Tech Giants Rely Heavily on H-1B Program

Despite tech leaders’ best efforts to curry favor with President Trump, his renewed crackdown on H-1B visa will hit the wider tech industry like no other. With almost 65 percent of H-1B beneficiaries working in computer-related occupations in fiscal 2024 and more than 50 percent working in systems analysis and programming more specifically, it’s no surprise that the country’s largest tech companies are among the top employers of foreign tech workers.

According to data supplied by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, all of the so-called GAMAM group of tech companies are among the top 8 employers of H-1B applicants approved between fiscal 2023 and the first nine months of fiscal 2025, which ends September 30. Amazon alone has had more than 30,000 applications approved during this time, with Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud arm, not even included in this total. The three lesser-known companies in the top 8 are all providers of IT services and consulting, two of them – Tata Consultancy and Infosys – headquartered in India.

When President Trump targeted the H-1B program during his first stint in the White House, temporarily suspending the entry of people with non-immigrant visas in 2020, tech leaders, including Tesla’s Elon Musk – a former H-1B holder himself – had pushed back vocally against the suspension, arguing that it was crucial for U.S. companies to be able to recruit the best talent internationally. Earlier this year, in a rare moment of agreement with the Trump administration, Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders hit out against the H-1B program, saying its main purpose was “not to employ the 'best and the brightest', but instead to replace American workers with lower-paid workers from abroad who often live as indentured servants.”