers, often in technology and engineering. Supporters say the program helps businesses find skilled workers not readily available in the U.S. workforce. Steve Bannon disagrees. Speaking on his "War Room" podcast, the one-time political adviser to President-elect Trump called on the incoming administration to end the program entirely.
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STEVE BANNON: We want it gone. We demand that it's gone, and we're going to fight for this.
KELLY: State Department data shows that workers from India received the majority of H-1B visas issued last year, so we asked Steve Harrison from member station WFAE to tell us how this is playing out in one city with a large Indian American population - Charlotte, North Carolina.
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STEVE HARRISON, BYLINE: Many of Charlotte's skyscrapers were built in large part by two massive financial institutions, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. Together, they employ roughly 43,000 people in the region.
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HARRISON: Those banks need thousands of IT workers. And some of those jobs have been filled by people who once came to the U.S. on H-1B visas. In North Carolina, people born in India are the second-largest group of foreign-born residents, after those born in Mexico.
AMIT MEHTA: So I'm Amit Mehta. I've been living in Charlotte since '99. I came to this country on an H-1B visa to work for a company that was multinational.
HARRISON: Now a U.S. citizen and a cybersecurity manager for one of the city's banks, Mehta has seen how Indian Americans have gone from the rank and file to being in charge.
MEHTA: Now, I look around and, you know, my last three bosses were Indian Americans, right? You're talking about C-level people running major businesses.
HARRISON: He thinks visas for highly specialized workers are critical.
MEHTA: That's the competitive advantage that we have as a country. We should not give that away.
HARRISON: As Bannon and others have attacked the H-1B visa program, newer Trump allies have been some of its most outspoken defenders. That includes tech billionaire Elon Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has said the system could be improved. But responding to Bannon on X, he said that visas are needed in part because American culture has, quote, "venerated mediocrity over excellence." Born in Ohio, Ramaswamy is one of many people of South Asian descent picked by Trump. Shan Shanmugathan, who works in Charlotte's IT sector, is heartened by Trump's appointees.
SHAN SHANMUGATHAN: And he's a New Yorker - right? - so he naturally tend to work with all kinds of peoples.
HARRISON: He came to the U.S. on an H-1B in 1993. A Trump voter, he believes the H-1B program is rife with problems.
SHANMUGATHAN: What's happening right now, it's got abused quite a bit. No question about it.
HARRISON: He thinks some employers aren't necessarily looking for hard-to-get talent, just inexpensive talent.
SHANMUGATHAN: Corporations do this all the time, right? They replace their experienced workforce, bring in new college grads, for example, to cut costs, right?
HARRISON: He thinks instead of employers sponsoring visas, a point system where employers compete for qualified workers would ensure salaries remain competitive because the visa-holder could have negotiating power. As for Mehta, he thinks the federal government should make sure H-1B recipients are not being paid less than their American colleagues, a main criticism of the program.
MEHTA: I still remember I was paid more than some of my peers. And I was not being kind of underpaid, right? And the company was not using that to just bring cheap labor.
HARRISON: In his first term, Trump pledged to end H-1B visas. But speaking to the New York Post last month, he called it a great program.
Steve Harrison, NPR News, in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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