NYC faces one fight over immigrants that's divided Trump's MAGA loyalists

While New York City has been a focal point for debate over the deportation of undocumented immigrants, many of its major industries and institutions are immersed in a budding policy fight over which and how many skilled foreign workers to allow into the country.

New York City led all U.S. urban areas in 2024 with more than 21,000 approvals for coveted H-1B work visas for specialty and skilled workers, according to new data by O2I, a New Jersey-based outsourcing firm. New York and New Jersey are among the top-five states for H-1B recipients, with nearly 56,000 H-1B visa holders in 2024, the company said.

The authorizations allow employers to temporarily hire foreign workers in areas where there are gaps in the domestic supply, including in mathematics, engineering and medical sciences. But the H-1B program has been the subject of sharp debate in President Trump’s inner circle, where critics contend the program, long dominated by Indian nationals, denies jobs to U.S.-born workers and lowers wages in tech and other industries.

“New York’s economy thrives on global talent, but an overreliance on H-1B workers presents a long-term risk. If policy changes limit access, the city’s key industries — finance, tech, and professional services — could face severe hiring shortages,” Israel Paul, the head of human resources at O2I's parent company Flatworld Solutions, said in a statement.

Here’s what to know now about the H-1B program, how it's been used in New York and the debate over changing it — or even scuttling it.

Which local employers rely on the H-1B program?

In 2024, the largest employers of H-1B visa holders in New York included Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, McKinsey and Morgan Stanley, each of which had hundreds of H-1B recipients in their ranks, according to data provided by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. But the employers also included some of the city’s pre-eminent medical institutions: Memorial Sloan Kettering, Montefiore Medical Center and Weill Cornell.

“As research shows, the H-1B visa is an important legal immigration program that helps meet our city’s workforce demands, strengthens our economy, and enables talented individuals to contribute to New York City,” Manuel Castro, commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, said in a statement.

What’s the view from the White House?

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for President Donald Trump, did not respond to questions about the H-1B program. But debate over H-1B visas was at the center of the MAGA “Civil War” in December that pit Trump advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy against others in or close to the administration, including Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer, according to reporting by the Washington Post.

Muzaffar Chishti,  a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said Trump’s base is currently “divided” between those who favor across-the-board cuts to immigration and corporate leaders like Musk who “happen to be some of his most significant donors.”

“And they believe that H-1B workers are very important, at least to their industries and by extension, important for the U.S. economy,” said Chishti.

“ If there's any change in H-1B policies, plus or negative, that is going to have a significant impact in the metropolitan area,” he said.

What are H-1B recipients saying about the controversy?

On message boards, some South Asian H-1B visa holders have expressed fears of traveling abroad out of concern they won’t be allowed back in the United States.

“There is absolutely a high level of anxiety among noncitizens these days,” said Akshat Tewary, an immigration attorney based in Edison, New Jersey. He said the fear widely associated with undocumented immigrants was increasingly filtering into legal residents, including H-1B visa holders.

“The H-1B community has become kind of a target, a piñata really, in politics,” said Tewary.

What possible changes could be in the mix?

Some conservative think tanks have argued that the H-1B program should be retained or even expanded.

Daniel DiMartino, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said New York City and Silicon Valley are “the two most exposed areas” in terms of potential effects on the H-1B system nationwide. In the metropolitan area, he said employers including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple were heavily reliant on H-1Bs, in addition to the financial sector and local hospitals.

DiMartino praised H-1B holders, calling them “among the most fiscally positive categories of immigrants. Meaning they pay much more in taxes than they receive in government benefits.”

But DiMartino said reforms are needed as some companies “ game” the system, resulting in a job going to a foreign-born worker “making $60,000 instead of somebody else who could be making $200,000.”

What else is there to know about this so-called MAGA “civil war”?

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Indian American Trump supporter who defended the need for foreign-born tech hires, stoked MAGA resentment in December with an X post.

He argued that “our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.” He added that U.S. pop culture, through TV shows like “Boy Meets World” and “Saved by the Bell,” had wrongly valorized “prom queens” and “jocks” over valedictorians.

“Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up,” he wrote.

This prompted a sarcastic response from influential Trump supporter and conservative activist Laura Loomer, who called for a reduction in H-1B visas on X.

Loomer said: “Our country was built by white Europeans, actually. Not third-world invaders from India.”

What other ideas are out there?

Chishti said the worker shortage arose from shortcomings of the American education system and STEM subjects, arguing that “ many U.S. workers are just not competitive in those areas.”

Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., rejected the idea that foreign-born H-1B workers are needed due to a domestic labor shortage.

“There's literally no possibility that this labor shortage idea is legitimate. If it were, you would see wages offered for IT jobs going through the roof, and they're not, they're basically flat,” he said.

Ideally, Krikorian said, the H-1B program would “be phased out” in the coming years.