Shobhit Mathur, co-founder and vice-chancellor of Rishihood University, has defended the contribution of skilled foreign workers to the US technology industry, recalling his experience of joining Amazon on an H-1B visa when the company was still making losses. In a post on X, Mathur said he was part of the initial team that built Amazon Web Services (AWS), adding that approximately 100 H-1B visa holders were involved in Amazon’s early team. His account comes amid renewed debate over skilled immigration after the US administration announced restrictions on green-card sponsorship processing for several technology companies.
Ex-employee shares Amazon’s journey: From makeshift desks to a technology giant
Mathur recalled that Amazon was operating from a rented building when he joined, with employees working at makeshift desks made from doors inside small cabins. He said the company was making losses at the time and that around 100 H-1B visa holders were part of its initial team. According to Mathur, these professionals contributed their hard work and expertise to building the foundations of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has since grown into one of the company’s most significant sources of profit.Mathur’s central argument is that foreign professionals can contribute to building businesses that eventually generate substantial economic value. He pointed to AWS as an example, saying that the cloud-computing business has become a major source of Amazon’s profits and helped transform the company’s financial position.
AWS has become a major source of Amazon’s profits
Amazon’s published results show the scale of the business Mathur describes. In 2025, AWS generated $128.7 billion in net sales, up 20% from the previous year, and its operating income rose to $45.6 billion from $39.8 billion in 2024. Amazon’s total operating income for the year was $80.0 billion, making AWS responsible for about 57% of it, even though it accounted for roughly 18% of the company’s $716.9 billion in net sales.The share has since climbed past the level Mathur cites. In the second quarter of 2026, AWS sales rose 37% to $42.2 billion and its operating income reached $16.6 billion, or about 60.5% of Amazon’s total operating income.
US suspends PERM labour certification for major technology firms
Mathur’s comments come as the Trump administration has intensified scrutiny of employment-based immigration. On October 8, 2026, Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the suspension alongside Vice-President JD Vance. The Department of Labor suspended eight companies from the Permanent Labour Certification programme, known as PERM: Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe.PERM is a labour certification process generally required for employment-based green-card applications. Employers typically must demonstrate that there are not sufficient able, willing, qualified and available US workers for the position and that employing a foreign worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed US workers.The department said it would not accept new PERM applications or process pending ones from the named companies. The reasons differed by company. Sonderling said the six outsourcing firms were suspended outright, while Microsoft and Adobe were suspended due to multiple active federal investigations. Vance singled out Microsoft, saying it laid off 6,000 American workers last year while benefiting from 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. Reuters reported that Microsoft is the largest filer of PERM applications, based on Permtrack.app data. TCS said in an exchange filing that it would follow any directions issued by the Department of Labor.
Why H-1B visas are at the centre of the debate
The H-1B programme allows US employers to hire foreign professionals for specialty occupations that generally require highly specialised knowledge and a relevant bachelor’s degree or equivalent qualifications. Technology companies use it to recruit software engineers, researchers and other skilled workers from international talent pools.Amazon has been a major participant. One summary of Pew Research Center’s analysis reports that Amazon came first with 11,000 H-1B approvals in 2023. More recently, Amazon’s approvals rose from 9,257 in 2024 to 10,044 in 2025, and a letter from US senators described the FY2025 figure as nearly double that of the next-highest employer. These counts include extensions and transfers, so they do not measure new foreign hires.The programme has also faced criticism over whether some employers use foreign workers to reduce labour costs or replace American employees. The US Department of Labor requires employers hiring H-1B workers to pay at least the higher of the actual wage paid to similarly qualified employees or the prevailing wage for the occupation and location. The department can investigate alleged violations of these requirements.The administration argues that restrictions are necessary to address cases of alleged wage undercutting and displacement. Technology companies and advocates of skilled immigration argue that access to international talent helps businesses recruit specialised workers and develop new products. These competing arguments have made H-1B visas a prominent issue in the wider debate over US technology policy and employment.
Mathur’s argument about immigrant talent
In his post, Mathur challenged the characterisation of foreign professionals as merely inexpensive labour, arguing that their contributions can extend beyond filling vacancies. He pointed to Amazon’s transformation from a loss-making company into a business with a highly profitable cloud-computing division.His closing argument was that companies would struggle to build businesses and wealth without skilled international workers. The post directly connects his early Amazon experience with the current debate over restrictions on foreign-worker immigration.
