Stephen Bannon, the newly appointed chief executive of Donald Trump’s campaign, is a virulent opponent of the H-1B visa programme that brings thousands of Indian skilled workers to the U.S. Breitbart News, the right-wing website that he runs, campaigns against the visa programme and Mr. Bannon, while interviewing Mr. Trump in November 2015 lamented that two thirds of Silicon Valley CEOs were Asians.
When Mr. Trump argued that getting talented job creators through legal channels into the U.S. was required, and he “felt strongly about it,” the interviewer – Mr. Bannon – countered him saying the country is “not only an economy.”
In the interview, Mr. Trump - though he got the details wrong -- cited the case of Snapdeal founder Kunal Bahl, who could not stay on in the U.S. after studies as his application for an H-1B visa was turned down.
“We have to create job creators. One man went to Harvard, did well, but was not allowed to stay, went back to his home in India, started a company, which is now a very successful company with thousands and thousands of employees. He wanted to do it here. We have to be careful about this. We have to keep the talented people in this country,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Bahl did not go to Harvard, but to Wharton Business School – which is Mr. Trump’s alma mater too. The Bahl story is repeatedly cited by supporters of immigration such as AOL founder Steve Case. “They have 5,000 employees now in India,” Mr. Case said once. “Those 5,000 employees could have been in the United States.” In Congressional hearings on immigration also, proponents of immigration have repeatedly cited Mr. Bahl’s case.
Mr. Trump continuously makes the distinction between “job creators” and other immigrants - including in this particular interview. “It is not good. We have to do something about it. People are coming in and they are taking jobs. They are getting paid less money,” the candidate told Mr. Bannon who said American technology companies were “letting go highly trained IT workers, and even forcing them to train their foreign replacements” brought in through the H 1B visa programme. While agreeing with the interviewer, Mr. Trump added a rider. “One of the things that I said before, and I feel strongly about this. When somebody is going to Harvard or Princeton, Pen, Stanford and they graduate and we throw them out of the country. And they can’t get back in. I think that is terrible. We have got to be able to keep great people in the country,” he said and cited the Bahl story.
“I think you agree with that. Do you agree with that?,” Mr. Trump asked Mr. Bannon. “Well. I got to be tougher…when two thirds or more of the CEOS in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or Asia…A country is more than an economy. We are a civic society,” the chief executive of the Trump campaign replied. “We have to keep them legally,” responded Mr. Trump. “When people come in, they have to come in legally. I want people to come in, Steve. And I have said many times. I am building a wall. Like Israel did. When these characters say the wall does not work..The wall in Israel works. I still want people to come in. Those people who are waiting in queue for years to get in are being bypassed by illegal people,” said Mr. Trump.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has not said anything specifically on the H-1B programme yet, but she too has argued for a retaining foreign science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduates in the U.S. In her ‘Initiative on Technology and Innovation,’ Ms. Clinton has promised automatic ‘green card’ or permanent residency to STEM students who complete a master’s degree or a PhD from a U.S university. She has also opposed the foreign workers replacing American workers. “The many stories of people training their replacements from some foreign country are heartbreaking, and it is obviously a cost-cutting measure to be able to pay people less than what you would pay an American worker,” she said in one interview.
