Despite warnings about potential national security risks and ties between TikTok and the Chinese government, the United States has allowed the platform’s parent company, ByteDance, to apply for and obtain nearly 1,000 visas in the past year.
The H-1B visa allows highly skilled foreign workers to travel to the U.S. temporarily with an employer as sponsor, but the system has been criticized for its lottery-style approach and concerns that employers, particularly those at Big Tech, are ignoring some qualified U.S. citizens.
Companies such as Amazon, Google, and Meta are among the biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B program. During fiscal year 2024, about 9,200 H-1Bs out of 85,000 were awarded to Jeff Bezos’ company alone. Over the past 4 years, however, ByteDance has seen the number of its overseas employees grow dramatically, from 163 in 2020 to 997 in 2024.
“Big tech has been very reliant on [H-1B], to exploit it, really, as a source of cheap and reliable labor”, Ron Hira, a professor at Howard University, explained to Newsweek. ”The employer applies for the visa and controls the visa, and therefore your legal status in the U.S.. They have enormous amount of bargaining power and control over the workers.”
ByteDance’s steady increase in reported numbers comes at a time when TikTok faces an uncertain future in the United States due to concerns that the company is too close to the Chinese Communist Party. President Biden has ordered ByteDance to divest from its operations in the country by Jan. 19, the day before Trump takes office. With the new administration coming in, however, the company’s future in the U.S. remains to be determined.
While TikTok’s fate in the United States remains in the balance, ByteDance is continuing to build its technology research and development teams in the country. And, like other major tech giants, it is turning to foreign workers rather than U.S. citizens or residents.
To date, the company that has made the most visa applications is Amazon, followed by Infosys Limited, Cognizant Technology Solution, and Google. In this special ranking, ByteDance ranks 34th.
