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ELon Musk, Mike Krieger and Jeff Skoll are three famous names in the world of technology. They are three of the most famous recipients of the popular H-1B visa that allows skilled workers to come to the US for work.
Now, a program frequently used by Silicon Valley and countless other workforces is in Donald Trump’s crosshairs following the president’s announcement. $100,000 fee on all new applications,
First introduced in 1990, the H-1B is a work visa that allows U.S. companies to sponsor foreign workers with specialized skills to live here for three to six years. H-1B is a major support of Silicon ValleyWhich sponsors thousands of such visas from India, China and other countries every year. Roughly speaking 60 percent of annual approvals are for computer-related jobs, and Big Tech CEOs like Musk argue That these visas are “essential” to maintaining America’s technological edge.
But H-1B visa is also very controversial. Some critics say they displace American workers and are full of fraud. others say America’s Byzantine cap and lottery system is cruel to applicants and stifles innovation.
So who are the prominent business leaders who have been here on H-1B visas – and what have they brought to the country?
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk
Musk, the South African mogul and onetime member of Trump’s inner circle, is perhaps the most famous former H-1B holder (as well as the world’s richest person).
In 1992, Musk moved to the United States from Canada on a student visa, having fled conscription by South Africa’s apartheid regime three years earlier. By his own account, he then switched to H-1B visa and became a software entrepreneur, Made his name alongside arch-conservative investor Peter Thiel as part of the “PayPal Mafia”.
Musk’s immigration history is controversial, because reporting by Washington Post indicates that he actually worked illegally between 1995 and 1997 while building his first software company, Zip2. vehemently denied the allegation,
Despite this, his impact on American power and prestige has been enormous. Tesla started the global revolution in electric vehicles SpaceX is currently the only way to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station And it’s vital to NASA’s plan to return America to the Moon.
On the other hand, his work at DOGE sabotaged the country’s world-leading foreign aid programs, The federal government lost an estimated $500 billion in tax revenue.,
Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of LA Times
When Patrick Soon-Shiong became UCLA’s youngest professor of surgery in 1983, the H-1B visa technically did not yet exist. But it benefited from its predecessor, the H-1, which served the same purpose.
Soon-Shiong was born in 1952 in South Africa, where his parents sought refuge from the Japanese occupation of China during World War II. After spending ten years as a superstar physician in America, he made his fortune by developing new treatments for cancer and diabetes.
Today, he is a minority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers NBA team and (sometimes controversially) Of Los Angeles TimesTogether Estimated net worth $12 billionHe has described his former H1 visa as “living proof of the American dream coming true.”
Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram
Two years before its massive $1 billion acquisition by Facebook (now Meta), Instagram was nearly strangled by the US immigration system.
That’s according to the app’s Brazilian co-founder Mike Krieger, who told Bloomberg News in 2015 Transferring your H-1B visa to a new employer took longer than creating the app.
After more than three months, Krieger’s paperwork was finally approved in April 2010, and today Instagram employs thousands of people. It’s the jewel in Meta’s crown, helping maintain American social media dominance while creating estimated $71 billion in advertising revenue. It is also an important component of the $250 billion global manufacturing economy, which supports millions of jobs in America
Noubar Afeyan, vaccine pioneer
Born in Lebanon in 1962 to Armenian parents, biochemistry major Noubar Afeyan was able to live in the US after completing his PhD thanks to an H-1B visa. according to Dartmouth University’s Tuck School of Business.
He founded leading vaccine maker Moderna, whose COVID-19 vaccine has been administered at least 155 million times — and has potentially saved millions of lives in the US and abroad.
according to reports And congressional testimonyModerna’s Canadian co-founder Derrick Rossi was also once on H-1B, as were several key people who developed its vaccine.
Albert Bourla, the French CEO of rival vaccine maker Pfizer, is also an immigrant, though it is unknown whether he was ever on an H-1B or H-1. The same is true about katherineHungarian scientist who pioneered mRNA vaccine technology.
Jeff Skoll, co-founder of eBay
eBay was the brainchild of Pierre Omidyar, a French-Iranian immigrant whose parents moved to the United States when he was a child. The company remained a one-man band until 1995, when he met Canadian engineer Jeffrey Skoll at Stanford University.
Skoll was the first president of eBay, and in fact its first employee, who spent part of his time on an H-1B visa.
He later founded the film company that produced Al Gore’s 2006 global warming documentary an Inconvenient TruthAlso Presentation 2011 Medical Thriller contagion – Designed to raise awareness about the possibility of a global pandemic.
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan
It took Eric Yuan nine applications before he was accepted for an H-1B visa. He eventually moved from China to Silicon Valley in 1997, speaking little English but proficient in computer code.
In 2011 he launched Zoom, now one of the world’s leading video communications companies. Its technology helped save the world economy from collapse more than he would have done Helped many people stay healthy to some degree during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as during the lockdown.
Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo
Born in 1995 in Madras, India, Indra Nooyi attended Yale School of Management before obtaining an H-1B to work in the United States.
By 1994 she was senior vice president at PepsiCo, the food and beverage titan that owns not only Pepsi but also Tropicana, Gatorade, Quaker Oats, Lay’s, Doritos, and dozens of other brands.
Nooyi ultimately served as CEO for 12 years between 2006 and 2018, and regularly topped lists of influential women in business. Today the company employs more than 130,000 people in the US, although it is no longer owned Any ex-Soviet submarine or warship,
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
Satya Nadella’s H-1B story is a bit unusual. By the time he married his wife, Anu, in 1992, he had received a green card and had come to the United States from southern India in 1988 to study computer science.
But permanent residence did not allow Anu to join him in the US, so Nadella’s lawyer suggested a very risky bet: Giving up his green card and applying for an H-1B, which will allow him to bring his wife immediately.
The gamble worked, and today Microsoft – which was founded in 1975 by Americans Bill Gates and Paul Allen – employs about 120,000 people in the US, capturing about one-fifth to one-quarter of the roughly $400 billion-a-year cloud computing market.