Category: Economics

The case for skilled worker immigration

The report “Exceptional by Design” is not a very original statement in support of skilled immigration, but it synthesizes many studies into one document. It covers the potential use of more of those who come for higher education study and the use of early and mid-career immigrants.  Its argument:

  • High-skilled immigrants accelerate innovation—their authorship of 36% of U.S. innovative output since 1990, with each 1% increase in their population share raising patents per capita by 9-18%
  • They comprise 19% of National Academy of Engineering members, 24% of National Academy of Sciences members, and 34% of Nobel Prize winners.
  • The semiconductor sector where immigrants founded Fairchild Semiconductor, which spawned Intel and Apple, and now account for 34% of patents in strategic fields, enhancing U.S. exports and competitiveness.
  • 80% more likely than native-born adults to start businesses, founding not just boutique firms both also 55% of unicorn startups (valued over $1 billion),
  • They expand job opportunities more than they compete for them, with H-1B workers earning a median $118,000 (surpassing 90% of U.S. workers).
  • They make high-skilled labor less scarce, reduce income inequality, accelerating wage growth faster for low-wage workers while still elevating high-skilled pay.

Here are past postings on the penetration of skilled immigrants (mainly STEM and medicine) in the Boston area, the rise of foreign-born STEM workers over time, and polls showing strong support for skilled worker immigration.

 

Foreign born workers and the supply of software engineers: Japan vs U.S.

The U.S. information technology sector (computer design, software, AI, etc.) is a major force in the world. When one compares its IT workforce with those of other countries, the role of foreign-born workers stick out.

The United States has 30% – 50% more software engineers per total workforce than does Japan. This is despite the relatively high penetration of numeracy and adaptive skills in Japan compared to other countries (go here).

One major factor behind the U.S. lead is the very high level of foreign-born information technology workers in the United States. The U.S. greatly depends on foreign-born IT workers. 39% of its software engineers are foreign born, compared to 4% in Japan. Japan depends are less on foreign workers throughout its economy than does the U.S (about 3% vs 19%).

For context, the U.S.’ use of foreign-born for software engineering (39%) is much higher than in the U.K. (18%).  There are roughly one million foreign-born software engineers in the U.S. How do they get here?  Among the roughly 700,000 H1-B workers. About half, or 350,000 pf them are software engineers. As I’ve posted before, there is a transnational IT workforce in the U.S. and India. This means that besides having a relatively lot more software engineers compared to Japan, the U.S. has a distinct advantage of being more able to draw easily upon a major supplier of software engineers in the world – India. Language barriers alone create a big barrier for Japan to beef up its software engineering workforce.

 

 

 

foreign personal caregivers: Japan vs U.S.

Since 2000, both Japan and the United States have experienced rapid expansion of their personal and elder care workforces. The demographic pressures that drive this demand are more severe in Japan, where by 2030 an estimated 30% of the population will be 65 or older, compared with about 21% in the United States.  How to they compare in staffing for personal care, which is overwhelmingly for elder care?

Japan’s long-term care workforce has roughly quadrupled, rising from about 550,000 workers in 2000 to 2.1 million in 2024. The United States saw its direct care workforce more than double—from roughly 2 to 2.5 million in 2000 to 5.4 million in 2024.  That is, 3% of the Japanese workforce in 2024, compared with 3.2% in the U.S. – basically equal in total workforce dependence.

What about family care, the subject in Yasujirō Ozu films such as An Autumn Afternoon (1962) and Tokyo Story (1953)?  It is possible that in Japan family members today take on more of the burden of personal caregiving in Japan than in the U.S.  The demographics show that a “family burden ratio” — the ratio of persons 45 years old (middle age, with the potential burden of elderly parents) to persons 75 years old is much lower than in the U.S. – i.e relatively fewer 45 year olds compared 75 year olds.  This ratio will worsen in the future in Japan but not appreciatively in the U.S.

But Japan’s share of foreign-born workers in the care sector remains modest—practically zero in 2000, just 0.2% in 2010, around 1.5% in 2020, and about 4% in 2024. Japan relies much less on foreign workers overall (3% of its entire workforce, vs. 19% in the U.S.) and it shows in the tiny numbers of foreign-born personal aides. Japan introduced over the past 10 years some policies to attract foreign works, such as the 2019 “Specified Skilled Worker” program designed to attract overseas caregivers.

Japan depends now mainly on Vietnam, Indonesia and Philippines for these workers. Automation (robots) and domestic recruitment will have to be heroic to be the solution without a major increase in foreign worker involvement.

The U.S. care sector has become increasingly immigrant-dependent. Some estimates say that foreign-born workers represented about 10–13% of the direct care workforce in 2000, rising to close to 30 percent by 2024. In some U.S. states, such as New York and Florida, immigrants now make up over half of all home health aides.  The foreign-born share is at about 40% for home health aides.

Does ICE enforcement cause a major reduction in personal care workers? Estimates of the share of personal care workers who are unauthorized tend to be low – less than 10%. One research team estimated in early 2025 that persons on Medicaid needing personal care will be most adversely. affected.

Trump is boosting temporary farm visa workers to replace unauthorized workers

The Trump administration plans to greatly increase the size of the temporary visa program for farm workers (H-2A) as it aims to completely shut down the large unauthorized workforce. There is a key change planned for the program. Its aim is to reduce the cost to the employer of using visa workers– and to greatly increase the use of seasonal migrant labor. 

In effect, the Trump administration seeks to completely rewrite the migration story of lower skilled workers for advanced countries, which was “We wanted workers but we got humans.” Its slogan: “We don’t want the humans, just the workers.”

The H-2A visa program began in 1952 allowing U.S. farmers to hire foreign workers for temporary or seasonal agricultural jobs when American workers are unavailable. (The program is for seasonal labor, not available for year-round dairy workers.) Usage has grown from 30,000 visas in 2000 to over 300,000 in 2023. The number of visas is uncapped. Roughly a fifth of visa holders for an agency which deploys the workers to farms.

The growth of use has mirrored a relative decline in unauthorized workers. The widely used estimate for unauthorized workers is over 50% of produce farm workers in California. Employers must prove they can’t find domestic hires, provide free housing, transportation, and pay at least the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) to prevent wage depression by using foreign workers this discriminating against U.S. workers.

The Department of Labor just issued an Interim Final Rule to overhaul H-2A wage rules.  The net effect on H-2A workers is to reduce their pay. The Rule does this adjusting the minimum hourly wage by putting a higher value on free housing provided by the employer. Higher housing value (such as $300/month) than in the past causes the minimum wage to do down.  It gives an example: a minimum hourly wage of $17,35 declines to $13.38. The Dept of Labor expects savings for large employers at $5,500 per year, for small employers at $2,200.

Meanwhile, hourly wages of farm workers in California’s Inland Empire have doubled from about $10 an hour in 2020 to about $20 an hour today. The effect of these changes appear to have zero impact on citizens working in farming. It will make the H-2A program more attractive to employers. It will make the H-2A program less attractive to Latin Americans.

Will fewer workers show up? The short answer, based on studies (such as here and here) is no – that the differential in wages for farm workers in, say, Mexico, and the H-2A program is so large that workers will still come.  Expected result: a large increase in the H-2A workforce.  Given as there may over 400,000 unauthorized farm workers in California alone, this change plus ICE enforcement can lead to a doubling of the size of the temporary visa program.

 

Go here for interesting insights about unauthorized farm workers.

Facts about Hispanics in the U.S.

The U.S. Hispanic population is now one fifth (19.5%) of the total population, compared with under 15% twenty years ago in 2005.

This growth is due to immigration and younger age (and therefore more birth production). This mirrors the age profile: the median age of Hispanics is 31 vs the non-Hispanic population at 41. Interestingly, the fertility rate among Hispanic women, while relatively high in the past, is today very close to the national average of about 1.75.   Even if Hispanic migration grounds to a halt, the relative youth of Hispanics mean many more Hispanic births in the next 20 years.

Since 2010, the Hispanic population has grown annually (compounded) by 2%; the entire non-Hispanic population by 0.4% and the non-Hispanic white population by negative 0.25%.

Hispanic household formation grew an annual average of 2.8% vs non- Hispanics at 0.7%.  Nearly half (44%) of Hispanic heads of household are Gen Z or Millennials (i.e. born after 1980), compared to only 32% of non-Hispanic homes. Hispanic home ownership since 2010 grew six times faster than non-Hispanic home ownership. Household formation is a foundation to a country’s economic health.

Average income growth among Hispanics since 2010 has been 3.8% vs non-Latino at 1.5%. In 2005, the median individual annual income of Hispanics was 40% less than that of whites. Today, it is 25% less (but about by the same absolute amount of $25,000). This is likely do less

Higher education: between 2005 and 2019, Hispanic bachelor’s degree attainment grew at twice the rate (64% vs 31.7%) of non-Hispanic whites during this period.

Between 2010 and 2023 the Hispanic “GDP” (analyzed here) grew by 75% vs 27% for the non-Hispanic population. On an annual basis, the Hispanic GDP growth (compounded) averaged 4%.

Thirty-plus years of the rise of transnational US-Indian IT workforce

The 1990s saw the birth of a transnational information technology workforce of Indians working in the U.S. and in India.  Another transnational farm workforce is that involving Latin Americans and the American Southwest, with its origins before WW 2.  A shared characteristic is circular migration – recycling between two countries. In sharp contrast with the Southwest U.S. transnational workforce, the transnational Indian IT workforce supported important entrepreneurial activity in both the U.S. and India, helping India rise quickly with the growth of the internet to being a major force in the economic growth of India. Between 2000 and 2024, the IT professsional workforce in India grew ten times.

The role model of the transactional workers is an Indian who graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, He worked in the U.S. for six years as a computer engineer with an H-1B visa won by visa lottery. He worked as head of product at Compile Inc., a data intelligence company founded in 2012 and based in Bangalore and Menlo Park. McKesson bought Compile in 2024.

The story of this transnational workforce is not the traditional story of an immigrant group migrating to another country, a few finding an economic niche, and through chain migration building a distinctive, durable presence. This was the case with Indians, starting in the 1970s, establishing a role in the American hotel industry.  In this case of IT, symbiosis involving both countries is at the core of the story.

1960s – 1990

US immigration restrictions were relaxed by the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965. A previously existing provision for temporary visa for workers with expertise was revised in 1990 to create the current H-1B visa. India’s educational centers of excellence, institutes of technology, science, statistics and management expanded. American firms begin to install STEM centers in India in the 1980s to take advantage of the Indian workforce. Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley were at that time few — notably Vinod Khosla, He was born in Delhi,1955, graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford Business School, and co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982)

1990: 500,000 Indian born persons resided in the U.S.

By the mid-1990s, many H-1B visas were already going to Indian programmers. China never had a significant H-1B presence due to language limitations.  Many H-1B workers were recruited to handle Y2K code remediation. Indian enrollment in U.S. graduate STEM programs began to rise but was outnumbered by Chinese students.

Outsourcing:  GE, Citibank and other American companies began sending IT work offshore to India. The early Indian firms TCS, Infosys and Wipro secured their first large U.S. contracts. An American model of a U.S. based client team plus a large offshore team was born. Before 1990 TCS had already begun servicing American firms with its India-based staff. By the mid 1990s, it began to scale up its use of H-1B visas for U.S. based placement. Indian firms learned how to become staffing firms for American employers using H-1B.

Entrepreneurism: 7% of Silicon Valley firms founded 1980–1998 had Indian CEOs/founders. According to a 1999 study, immigrants accounted for one-third of the scientific and engineering workforce in Silicon Valley. Indian and Chinese CEOs lead one-fourth of high-tech firms in the region. The concept of “brain circulation” emerged, with skilled immigrants returning to their home countries while maintaining ties to California.

Acceleration of ties between the two countries fostered the growth of the IT industry and IT workforce culture in India. H-1B veterans returned to India with direct experience with American IT management and operations.  Indian educational institutions began to steer their programs to reflect the American IT sector.

The Indus Entrepreneurial (TiE) Network was founded. In its own words (2025), “TiE ranks among the world’s largest ecosystems for innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic development.  Founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley by a group of successful entrepreneurs and corporate executives with roots in the Indian sub-continent, today TiE Chapters worldwide have become a vibrant platform for entrepreneurs, professionals, industry leaders, and investors. With its network of over 33,000 members globally (including over 3,000 charter members) in 62 chapters across 14 countries.”

2000: 0ne million Indians resided in the U.S.

The dot-com boom created huge demand for IT labor. Congress temporarily raised the H-1B cap to 195,000 (1999–2003). Indians took a growing share, surpassing 50% of H-1Bs by the late 2000s. Indian STEM enrollments in American higher ed skyrocketed, especially in computer science. By 2005, India had become the second-largest source of international students (still after China), with most in STEM graduate programs. By the end of the decade, over 100,000 Indians were working in the U.S. using H-1B visas. Over time, a path for an H-1B visa holder to gain a green card was established.

Offshoring becomes mainstream: The 2000s cemented India as the world’s IT back office. It captured 60% of the global offshoring market. U.S. firms sent large volumes of software development, call centers, and business processes offshore. TCS, Infosys, and Wipro became multibillion-dollar firms serving mainly U.S. clients. The business model was cost arbitrage, with American IT wages multiple that of Indian wages.

During the 2000s, American companies began to invest in its own proprietary centers in India. Microsoft established a small footprint in the 2000s. Its India-based workforce grow to over 10,000 in the 2010s and today is in the mid 20,000s. These “global capability centers” have coped with the adverse impact of disruptions in American work visas.

2010: two million Indians resided in the U.S.

Ever more intense use of H-1B visas by Indians took place, many of them working for the major Indian staffing firms. The share of H-1B visas going to Indians soared to 70% and the number of active beneficiaries rose to over 200,000.  A 2010 federal government memo started a crackdown. Infosys made a $34 million settlement in 2013 for visa fraud, yet its enrollments went up.  High-profile cases, like Disney’s 2015 layoffs of American IT workers replaced by H-1B holders from TCS and HCL, fueled a backlash. The first Trump administration raised denial rates to 24% by 2018 and proposed wage hikes. However, clever manipulation of the H-1B rules and the connivance of American clients enabled legal placements at a lower wage than that paid to an American worker.

Middle class Indian-American suburban communities sprung up.  Cupertino, CA, hosts Apple headquarters. Cupertino today is 64% Asian. 77% of workers residing there have management or professional jobs. The city front-ended the rise of the Indian population due to Silicon Valley.  In 1990, 4% were Indian-Americans; in 2010, 23%. An Indian-American became mayor.

Monroe Township, NJ, is the largest and most diverse South Asian cultural hub in the United States. The Township celebrates Diwali as a Hindu holiday. The County prints election ballots in English, Spanish, Gujarati, Hindi, and Punjabi.

Sugar Land, in Fort Bend County, near Houston, has many Hindu temples, Sikh gurdwaras, and cultural associations, and hosts large Diwali festivals. The share of the population that is Asian rose from 10% in 2010 to 35% in 2020.

2020: three million Indians resided in the U.S.

At the outset COVID-19 pandemic, Trump suspended new H-1B entries. The Biden administration lifted the ban in 2021. New H-1B visas for TCS and Infosys fell 20–30% by 2023–2024. These firms today have diversified and depend less on the H-1B market in their business model. In September, 2025 Trump set a $100,000 one-time fee on new H-1B applications. Many Indians use their student F1 visa for one-to-three-year work stays — this program is vulnerable.

Indian IT firms are reported to be increasing their non H-1B staffs in the U.S. These non H-1B staffs in total may exceed 100,000.  Meanwhile, American firms employ several hundreds of thousand Indians in their India offices. Examples: IBM with more than 100,000 and Oracle with 40,000.

 

H 1 B: the fundamental driver of the controversy

The fundamental driver is a complex mix of both surplus and shortage in domestic supply of STEM workers. Employers and universities are incented to shout shortage. The federal government does not have the skill to monitor the situation. Employer lobbies have prevailed.

On Sept 19, the Trump administration without warning imposed draconian changes to the H1 B program. This program brings in foreign workers, primarily for STEM work, for up to six years. H 1B visa holders have a good deal of success in obtaining green cards.  The  number of STEM workers currently in the country is not known (due to limitations in the federal data systems); estimates range between 500,000 and 700,000. The policy changes are designed to reduce abuses in the program. The abuse allegations are focused on H-1B workers not only taking STEM jobs from Americans but also paying them less.

The immediate fight between prolific H-1B users, such as Tesla and Google, and critics deals with large scale abuses, such as when Disney in 2014-2015 not only replaced hundreds of American workers, but required these workers on condition of termination benefits to train their replacements. The underlying issue is whether there is a shortage of STEM workers in the country.

H-1B has four levels of expertise of applicants. Only about 10-15% of workers are at the top level, This means, in effect, that the policy justification for H-1B does not rely on recruiting only to best of the best, but main stream workers. the program therefore is implicitly justified due to worker shortages.

Two authors in particular have focused on how there may, or may not, be STEM workers shortages. Their shared conclusion: there can be both surplus and shortage in domestic supply, but those supporting H-1B (typically employers and universities) have repeated sounded the alarm of shortages by oversimplifying the analysis.

In 2014, Michael Teitelbaum argued that U.S. anxieties over STEM worker shortages have unfolded in recurring “boom-and-bust” cycles since World War II. He identifies at least five: the post-Sputnik expansion of the late 1950s and 1960s, the defense and NASA downshift of the early 1970s, the competitiveness scare against Japan in the 1980s, the internet and telecom boom and bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the biomedical surge tied to the NIH budget doubling from 1998 to 2003 that later left many young scientists stranded. Each round began with alarms about falling behind, followed by educational expansion and policy changes, then oversupply and disappointment.

Per Teitelbaum, American universities scaled up STEM training and maintained global excellence, drawing large numbers of international students. Yet they also produced chronic mismatches, often training too many researchers for narrow academic tracks while industry needed applied skills. Graduates entering after the busts encountered glutted markets, and undergraduates were frequently discouraged by overly abstract curricula. For Teitelbaum, higher education has not calibrated to real, evidence-based labor needs.

Falling Behind?: Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent (Princeton, 2014)

Ron Hira, a persistent critic of H 1B,  in 2022 challenged the narrative of a chronic U.S. STEM worker shortage. Like Teitelbaum, He noted alarms about shortages surfacing repeatedly. Businesses, universities, and government agencies. He critiqued the misuse of labor data: Bureau of Labor Statistics employment projections are treated as precise forecasts, despite a history of major errors; unemployment rates are misinterpreted, with occupational benchmarks ignored; and, most tellingly, wages, the clearest indicator of scarcity, have stagnated or declined in many STEM fields.A distorted policy debate fails to acknowledge labor market heterogeneity across STEM occupations or the impact of global trends like offshoring and guest worker programs. If genuine shortages existed, wages would rise sharply, diversity efforts would improve, and companies would invest heavily in training—none of this is evident. He called for better data collection, more nuanced analysis, and transparency in employment practices.

 

Where do F1 students work?

In this posting I describe where F1 visa (student visa) workers work and the shape of this workforce. About 425,000 active students or recent graduates have temporary work authorization through three program: OPT, OPT-STEM, and CPT. (I am incorporating two other study-related visas, M-1 and J-1, into these figures.)

Summary: These workers have proven attractive to large, mostly IT firms. Google and Meta employ domestically about 130,000 persons or 2% of the entire “tech” workforce. They employ 3% of the most advanced form of student vias-related workforce (OPT-STEM). Amazon employs about 1% of the American workforce, but 7% of the OPT-STEM workforce.

What do these workers offer that might be special and worth a sustain recruitment program?  Commitment to stay the course (ether one or three years) and not leave early. Commitment to work hard, if the worker wants to increase their chance for a H-1B designation, which would naturally be a target. 

All of these workers are in the SEVIS databases. This database was created post 9/11. About 1.6 million individuals are active on SEVIS.  The Trump administration plays fast and loose with trying to deport persons, and SEVIS was used earlier in 2025 to attempt to cancel some 4,000 student visas. (Mostly failed.) SEVIS and other DHS databases are not designed and maintained to be reliable for all purposes.  Any one who has tried to use a government database even slightly off from its routine use knows how limited and unreliable these databases are.

In 2024, Walmart is recorded in SEVIS as employing 2,091 OPT and OPT-STEM workers. With 1.6 million U.S. domestic employees, Walmart’s domestic workforce is larger than the combined domestic workforces of Amazon, Meta and Google. But 17,400 of OPT and OPT-STEM workers were employed by Amazon, Meta and Google.

The role of large IT firms in the student visa workforce grows as the students emerge from study and enter the entire workforce. This is predictable: as students become more part of the entire workforce, large employers will be increasingly skilled at recruiting a larger share.

The CPT workforce is aligned with work study programs.  There are 130,000 international students in this program. Amazon, Meta and Google employ less than 5,000 (4%) and the top ten employers account for 9,800, or 8% of the total.

The OPT workforce is for 12 months post graduation, and is 195,000 in size. These three giant IT firms employ 7,600 of them (4%) and the top ten employers account for 8%.

The OPT-STEM workforce is, of course, STEM restricted in higher education major, total workers being 95,000. It allow for three years of employment. The three giant IT firms employ 9,800, or 10%, and the top 10 employers hire 17%.  Among the top ten are Goldman Sacks, Walmart and Tesla. It comes clear that a relative handful of large employers are practiced in the recruitment of these workers. there are about 6.6 million “tech” workers in the U.S. Meta and Google employ about

Again, what do these workers offer that might be special?  Commitment to stay the course (ether one or three years) and not leave early. Commitment to work hard, if the worker wants to increase their chance for a H-1B designation, which would naturally be a target.

Foreign students working here

In the United States today among international students, about 350,000 are in college and about 500,000 in graduate school.  (These figures plus a work study provision add to about 1.1 million which is the common estimate of all international higher ed students.) There are about 425,000 foreign persons graduating with a bachelor’s or graduate degree who due to their student visa (F1) are temporarily authorized to work. This and a few more postings in the future focus on these 425,000 persons.  They are highy vulnerable now to cutback or radical change by the administration.

I am posting because these worker rolls have grown significantly in the past ten years – about tripled – and because given the track record of the administration to using Executive Branch initiative (and not necessarily allowed by law) on visa policies, these students may or may not be in trouble in the months ahead.

An attractive feature of study in the U.S. is the chance to work here, temporarily and possible permanently with a green card. There appears to be upwards of a 50% chance to get a green card if a graduated student obtains a student-related work authorization, hangs in, gets a H-1B visa, and then applies for a green card.

At this moment (September 22) their status does not appear to be threatened by the Trump administrations Executive Order on September 19 in which Trump set a $100,000 entrance fee. This fee appears to be set for future H1-B visa holders. (There are about 700,000 existing H1-B holders.  The Executive Order was rolled out with much confusion – the Secretary of Commerce’s description of it varied from what the White House said. The administration issues immigration-related orders with no advance notice and with apparently little planning.

In this posting the international student-related visas are succinctly reviewed.  International students can work after graduation under two programs:

Standard Optional Training Program (OPT): available to all F1 (student visa) holders for 12 months after graduation. Enrollments rose from about 77,000 in 2014 to about 200,000 today.

STEM-related OPT: able to work for three year if the college or graduate degree was in the STEM area. Enrollments rose from about 21,000 in 2014 to about 200,000 today.

A third program called Curricular Planning Training (CPT) is designed only for students while they are enrolled in school – think college internship placements tied to the student’s major> Their ranks rose from about 92,000 in 2014 to 130,000 in 2014.

Repairing the damage with South Korea

How many foreign workers will be needed to meet the foreign investment targets set by the Trump Administration?

Using two cases of huge foreign company investment in manufacturing (Hyundai EV plant in Georgia and TSMC semi-conductor plants near Phoenix), it would appear, very very roughly, that for every $100 billion in foreign plant investment upwards of 1,000 foreign national temporary workers are on site at any one time, and perhaps multiples of that in individual head count over the course of multi-year projects from ground-braking to smooth operations  The White House has announced investment commitments running in several trillions of dollars.  At such a scale, many thousands of foreign nationals will be coming to help execute the investments. Foreign companies understandably want to use their own nationals for their special knowledge and work culture.  American labor organizations want to keep these numbers low.

And the foreign firms will be working under pressure. Building construction and equipment installation and testing phases are tightly managed.  Delays are costly.

Before visiting the Hyundai plant fiasco, there is a Taiwanese investment in the Phoenix area. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) broke ground in 2021 for two semi-conductor plants in the Phoenix area. The project will cost over $60 billion, of which the CHIPS Act is contributing $6.6 billion. Construction labor is over 10,000 workers. TSMC has tried to bring in 500 or so workers for the construction, using temporary work visas. Local building trades unions have objected.

TSMC has confirmed that some Taiwanese workers are there using E-2 visas. Nationwide, about 55,000 E-2 visas are issued per year for workers taking on temporary assignments (which can last over a year).  The number of all Taiwanese on an E-2 visa is about 3,000. There are no reports of ICE inspections of the TSMC plants.

As for the fallout from the Hyundai raid, here is what the English language Korea Herald has reported.

“US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau [on September 14] voiced “deep regret” over the mass detention of Korean workers in the Sept. 4 immigration raid in Georgia. Landau met with South Korea’s First Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo. The Korea-US vice foreign ministerial meeting took place only two days after the return of 316 South Korean nationals on Friday [Sept 12], eight days after their detention during the immigration raid.

“Deputy Secretary Landau also expressed deep regret over the fact that this incident occurred and said that this incident should be used as a turning point for institutional improvement and for strengthening the (South) Korea–US relationship,” the Foreign Ministry in Seoul said in a Korean-language press statement.

At the beginning of the meeting, Park “expressed regret that not only the workers but also the Korean public had been deeply shocked by this incident, referring to the unfair treatment that Korean company workers had to endure in US detention facilities,” according to the ministry. “Vice Minister Park strongly urged the US side to take concrete measures to prevent a recurrence and improve the system in order to ease public anxiety,” the ministry’s press statement read.

 

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