In 2015, President Obama expanded the program to allow the spouses of H-1B visa holders to also work in the United States,
but in a recent court filing, the Trump administration said it was reviewing that policy.
Such a change would favor established American technology companies, which tend to pay high wages,
and hurt the outsourcing companies, which hire immigrants to do more basic work at lower wages.
Under the H-1B program, “all companies have to attest
that they tried to find an American,” said Russ Harrison, director of government relations at IEEE-USA, the American branch of IEEE, the largest professional association for computer scientists and electrical engineers.
Outsourcing companies based in the United States, particularly IBM and Cognizant, also use large numbers of H-1B workers.
The leading American technology companies, including Google, Microsoft and Apple, employ thousands of H-1B workers.