If the Republican nomination was to happen today, Donald Trump would steamroll over the rest of his competitors without breaking a sweat -- he's that far ahead in the polls. Which is why his position on tech-related immigration matters so much.

It is an understatement to say that Trump is against the H-1B visa. He positively loathes it, and has withering criticism for Marco Rubio, whom he considers a lackey to Silicon Valley and Mark Zuckerberg in particular, calling him the Facebook founder's "personal senator". What really gets his goat about Rubio is the Florida Senator's past plan to triple H-1Bs, which he says would "decimate women and minorities".

Trump thinks that the STEM (people in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math) shortage is a malicious myth. "We graduate two times more Americans with STEM degrees each year than find STEM jobs, yet as much as two-thirds of entry-level hiring for IT jobs is accomplished through the H-1B program," the campaign's position paper said. It also maintained that more than half of H-1B visas are issued for the program's lowest allowable wage level, and more than 80 percent for its bottom two, the Trump campaign said, although there's plenty of heated debate around this issue.

Consequently, Trump proposes to raise the minimum wage for foreign H-1B hires to "force companies to give these coveted entry-level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers in the US, instead of flying in cheaper workers from overseas", a stance that he underscored during his most recent presidential debate.

Trump has special ire reserved for Disney, who shipped in H-1B workers from India to replace 400-odd American techies at their Florida offices. To add to the ignominy of their being summarily fired, the Americans were forced to train their replacements over a period of a month or so lest they lose their severance payments. Trump insists that Disney hire back each worker let go. "If I am president, I will not issue any H-1B visas to companies that replace American workers and my Department of Justice will pursue action against them," he told a news outfit.

But how serious is Trump about all of this if he wins the nomination? According to Vivek Wadhwa, a scholar and entrepreneur who researches immigration and technology issues and teaches at Stanford University, Trump will probably execute a "tactical shift" and dial down his anti-immigration position to the point of actually favouring skilled workers. Alienating the tech industry may just prove too costly a move to risk.