US CEO backs H-1B, says $100,000 fee will hurt economy: ‘Immigrant workers have different skill sets’
CEO of Texas’s International Bank of Commerce Dennis Nixon spoke out in favor of the H-1B visa amid the raging controversy and said the fee of $100,000 won’t impact the biggest sponsors like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta or Apple. But entrepreneurs will struggle to hire workers as foreign talent will be pushed only to bigger corporations, as they will only have the ability to afford H-1Bs. Calling the new H-1B visa fee a ‘prohibitive fee’, Nixon said that more than 45% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children, including Nvidia, SpaceX, Alphabet, and all of them started as small ventures.
In an opinion piece in San Antonio Express News, Nixon said that it is a misconception that H-1Bs displace native American workers. Before an employer can file for an H-1B visa, they have to ensure that hiring an H-1B worker will not displace a native worker.
