Immigration Uncertainty Is Weakening U.S. Tech’s Foreign Talent Pipeline
Hiba Anver, a partner at Erickson Immigration Group, argues that US immigration uncertainty is already weakening the country’s ability to attract and retain skilled foreign workers. Speaking on Bloomberg Technology after the Supreme Court struck down Trump-era restrictions on birthright citizenship, she said falling visa sponsorship, lower foreign job-seeker interest and declining international student enrollment point to a broader talent-drain risk for technology and other industries that depend on global hiring.
Visa sponsorship is shrinking as the talent-drain risk accelerates
Ed Ludlow pointed to Handshake data showing that the share of entry-level jobs offering visa sponsorship had fallen to 2.3%. The chart shown by Bloomberg Technology, attributed to Handshake, showed the percentage of U.S. jobs sponsoring visas dropping from above 10% in 2023 toward roughly 2% by a projected 2026.
| Measure | Value shown or cited |
|---|---|
| U.S. jobs offering visa sponsorship in 2023 | Above 10% |
| Entry-level jobs offering visa sponsorship cited by Ludlow | 2.3% |
| Projected level shown for 2026 | Roughly 2% |
Hiba Anver treated that decline as part of a broader acceleration in talent drain. Foreign job-seeker interest in the United States, she said, is at a six-year low. She also cited estimates that international student enrollment has fallen by 17%, with the economic consequences of that drop quantified by some measures at more than $1 billion.
The connection Anver drew was between immigration policy and downstream economic effects. Visa sponsorship, foreign job-seeker interest, and international student enrollment are not separate signals in her account; they are related indicators of how interest in the United States is being redirected elsewhere. Those effects, she said, are already starting to reach U.S. workers and the U.S. labor force as well.
For employers, that makes lower sponsorship and weaker foreign interest more than an administrative constraint. In Anver’s framing, they are early signs that immigration-policy uncertainty is beginning to affect the broader labor market that U.S. companies depend on.
The birthright-citizenship ruling removed one source of instability
Hiba Anver described the Supreme Court’s decision striking down President Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship as “good news” for technology, healthcare, and financial services — industries she said rely heavily on workers from countries represented in the H-1B and L-1 visa pipelines.
The importance of the ruling, in her telling, was stability. Employers had already been dealing with “a tremendous amount of change” over the prior 18 months. Had the court ruled differently, she said, business leaders would have immediately asked what other immigration reinterpretations might become possible.
For companies that depend on global hiring, that uncertainty can be economically damaging on its own. Employers and workers are not only reacting to the current rule set; they are making career, hiring, and family decisions under the possibility that the ground could shift again.
I think that again this is a win for stability and continuity.
Ed Ludlow framed the stakes in personal as well as labor-market terms. Many people come to the United States for technology careers, he said, but also with the hope that starting a family in the country gives that family a future. The birthright-citizenship ruling mattered because those expectations help make the United States attractive to skilled workers in the first place.
The process is already burdensome before permanent residency enters the picture
Asked what the real-world experience looks like for a technology company or candidate trying to secure a visa, Hiba Anver emphasized scrutiny, vetting, and a rising evidentiary burden. Foreign workers, in the current environment she described, face increasingly strict requirements to prove eligibility.
That burden compounds for workers from certain countries once they try to move from temporary status to legal permanent residency. The wait time for some foreign individuals to convert to lawful permanent residence can be “years and years, if not decades.”
Anver rejected the simplified claim that foreign workers are merely taking jobs from U.S. workers. Foreign workers, she said, have to “jump through a lot of hoops” to achieve their immigration goals. The system is not frictionless for workers, and it is not neutral for employers: delays, evidentiary standards, and uncertainty all affect whether a worker chooses the United States as a long-term home.
If the birthright-citizenship decision had gone the other way, she said, some high-skilled foreign workers would have seriously reconsidered choosing the United States permanently. The question is therefore larger than whether a particular worker can obtain a visa today. It is whether the United States still looks like a stable destination for skilled migrants and their families.
Hiring barriers become a competitive advantage for firms outside the United States
Hiba Anver described technology companies’ position as straightforward: they want to hire the people they decide they need. When a company identifies the right candidate, it wants to onboard that person as quickly as possible, regardless of where the person is from.
That urgency reflects the markets in which technology companies operate. Anver said those industries are increasingly competitive and that it “always feels like it’s a race to innovate.” In that setting, immigration barriers are not just paperwork. They can determine whether a U.S. company can move as quickly as a competitor elsewhere.
The competitive implication was explicit. The more barriers placed on a U.S. company’s ability to hire a chosen candidate, the more advantage accrues to companies outside the United States.
The more barriers that are presented in a company, a US company’s ability to do that, the further advantage it creates for companies outside of the United States.
Anver acknowledged that overall demand for foreign talent has decreased slightly, but linked that partly to companies hiring less in general. Once an employer identifies a candidate who fits a particular need, companies remain willing to do what it takes to bring that person on because “the stakes are so high.”
The tension is that employers may sponsor fewer roles overall, especially at the entry level, while the need for specialized talent remains. Companies become more selective about when they will fight through the process; foreign workers, meanwhile, have more reason to weigh whether the United States is worth the uncertainty.