How the White House just declared war on technology

We knew that the White House had an open feud with the Media, an uneasy truce with the Intelligence community, well you can add the tech sector to that list of ambiguous relationships, read on.

Just when we were getting concerned about the impending robot-apocalypse in our future of work, something else a bit more in-the-now, is taking our minds off of those things.

The Oval Office is cracking down on the H-1B visa program that Silicon Valley loves

Future of American Innovation is now Officially Uncertain

So lo and behold the #H1B issue brings immigration back on the front burner, and a lot of CEOs are none too pleased about it #SWE.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department are taking new stern measures:

“The Justice Department will not tolerate employers misusing the H-1B visa process to discriminate against U.S. workers”

For major tech companies, this is bad news. Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai was quoted in an internal memo earlier this year about the:

"...painful cost of this executive order on our colleagues.." (of the Jan 27th immigration ban)

It's not just companies may face new scrutiny when hiring foreign workers, even their spouses may not be able to work, with a severely limited number of applicants able to get in. Insiders report that that is new rule could be more serious than it appears to the ordinary American citizen.

The War on Tech Goes like This

The Oval Office and the new administration are taking aim at high-skilled visas that Silicon Valley seeks so it can hire foreign engineers.

The truth is, Silicon Valley saw this coming, and the White House somehow believes the H-1B is a cheap labor program.

So it's probably not the best week, if you were hoping to move to Silicon Valley from Bangalore (or elsewhere) to be a coder. What they don't tell you is that the U.S. is actually tech-illiterate, with serious skill-gaps.

It Will be Like Winning the Lottery

• The lottery for companies to apply for 2018 visas opened on Monday and Indian coders and engineers might be the big losers.
• The real losers are the tech companies themselves who must adapt to the rules that robs them of talent and high-skill workers in arguably their most important asset.
• According to an Immigration Attorney, U.S. businesses could face less than a 35% chance of securing an H-1B visa for the foreign talent they wish to hire.
• Many outlets have noted it does not make good economic sense, to handcuff the tech community from bringing in this talent in such critical areas.

America vs. the World | Washington vs. Silicon Valley

The America first agenda ("let's make America great again" - #MAGA) is not giving Silicon Valley much respect, with the government’s immigration enforcers not seeming to take the rumblings in California very seriously.

Apple would not exist without immigration Tim Cook, Apple CEO

All good things must come to an end, though this might put Silicon Valley companies in an unfortunate position for the war on talent and hamper profit-margins of major Tech firms.

Can the Recruitment Nightmare Turn the Economy Sour?

High-skilled Millennial software engineers are global citizens for a reason; because they can virtually go to the highest bidder no matter the location or country.

If we thought talent with STEM skills was in short-supply, this is bound to put a lot of companies in a difficult position. Hiring locally would be great, if the talent existed locally, and if the price was right.

We think of America as the leader in technology, but what if it was only a very small minority who were in that position?

• A 2015 Educational Testing Service study found that U.S. millennials rank among the worst in the world when it comes to applying their technical knowledge to solve problems.
• If computer programmers, may no longer be eligible for H-1B visas, this may be a more serious problem than policy-makers realize putting the future of Tech in jeopardy.
• The new administration's Office of Science and Technology Policy, isn't really quite up and running yet in 2017.

Americans aren't the Brightest STEM students on the Block

It may be naive of us to expect a Populist government to understand the intricacies of talent recruitment and keeping American companies on the leading edge of innovation.

Unfortunately for aspiring STEM American born students, there's probably a reason why so many software engineers are of Asian (both South and East) descent in Silicon Valley.

With so much technical illiteracy in the US, the H-1B visa program has become America’s secret weapon warding off economic catastrophe - Blake Irving, CEO of GoDaddy

Jobs for Real Americans vs. Innovation

In one of the strangest rule changes yet, immigration politics and technology collides with Silicon Valley's diversity issue, with our fundamental identity of what it means to be American.

All of this makes even less sense, considering a staggering 46% of millennials living in the San Francisco Bay Area, want to leave due to outlandish housing and cost of living.

The pressure to use home-grown talent only may even be called a 'declaration of war' by the Oval office on the technology sector. One possibility, is that this would actually accelerate something far more sinister, read on.

What If AI Learned to Self-Code?

If we fail to see the long-term risks in these policies, we run the risk that the American Dream will get automated. Less talent puts more pressure on relying on machine intelligence, which may actually lead to less jobs for American citizens.

In the near future, artificial intelligence will be able to self-code, leading to the possibility that less software engineers will be required.

Interested in this issue? Read more on #immigration.

I'm the 2nd ranked LinkedIn Top Voice in Marketing and Social. When politics impacts technology, it becomes the concern of the entire software engineering community and business leaders who care about the future of technology.

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Do yo work in software engineering or in Silicon Valley or the Bay Area, what do you think of the recent changes to the H-1B visa program? Tell us your personal stories, we want to hear the real story.