The tech industry is on a collision course with the Trump administration over immigration.

Top companies in Silicon Valley have already denounced President Trump’s executive order limiting travel from seven predominately Muslim countries, with a number of companies exploring legal challenges to overturn it.

ADVERTISEMENT

But even as that fight plays out, the administration is separately considering a crackdown on worker visas — potentially a far greater threat to tech companies, which employ scientists and engineers from around the world.

A draft executive order from the Trump administration titled “Protecting American jobs and workers by strengthening the integrity of foreign worker visa programs” has been circulating among executive branch officials, multiple media outlets reported this week.

The text of the order, as published by Vox, states that visa programs for foreign workers “should be administered in a manner” that “prioritizes the protection of Americans — our forgotten working people — and the jobs they hold.”

Among several policy changes, the order would direct the departments of Labor and Homeland Security to scrutinize the H-1B visa program for foreign workers and to beef up existing enforcement mechanisms.

The order would also direct the Homeland Security Department to “review all regulations that allow foreign nationals to work in the United States,” with an eye on rescinding ones that violate immigration laws or are not in the national interest.

Some in the tech community are already lashing out at the proposal.

Blake Irving, the CEO of web hosting company GoDaddy, wrote in a post on LinkedIn that the U.S. economy is reliant on the H-1B program and that the order “risks serious consequences for US-based tech companies’ ability to hire elite global talent.”

“To be clear, the entire US economy is at stake with this draft order and tech leaders need to speak out on its dangers,” Irving wrote.

Leezia Dhalla, a spokeswoman for FWD.us, an immigration advocacy group founded in part by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, said high-skilled immigrants help the U.S. economy by boosting innovation, which leads to more jobs for American workers.

“We should harness the talents of foreign-born entrepreneurs and students to benefit our economy and our communities, rather than pushing them to other countries to compete against us,” Dhalla said in a statement to The Hill.

The crackdown on the visa program is likely the brainchild of Trump advisers Stephen Miller, a former aide to attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTrump's policies on refugees are as simple as ABCs Ocasio-Cortez, Velázquez call for convention to decide Puerto Rico status White House officials voted by show of hands on 2018 family separations: report MORE, and Stephen Bannon, a former executive of Breitbart News.

During an interview last year on Sirius XM, Bannon and Miller critiqued the nation’s immigration system and talked about limiting the number of foreign workers entering the U.S.

“If you’re in your 40s or 50s right now, people will tell you they haven’t had a raise in decades in IT,” Bannon said. “What was supposed to be a great career turned out not to be a great career because of these visas.

“And now you’ve got all the engineering schools are all full of people from South Asia and East Asia — and it’s not that people have a problem with those folks learning — but they’re coming here to take these jobs.”

The H-1B visa program allows foreign workers in specialized fields to stay in the United States for employment. Many of the participants first receive visas to attend college in the United States in fields like science, math and engineering.

A large portion of the 65,000 H-1B visas that are distributed every year are directed toward technology workers, with Silicon Valley lagging only behind IT outsourcing firms as the top applicant.

It’s unclear whether Trump is on board with the draft executive order or whether the White House plans to move forward with it.

Whether protests from tech companies will affect the White House’s decision-making remains to be seen.

In December, leaders of major Silicon Valley companies met with Trump in what was widely seen as an attempt to mend fences after a presidential election in which the sector was mostly behind Democrat Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonBiden courts veterans amid fallout from Trump military controversies Biden looks to shore up Latino support in Florida MLB owner: It's 'very necessary' to vote for Trump MORE.

“I’m here to help you folks do well,” Trump told the technology executives. “You’re doing well right now.”

During the meeting, Miller floated a proposal to change the program from awarding visas to a lottery system that would favor high-salary employees, according to Reuters.

That shift mirrors proposals floated in Congress in recent weeks and is largely acceptable to Silicon Valley, whose foreign workers are paid more on average than those employed by outsourcing firms.

But the rapprochement between tech companies and Trump appeared to end after tech executives lined up to denounce the president’s executive order on immigration, which in part temporarily bans people from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia from entering the U.S.

“Like many of you, I’m concerned about the impact of the recent executive orders signed by President Trump,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.

“We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat. Expanding the focus of law enforcement beyond people who are real threats would make all Americans less safe by diverting resources, while millions of undocumented folks who don’t pose a threat will live in fear of deportation.”