AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Visas for foreign workers have been a target of President Trump. Last week, two states - Florida and Texas - took steps to temporarily freeze the H-1B visa at state public universities until 2027. The H-1B visa is the temporary work visa that lets employers hire foreign professionals in specialized jobs like tech or medicine. Here's Governor Ron DeSantis recently.
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RON DESANTIS: They're saying, well, this is so specialized that, you know, we can't find Americans to do it. Well, shouldn't universities be able to find them? I mean, like, literally, you need to run your university. You have it within your capacity to produce those people.
RASCOE: Pakistani American Talat Rahman was working in the U.S. on an H-1B before becoming an American citizen in 1990. She's a professor of physics at the University of Central Florida, and she joins me now from Islamabad, where she's attending a work conference. Thank you so much for being with us.
TALAT RAHMAN: It's my pleasure. I'm really glad to be here.
RASCOE: So, you know, as someone who was at one point on an H-1B visa, what went through your mind when you hear about Florida and Texas moving to freeze the visas at state public universities?
RAHMAN: My first reaction was, these people are so ill-informed. The idea that H-1B visas are being given so we can get cheap labor is just totally outrageous. I mean, that's just not how things are. These visas are given to the best in the field, the best person for the job.
RASCOE: In your case, why were you on a H-1B visa?
RAHMAN: So in my case, I came here as a graduate student, right? And so I got my PhD here. And a good number of people who are getting onto H-1B visas - they got their education here. My original idea when I came to get my PhD was to complete my degree, do a little bit of research and then go to Pakistan. And there are a number of people who did not go back, like myself, because when they got an H-1B visa, they got addicted to the research they were doing, to the teaching they were doing, too, and they were doing a great job here. And American universities are wonderful. But then if you don't give people these H-1B visas, well, they will go back to their country, and these other countries will benefit from that.
RASCOE: Governor DeSantis is saying that there's an abuse of the H-1B visas - that employers should be hiring qualified Floridians over foreign labor, especially for jobs that he says shouldn't be, quote, hard to fill. I guess what he means is if you're a college, you should be educating people who can be professors and then come back, and they should be American. Does he have a point?
RAHMAN: No. I don't think he understands how the system works. When you produce professionals, there's no factory for producing them, right? You know, it's not a car, where you have these sets of requirement and out comes a Mazda with this color, this air conditioning, this, that and this, that and the other, and that Mazda is just like any other Mazda. We have to understand that there is a human element. There's also a question of breadth of experience because, you know, most of us believe that diversity actually enhances quality and not the other way round.
RASCOE: You've been on hiring committees for academic roles at universities, and you've had a hand in making the choice to hire foreign nationals. What goes into that decision?
RAHMAN: The first thing we do is that when we have a job description, we are then looking to see who is the best person who fits this job description, because, you know, we don't just hire at random. We are hiring a person to fill a particular void that we have in our department, right? So, for example, there's a lot of work right now in how you merge AI into physics. OK? So maybe we're looking for someone who is going to be the expert in that area. And we may have experts in AI, others who are experts in that particular kind of physics, but maybe we don't have someone who can merge the two fields. And then we look at who is the one who's got the most publications and who's got the best ideas and who we really - we see a spark. And we see that they will be able to not only hold the attention of our students and train our students to move forward, but also be able to secure grants and eventually be leaders - not just national, but international leaders in the field.
RASCOE: How will public universities and institutions be affected if these H-1B visa freezes become permanent?
RAHMAN: You know, we want to maintain the highest quality in the U.S. in terms of innovation, in terms of discovery, in terms of quality of education. And that maintenance has come because we have recruited people from around the world. And some of them have gotten Nobel Prizes. Some of them have gotten other prizes. And they have all produced American students who've gone and done wonders in the world. When you base a system on quality, then you don't want to be restricted. We will lose excellence.
RASCOE: That's Talat Rahman, a professor of physics at the University of Central Florida. Thank you so much for joining us.
RAHMAN: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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