An US investor sparked outrage this week after claiming that most H-1B visa holders were ‘faking’ their skills while working well-paid jobs. The remarks came amid growing calls for the Donald Trump-led administration to curtail or scrap the program which allows skilled foreign workers entry into the US for various jobs.
“I have literally made people solve: ‘5(x) + 2 = 12, what is x?‘ in job interviews and most people fail it. CMOs, data engineers, analysts, etc. It’s all one big make-work program we’ve been in since the relational database was released in the 1970s. All H-1Bs fail 100% of the time but allegedly they are the world’s math and database and IT experts and allegedly this is ‘skilled’ employment,” Lauren Balik wrote on X.
She also claimed to have performed this test ‘many times’ on people and insisted that those who could answer were equipped to earn $100,000 per year or higher in the US. Balik also questioned the job experience acquired by H-1B visa holders — claiming that many of these workers held Masters degrees that weren’t from a ‘real program’.
“Simple algebra. They cannot do it. That’s because most of these jobs are UBI and fake and if they are UBI then why are we Americans outsourcing the UBI to non-citizens? I even had an ex-Google guy who couldn’t solve this and he was talked up as a legend, top 1%” she added.
The Trump administration appears to have a mixed outlook towards the visa program with key figures pushing for severe restrictions while others including Tesla CEO Elon Musk pushing for the system to be preserved. Donald Trump himself appears to have changed his mind over the past decade after calling it a “cheap labour program” and vowing to end it ‘forever’ in 2016.
“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” he insisted soon after winning the US Presidency in 2024.
Politicians across the spectrum have called for the specialised visa program to be tightened in recent years — to save American workers from being sidelined. The annual quota of new H-1B visas (distributed through a lottery system) is currently capped at 85,000. More than two-thirds of these coveted documents go to tech workers every year with Indians securing around 72% of H-1B visas.