I think there’s plenty of interesting debates to be had about immigration policy and its effects on the labor market, but one thing worth noting here is that the primary problem that damn near every other country on earth has isn’t immigration, it’s brain drain.
A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them do so. You can argue how well that’s worked out for us - having worked with a great many extremely talented H1bs in an industry largely built by immigrants, I’d consider it pretty positive - but it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.
The top end of H1B has been great for America. In the last few decades, there has been growth of abuse of the program to get mid level talent at below market rates which really hurts the middle class in America. People need to understand that most reformists don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration to the US. We need to limit the volume, especially the immigrants that are directly competing with a hollowed out middle class in the US. Let me know if you want further reading on this topic.
Agree with the abuse part. Question is - is this the right way to fix the problem? A half baked executive order that raises more questions than answers for the existing H1B visa holders.
Are we saying software engineers making $125-150k are middle class? If so, then yes this I absolutely believe this is true. These will still be high level people for the most part that will up our game in my opinion. Thats in the opinion column, hard to prove. But this fee may have a net negative impact on jobs for Americans as it will push more companies to simply outsource to these countries rather than pay more in the US. So you need to tax that too. And then they will find some way around that and we will need to tax that new thing. I don’t like this game, it is trying to stop progress in my opinion. But I guess it is a balancing act and who knows where you set the line. Adding friction to it will definitely make it so only higher quality talent migrates here, that much seems clear.
The hollowing out of the middle class in the US isn't because of immigrants, it's because of a sustained campaign by capital to reduce the power of labor over the last 50-odd years and to concentrate wealth as best they can. Immigrant labor contributes to that because we've got inadequate labor protections and because we bought into the idea that lower consumer prices was a fine reason to ignore both labor and antitrust.
"The hollowing out of the middle class in the US isn't because of immigrants, it's because of a sustained campaign by capital to reduce the power of labor over the last 50-odd years and to concentrate wealth as best they can."
Creating low cost alternatives and taking advance of lax laws is part of that. If you can import 100k skilled workers per year under a scheme that gives you more power over them. Then you also offshore 300k jobs per year to countries with weaker protections.
It's always baffled me how the same candidates that claim to be pro labor and pro environment are also pro globalization. The way it plays out is that the jobs are just offshore to jurisdictions that lack the same labor and environmental protections.
Wholeheartedly agreed. I used to work very closely with economists in asset management. What looks like efficiency on a spreadsheet can look very different on the ground.
I like your focus on middle class. That is if we're viewing h1b as an input we ought to eval based on what's good for the middle class.
I don't quite agree that much with causes: high housing, Healthcare & med bankruptcy, and high education costs (correlating with high housing) are bigger factors. However non tech/lawyer/doctors have been adversely effected by the fact they've seen no real income gains in 25 years overall.
Now, the top 5% and corps need to be made to pay more taxes... thats another subject.
A couple elderly people i know are quite concerned Trump will take their snap benefits, or decrease medicaid/care etc while the tax reductions were given on the bb bill. Thats not acceptable.
> However non tech/lawyer/doctors have been adversely effected by the fact they've seen no real income gains in 25 years overall.
We may be reaching the breaking point where Americans view any solution to this problem as worth trying. We’re near 2 generations of flat real income for the vast majority of Americans. When your grandparents are the last generation to remember rising living standards, it’s hard to buy that the system is working for you at all.
> We’re near 2 generations of flat real income for the vast majority of Americans.
No, we aren't! We have statistics on this (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N). Median real income is up substantially since 40-50 years ago, depending on what you count as a generation. And we have stories and records of what life was like in the 1970s, when 80% of households had to hand wash dishes and 50% had to line-dry clothes. The reason people believe living standards haven't risen since their grandparents' day is that they get false nostalgia bait depictions of how a typical person lived in their grandparents' day.
(What is true, and what I'm sure contributes to the power of the nostalgia bait, is that real income stagnated with the dot-com bubble and didn't hit a sustained rise again until the mid-late 2010s.)
Real people don't care about "real income". They care about if they can get and retain a decent home, job and life. How much debt they are in, that their education is enough, how their social life is, if they can have kids and how they think about their future.
"Real income" is measured against the consumer price index (CPI). CPI is used to gauge inflation, "are people paying more for groceries this year than last?", not living standard. Most of the important questions like "how many years of education do you need for a good job?" or "how many average salaries do you need for a good home?" are all massively worse. So are many metrics of despair.
What real income really shows is that more money now gives you less. That what buys you a loaf of bread doesn't buy you a good life anymore. Because median income might be keeping up with inflation, but not with anything else.
While you are correct that real wages are up around 25%, productivity has nearly doubled. While various consumer goods, and technology have seen large improvements - ignoring the measurable and qualitative ways that affording basic aspects of life have become more difficult is not wise.
Thank you for chart. I will reassess real income gains. I'd be lovely to have a chart on housing/rent, healthcare, and higher education to see if people had both higher income and expenses.
Global trade as made consumer prices competitive in many things, but those are a big three.
Global trade has made shippable commodities cheaper, so purely local expenses such as housing, healthcare, and education are relatively more expensive. Especially as inflation measurements include items from both categories.
This is why many places in the world no longer produce enough food to feed their populations - refrigeration and cheap oil enable food to no longer be a local commodity. Education is sometimes headed in the same direction. But housing cannot be sourced anywhere but locally.
'Hand washing dishes' was replaced with 'get a low paying job to be a second household earner'. Considering this, has the standard of living really increased?
I think many women were happy that they could get an education and job to make their life more interesting besides being the house slave of their husband.
It’s certainly hyperbolic but lack of autonomy and complete financial dependence were pretty par for the course for women back in the day.
My grandma slowly squirreled away money in a shoe box over decades as she had no personal bank account and lived on what my grandpa provided while she took care of seven kids. She saw it as her lifeline. Meanwhile he got drunk every night at the yacht club.
When the last of the kids were nearing college she spent that money on classes for clerical work and got a job.
I could not possibly imagine being in her shoes and I can imagine why a woman would be loathe to enter into such dependence on another person, regardless of how fulfilling child rearing and house keeping may be.
And the further you go back from there the worse it looks for women.
And what about women who love their family and kids and would like to support the family by staying at home? Come on dude, calling it slavery is fucked up.
Clothes dryers are a sign of shrinking real estate, not a sign of luxury.
When one lives in a tiny apartment with no balcony, you better have a dryer. When living with plenty of land, it's not a problem to hang clothes to dry in the sun.
> Clothes dryers are a sign of shrinking real estate, not a sign of luxury.
My euro family disagrees, even in places that don’t have a balcony. Get the rack out and dry indoors and it’s pretty dry overnight (in the not so humid places).
I have a dryer but avoid it for most clothes because I think it wears them out.
A lot of rent agreements in then UK explicitly forbid tenants from drying clothes indoors on a rack because it is claimed that it raises humidity and the risk of mould (being an already quite damp, cold country)
Plenty of old photos of people running drying lines between them and the opposite tenement building. Not saying people should do that today, just that it's what people did when they had neither space nor means to buy a dryer (or before dryers were invented)
Many Americans would love to do this today, but every apartment I've rented in the last 15 years has strict rules against drying clothes outside along with other restrictions on what you're allowed to place or store on patios and balconies there. Most of the rules seem to be in place purely so that the complex/tower doesn't look "poor" or "trashy"
You have indoor heating, right? Clothes dry just fine on a rack indoors (albeit you may need some way to remove the resulting humidity if your heating system isn't doing that job already)
I've been handwashing my dishes for a long time and now have a dishwasher. One of the main benefits is having a place to store the dirty dishes until there are enough to make it worth washing. I used to do 3 washes a day, with 2 tiny ones.
Nooo. Wages only jumped in the Tech biz just before the dot-com crash and again before the AI crash that hasn't happened yet (unless you count laying off workers to pay for capX on NVIDIA hahaha). Bottom line: McDonalds is paying $20/hr now in California to flip burgers --YUUUGE, but a whole lot of people lost their jobs when major automobile manufacturers laid them off because they "didn't want to compete with McDonalds for workers"...where is that in your "Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics" (I'mma change that to "and LLMs" rofl).
*-nevermind the $10000 workstation named after a gf or more recently $2000 orange phones (I bought a DEEP Blue because Apple is always threatening to "Care-Deeply" me), $1000 watches and $300 earpieces for errbody. So Hungry. Also, we'll make sure you never work anywhere in Tech again if you even so much as interview for a new job outside of our company and Non-Competes Are No Longer Blocked! But What the Helly..Turtleneck also didn't invent the hungry mantra which is embraced by many other similar brilliant people, from Einstein to Elon'n-on and of course, my dad's gang one of whom brought Turtleneck back to Apple.) Get it? Got it? Good.
> It's always baffled me how the same candidates that claim to be pro labor and pro environment are also pro globalization. The way it plays out is that the jobs are just offshore to jurisdictions that lack the same labor and environmental protections.
Why's that? The jobs and lives of individuals in those countries are better than the alternatives present otherwise to them. Globalization may hurt certain America jobs but certainly countries like India is grateful for all of the engineering roles.
High consumerism is harmful to the environment but I don't think the link between offshoring jobs is direct to environmental harms and certainly it's helpful to giving more job opportunites.
I could see that being the case in a scenario where all countries had strong labor protections. However, in practice globalism tends to result in jobs being exported from countries with strong protections to countries with weak protections. In that sense it is anti-labor.
In the case of bringing in workers; those workers are less likely to join unions or demand good working conditions since they are effectively indentured servants. That also is bad for labor.
Insofar as a "pro-labour" position exists in practice it has to be anti-globalist. If pro-labour is going to mean something it has to mean trying to get labour a better deal than a free market would offer, otherwise it isn't really taking a position on labour at all. A key part of globalism is it makes it impossible for labour in any given country to avoid being paid the market price for their labour.
Environmentalism is similar. Globalism fixes the amount of pollution globally to the market optimum where presumably an environmentalist wants to control pollution using some other system than markets.
You seem to be arguing that globalism makes the world better off. I agree, but that is because pro-labour and pro-environmentalist ideologies are pretty explicit that they aren't trying to maximise the general welfare. A situation where one soul works very hard and happily for little pay making things for everyone else could be a good outcome for everyone (see also: economic comparative advantage). The pro-labour position would resist that outcome on the basis that the labourer is not making very much money. And the environmentalist would probably be unhappy with the amount of pollution that the hard work generates. The globalist would call it a win.
Globalism as an ideology is distinct from globalization of trade. Globalists would argue for expansive supranational regulatory controls. Migration and alleged environmental concerns are typical rationalizations for their expanding powers. The distinction is better understood as between a set of liberal, laissez-faire trade policies and an emerging illiberal supranational regulatory state.
Specifically when you say:
>Globalism fixes the amount of pollution globally to the market optimum where presumably an environmentalist wants to control pollution using some other system than markets.
We can observe that the Globalist organizations regard not just pollution, but carbon consumption to be something which markets cannot be trusted to manage. Instead they propose top-down regulatory management on a supranational level.
I'm very much free trade and pro-globalization, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me that a candidate for political office in country X should be most concerned about the overall welfare of the citizens of country X, then next for the non-citizen residents of country X, then non-citizen/non-residents last. We can argue how steep the dropoff should be, but I think most people would believe that the ordering is that one, with some possible ties.
Overall welfare is about more than just income though. It’s about national security, the cost of living, and the benefits of things like innovation, technology, culture.
Let’s look at US imports from China. Last year that was $462bn worth of goods. Suppose the development of China never happened and all those goods were manufactured in the USA instead. That’s impossible, the US doesn’t have tens of millions of industrial workers lying around spare to do those mostly low end, low value jobs and if it did they would cost more and the goods would all be much more expensive. So the cost of living would go up, the economy would less efficient because many workers would be doing lower value add jobs than they are now. The country would be much worse off overall. It would basically amount to enormous government subsidies and protections for vast swathes of lower value assembly work than what many people are doing now.
I support global trade because I think it’s best for the west. Not hyper-liberal ultra free market trade. Negotiated, rules based, moderately regulated trade and investment that is balanced to meet domestic and international needs.
It’s important to clarify that H-1B is a non-immigrant visa — you don’t get to stay if you lose your job. That matters because the debate isn’t about immigration itself but about how the program functions. H-1B was meant to supplement shortages in highly skilled roles. Over time, though, it’s reshaped whole categories of employment. Anecdotally, I see very few young U.S. devs compared to many late-career ones finishing out their working lives. If we dare to use the term “national interest,” the real issue is whether a temporary labor program has morphed into something that permanently alters the market.
I've heard about the shrinking middle class in the US since around 1990. It somehow doesn't actually seem to be smaller now than it was 35 years ago. More and more ordinary from the bottom third of the population can afford things that used to be reserved for the upper third.
Are you sure it's really been/being hollowed out or are you just repeating something you've heard or read other people state so often that you think it's true?
That's not been my experience. Technology has advanced such that there are things that used to be expensive that are not any more. However, I don't see more people who are able to live middle class lifestyles. Things like owning their own homes, not having roommates, being able to leave demeaning jobs, only having to work one job, raising a family on a single income, etc.
This doesn't map exactly to "middle class" but it also seems like there's now a lot less ability for people to afford to work in "artist" type careers. It used to be that you could wait tables, get a low cost studio in the city, and work as an artist in the evenings/weekends. Now you have to work multiple jobs and probably still can't afford to live in the city and make art.
Labor share of US GDP is usually around 60%, which is comparable to Europe.
If you divide the GDP by the number of employed people (including self-employed and entrepreneurs), you get a bit over $180k/person. The median full-time income is a bit over $60k. In other words, as a gross simplification, the mean worker earns 80% more than the median worker.
The comparable numbers for Germany are a ~€100k, ~€45k, and 35%. If something is hollowing out the American middle class, it might be the high earners rather than the capital.
Your numbers don't sound that bad, and it's actually why people still come to America for opportunity. It's because the mean > median that makes America more desirable than Germany.
Exactly this. And the main "equalizing" factor in Germany is taxes, round about 50% of Germany's labor share of GDP for average earners consists of taxes and social security contributions. Which is exactly what the Republican campaign has been all about - minimize taxes and cut spending wherever possible. Yes, you get a vastly more unequal and in many cases just flat out inhumane society. But if you can manage to be part of the "upper" class for a few years it pays so well that it becomes very appealing to a lot of people all over the world.
> But if you can manage to be part of the "upper" class for a few years it pays so well that it becomes very appealing to a lot of people all over the world.
Unfortunately last several millions came for exactly the opposite. Free full government support, aka communism.
The upper-income tier grew from 14% -> 21% as the middle-income tier shrank from 61% to 50%. To be perfectly fair, the lower-income tier class did also increase from 25% to 29%. The story is complicated.
As you said, the story is complicated. Even in 2015, a decade ago:
> There is one other stark difference: only upper-income families realized notable gains in wealth from 1983 to 2013.
During the period of analysis then, either consumption among the lower two tiers eliminated their available savings ability, or the real purchasing power over this period declined, leading to the same effect.
If by hollowing you mean the reduction of the size of the middle class, it is because it has become richer, not poorer over time, so I don't think your take is right.
The hollowing out of the American middle class is because the huge, wealthy middle class was a post-war anomaly, from a time when the US had the only intact industrial plant in the world, and lack of communication technology and logistical sophistication meant production had to be localized and centralized. So, if you happened to be living in the right places in the US, you could have a house and a car and put a couple kids through college on an (artificially-inflated) factory worker's wage. At the same time, 80% of the population of the world was on the edge of starvation.
Now, thanks to better logistics and communications, companies can move jobs to where labor is cheaper. This has pulled billions of people out of poverty, dramatically reduced the price of goods, and generally improved global well-being--but that was at the cost of the 1% of the 1950s, which is to say the American working class. Now, if you work in a factory in the US, you only make a single-digit multiple of what a factory worker in Korea, Mexico, Germany or Italy makes (though you still have a double-digit advantage on much of the world).
It wasn't sustainable to have a tremendously wealthy middle class in a world that was mostly starving. No amount of trade barriers could maintain that: you're relying on a world market with very little competition, and the other 7 billion people aren't going to be content to sit on their hands.
What you want to do instead is to develop new, cutting-edge, high-paying industries, and thereby keep a competitive advantage on the rest of the world. Maybe you could, I dunno, develop top-notch schools to lure all the best and brightest people from around the world to your country, invite them in, encourage them to stay, and get them to innovate and create here rather than elsewhere. That might just result in whole new, massive, high-paying industries that pick up the slack left by your diminished industrial dominance.
Seems like a good idea to me! But hey, instead, you could always try slamming the door shut, chase out all the dirty foreigners, and just rely on your inherent and intrinsic American superiority to carry you forward. I'm sure that'll work just as well.
One of the big changes in the post war era was that immigration was massively opened up in 1965. From 1924 to 1965 the US had very restrictive immigration laws, which led to labor shortages, which allowed unions to become strong, rising wages and the expansion of the middle class. Since 1965 we've had declining union participation.
This is simple supply and demand. If you restrict the labor supply, the value of labor increases.
The same thing was observed after the Black Death, which killed off 30 to 50% of Europe's population. There were labor shortages, which increased the bargaining power of labor, and increased wages.
It's really funny US companies suddenly start pretending they don't believe in supply and demand when it comes to labor.
You really going to mention all that, which had some impact on the US middle class, but you're not going to mention anything about the US "wealth distribution" dynamics which has had its regulations and protections removed to the demise of the middle class?? Income tax roof being more than double before, corps being taxed more than double, the top earner vs bottom earner of any corporation much closer.. Less workarounds, no-one using the stupid "buy-borrow-die" strategy that is all too common now..
So, if I understand correctly, your view we should continue pretend the H1-B is something called a "genius visa" and the best bet for prosperity is not for current citizens to have well-paying jobs but to increasingly import people from other nations and pay them less?
The US population is 4 per cent of the entire world's, which means that the vast majority of talented humans is born abroad.
If you can snatch them, they will build SpaceX or Google for you. If not, well, they will do so either elsewhere, or not at all. (South Africa does not seem to be a good place to start business, and neither is Russia.)
Can you gain prosperity by employing three mediocre people instead of one talented one? Maybe, but you won't get a new vibrant sector like Silicon Valley this way.
Europe, where I live, is a lot more gung-ho on mediocrity and forced equality, and we seem to be the ones with clearly stagnating living standards, not you.
Thank you for illustrating a point that's hard to make, which is ... on this website everyone understands the math for supply and demand. Except when it comes to immigration. When it's about immigration, it's the evil capitalists. Again, thanks. We should all know by now that when the supply of labor increases, there is Zero affect on wages.
If there's a different metric go ahead and suggest one. I know you're trying to bait a comment with the BLS reference. It used to be commonplace to observe that GDP is actually a very bad way to measure a country's performance, because it skips over things like income inequality or upward mobility. USSR had great GDP numbers, actually, despite the propaganda in the west at the time. Unfortunately everyone was miserable and, well, the rest is history.
> I know you're trying to bait a comment with the BLS reference
I am not. I am generally confused at what you would suggest is wrong with the GDP measurement.
We have multiple layers of agencies reporting on GDP and other economic measures the US. There are certainly some troublesome siloed measures (CPI), but I wasn't aware that GDP was one of them.
Your take doesn't seem relevant with regard to my knowledge on the subject.
My point is that measuring things via GDP alone is bad and/or dumb. I think that was pretty clear in my comment. "Number go up" is not a sane way to measure progress.
I also do not care about your "knowledge" on the subject.
>The hollowing out of the middle class in the US isn't because of immigrants, it's because of a sustained campaign by capital to reduce the power of labor
Importing cheap foreign labor to undercut unions and lower wages is one of the spokes of the wheel used by capital to reduce the power of labor (and always has been).
Much the same as in a strike when workers get mad at scabs. The person right there in front of you is looking out for their own best interests and in those circumstances that is to your detriment.
Capital uses immigrant labor partly for simple price reasons and partly because those workers interests really are different from the locals and their lack of local connection makes them a viable slow motion scab workforce.
Zuckerberg's compound didn't make the Bay Area housing crisis and Barron Trump isn't why NYU is expensive or hard to get into. Giving everyone involved $1 million from Larry Ellison's pocket wouldn't particularly change either.
That's not to say you shouldn't do it! But the problem is elsewhere.
Or you could stop tying H-1Bs to employers, meaning that there's less incentive to do the work to bring "mid level talent" in at below market rates, because those people would immediately find a job at market rates.
There's a straightforward solution here. Right now H-1Bs are a way for companies to lock in employees by leveraging the visa status.
Idk what visa program was is under, but home depot used to bring in immigrants to run their stores (stockers , cashiers, etc ) under a program that meant that some contractor was putting 12 people in a 3 bedroom apartment and charging them big fees to come work for minimum wage. This was a while ago, but I was in the rental business and got to see it first hand and talk to the workers. It was extremely exploitative. 5 years ago they were still doing it my hometown, I haven’t checked since. It was mostly Eastern Europeans.
The occupation requires:
Theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge; and
Attainment of a bachelor's or higher degree in a directly related* specific specialty (or its equivalent) as a minimum for entry into the occupation in the United States.
The position must also meet one of the following criteria to qualify as a specialty occupation:
A U.S. bachelor’s or higher degree in a directly related specific specialty, or its equivalent, is normally the minimum entry requirement for the particular occupation;
A U.S. bachelor’s or higher degree in a directly related specific specialty, or its equivalent, is normally required to perform job duties in parallel positions among similar organizations in the employer’s industry in the United States;
The employer, or third party if the beneficiary will be staffed to that third party, normally requires a U.S. bachelor’s or higher degree in a directly related specific specialty, or its equivalent, to perform the job duties of the position; or
The specific duties of the offered position are so specialized, complex, or unique that the knowledge required to perform them is normally associated with the attainment of a U.S. bachelor’s or higher degree in a directly related specific specialty, or its equivalent.*
The positions that you're describing do not meet the criteria for the H-1B. If it was under the H-1B, then it should have been reported for fraud.
Chances are this was done as a seasonal H-2B non-agricultural worker (likely under a seasonal need)
To qualify for H-2B nonimmigrant classification, the petitioner must establish that:
There are not enough U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to do the temporary work.
Employing H-2B workers will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers.
“Seasonal need” to work from June to December, then another “season” from January to June lol. They would be on a 6on,6 off rotation, staggered with their replacements. I do recall though that there was a huge local hiring spree a few years back, so maybe they got audited.
The problem (for them) is that pay scales (and cost of living) in that area are above average. A friend of my son got a job there about 8 years ago and it paid about 63k plus benefits, whereas the average home depot employee makes about 32k. No idea what it’s like post COVID.
If someone sees visa fraud, it should be reported. There are programs to try to combat it, though this is a "UCIS doesn't have the resources to audit every company."
Ignoring visa fraud is one of the ways that it becomes established and in turn makes it harder for the companies that are following the rules to be successful.
I have worked with software people on H1B visas who's #1 goal was to hire more [specific nationality] and thin out the rest. Their work ethic was a top-down rule by fear, and their code was VERY bad. Made my life straight up worse. One example of abusing the H1B visa system.
This is exactly correct. The H1B visa has not lived up to its original premise in quite some time. A very significant percentage of people who are now working on these visas are not offering anything beyond what is already available within the American workforce, except for lower compensation.
Are you suggesting that those companies don't know they're hiring H-1B workers? It just sort of happens to them?
If they offer below-market (for American workers) salaries and get no sufficiently-qualified domestic candidates, as they're required to promise they do, it's no surprise to anyone that they're hiring a ton of H-1Bs. They want that because they want to pay less.
I don't blame them for doing what's fiscally advantageous for the shareholders up till now -- but I think I'll be glad to see this change implemented, if it is, because I know companies write on those forms "domestic talent not found" when they know the truth is "domestic talent not available at the wages we'd like to pay".
FAANG offers the exact same salaries to US citizens and those who need sponsorship. And speaking from personal experience, the majority of the Chinese and Indian immigrants at Meta are extremely talented and tremendously hard working. The best Americans are obsessed with startups and entrepreneurship and aren’t satisfied with being cogs in the machine the way H1B seekers are.
I’m not saying the system is perfect, we definitely need to work on clearing out these fraudulent consultancies and such. But FAANG H1Bs are good engineers and we would definitely be worse off without them. I much preferred the proposal to only allow H1B after a certain salary threshold of ~200-250k which seems like it would solve the issue.
If you already have an immigration status that allows you to work in the US then you're free to advocate for your worth by engaging with the job market. If a company has to sponsor you for an H1B though you'll be locked to one employer, and that lack of options is what means they don't need to give you market rates.
But yes, as far as I know companies would usually offer an H1B applicant lower salary. They know the candidate will need visa sponsorship because the candidate has to say up front (usually in the first conversation) if they are authorized to work in the US. If the companies know they will have to undertake costly sponsorship, and as far as I know employment law leaves them quite free to offer a lower salary: foreign nationals are not a protected class so salary discrimination on the basis of who will need visa sponsorship is just to be expected in the current system...
> If a company has to sponsor you for an H1B though you'll be locked to one employer, and that lack of options is what means they don't need to give you market rates.
You're not locked into one employer on an H1B. Once you are here it is possible to switch jobs relatively easily since you do not need to go through the lottery again.
> as far as I know employment law leaves them quite free to offer a lower salary
"The H-1B employer must pay its H-1B worker(s) at least the “required” wage which is the higher of the prevailing wage or the employer’s actual wage (in-house wage) for similarly employed workers."
The basic mechanics you're assuming are wrong - H1B is not locked to an employer, it can be easily transferred between employers. H1B is tied to having AN employer, but employees are free to switch between employers to get market rates and they do.
My understanding was that by changing jobs you could "lose your place in line" potentially costing you years of waiting in your overall immigration process.
That is true if you have something like an ongoing green card petition. However, if it's just an H1B, by the time it's approved and can transfer it, there's not really a "line" anymore.
Though there's pretty hard limitations on what you can transfer with - it has to be the same sector, similar limitations on minimum salary, and requires work on the new employer's part to move the H1B to them (so you can't keep it quiet, and it's another barrier as it's non-zero cost for lawyers etc. to actually do that).
Does your new company need to file paperwork? Have/consult an immigration lawyer? I know our jobs openings we always specified we weren't willing to sponsor because we didn't have the ability to do the overhead. Do you mean we could have hired H1Bs and my management teams were all mistaken?
most of us here have been hiring managers in the bay area so we have been exposed to this. My exposure was you are fairly locked into one company. I had friends who had to go home abruptly when fired. We would have to buy their cars so we could sell them slower at non-fire sale prices for them. But this was late 90s through early 2000s. Maybe it's different.
What do you mean "suggest"? Every single job application I've ever seen has a question about citizenship/status. And of course they'd know whether they need to file legal papers to employ you as H1B or not - it's not like it somehow happens in secret. They know who's visa worker and who's not.
No need to check immigration status. If they're non-white and have an accent it's already a tell you can lowball them. You'd probably skip over some white europeans with solid English, but lets be real, those people can fake being a US citizen easy enough with some trivially obtained paperwork.
That would be highly illegal: it'd be discrimination on the basis of race (which is protected under the law) rather than on the basis of immigration status (which is not protected).
The incentives ensure that it will happen with zero intent, and probably without the people doing it even realize they're doing it. It's not illegal to see someone, think of them as a 'sucker' but not even realize why, then lowball them, which is far more likely than for a person to actually consciously confront themselves they may be a racist.
In any case, even if they know it's illegal, it's not so easy to enforce, the fact that people get successfully sued or jailed a small fraction of the time isn't going to be some solace.
The only way to actually solve it is to remove the incentive in place, namely either the market pressure to get the best developer at the cheapest price or the vulnerability of being an immigrant.
We've all seen hiring managers that coincidentally hired only or nearly only their fellow countrymen, and nothing happens to them, even though it is highly illegal.
I'm speaking in a hypothetical, not something I've witnessed. I doubt anyone ever witnesses it willfully happen. All that is necessary is the incentives be in place for
1) Hiring manager to have incentive to hire quality talent at the most economical price
2) Foreign talent be more desperate than domestic talent
The effect is practically guaranteed even if there is exactly zero intent by the hiring manager or any conscious 'discrimination.' Incentives beget results and people may not ponder how they got there, and they often don't.
Unless you change (1) or (2) all the discrimination legislation, lawsuits, and 'training' in the world isn't worth the paper it is written on.
People need to understand that most reformists don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration to the US.
What do the most influential reformists want? The ones who set the extreme agenda that everyone else follows? As I understand it, right now the US is routinely enacting policies that the majority of citizens do not want; from this, could we surmise that the majority of people, and presumably thus the majority of reformists, will receive the extreme H1B policies that they don't want?
I am skeptical that _that_ is what's hollowing the middle class in America, it's equally easy to point to income inequality for this. But you have your story you believe, I'm resigned that the die are already cast.
It's kind of sad to see the accelerated downfall of your country.
> it's equally easy to point to income inequality for this
Have you ever considered what causes income inequality? Maybe policy that favors globalist, ownership class over salaried workers? H1B in it's current form favors owners/managers over workers! We are saying the same thing. We have to analyze the causes of income inequality in order to solve it.
It's not the only reason, but it's one of the likely causes. Like most complex issues, it's multi-casual. You can't import 100k+ workers per year into a country and have no effect on wages! I understand the net economic impact is potentially positive, but I am speaking to the direct economic impact of the workers being displaced.
> But you have your story you believe, I'm resigned that the die are already cast.
But that is your story you believe, consider that the parent commenter has the exact same (mirrored) mindset.
A useful segue to avoid you or them "being resigned": given that you say you're "skeptical", what would be the minimal proof you'd consider valid for you to change your mind?
The discussion is already dead, there's no point trying to convince anyone because the discussion is politicized and the current admin doesn't care about petty things like reality. Whoever is right won't matter in this stage, it matters who's saying it.
I might be wrong, fully willing to cede the point, but this whole thing going on is more than _just this point_.
Looking at it solely from a perspective of competition between labor glosses over the fact that insufficient labor is also bad for the economy because it keeps companies from growing and hiring more people.
So sure, while the fewer jobs that they can fill could have higher wages (not a given, because lack of labor can stunt or kill companies) there could be much fewer people employed overall, which is clearly bad overall.
Of course, that assumes there is enough room for companies to grow. There are strong indications (e.g. the various labor and unemployment surveys) that this is the case in the US. In fact, there is a credible theory that the reason the US managed the inflation crisis so well was due to the immigration crisis.
You seem to be suggesting that the H1B pulls wages up because the median pay is higher than the median overall pay in the country? That’s not a valid comparison, you’d have to compare the H1B’s salary to the median pay in their specialty.
Not only that, but you'd have to do a study to show that the talent couldn't have been trained in the US, and that an increased supply of workers didn't drag down salaries, either short or long-term. Immigration helps the countries top-line metrics, but it rarely helps the citizens inside the country.
There used to be a much stronger push for education in the US. Perhaps if companies could not "just hire from overseas" or "just outsource" there would be a longer term growth strategy that would focus more on the education of the US population (not just training for this or that job).
It did seem in the past that there was much more of an all-hands-on-deck attitude towards education throughout US corporate activities, more broadly focused on the general fields the various companies valued the most. I suspect this fall off is very real, but don't actually know if that is just my impression or if there is a concrete effect from modern economic structures.
It's an important enough question it should definitely be studied and taken into account in policy.
However I can't agree with your conclusion that "Immigration helps the countries [sic] top-line metrics, but it rarely helps the citizens inside the country". That requires meta studies that I have never seen to prove it is so. I could cautiously accept that "some types of immigration rarely help corresponding sections of the local population" much more than such a blanket judgement. Overall, it is just not true that economics is zero sum. It doesn't have to be. An entire people can in fact flourish.
It's so hard to study; one of the key things you loose in an environment where you bring in bulk migrants is a cultural expectation to interact with juniors that are part of your community.
It's not just a supply and demand equation; it's a fundamentally different environment that changes the social payoff for mentoring, networking, and building a reputation.
Ultimately despite all the propaganda trying to convince us that diversity is inherently beneficial, we are trading economic benefits for social costs. So we need to carefully restrict migration to make sure the economic benefits are actually there.
The economic benefits are really not clear; at least not without caveats and clear conditions for the advanced skills that make a migrant beneficial.
This is if you believe that lower wages for high skill work is not an issue.
However high migration rates lower social trust, this is well studied.
If you take a smaller example, hiring internationally vs domestically. If you have to go domestic then you might have to settle for a less ideal qualification, requiring more training.
This is repeated everywhere, so companies that train better are more likely to succeed. Leading to conditions that encourage upskilling for locals overall.
>Perhaps if companies could not "just hire from overseas" or "just outsource" there would be a longer term growth strategy that would focus more on the education of the US population (not just training for this or that job).
Except the Heritage Foundation, er, I mean, Trump Administration controls all 3 branches of government and has all the freedom in the world to power a resuscitation of public education in America, except they're not interested in that at all; quite the opposite, they want to further fragment education baselines and make secondary education less desirable.
I don't think you have to show that the talent couldn't have been trained in the USA (or rather, it couldn't have been trained into USA workers), but that the talent wasn't trained in the USA so bringing in an outside worker is the only way to hire for the position.
You can't really expect a company hiring PhD's in a niche field to show that they couldn't have spent 7 years training an American for the work.
That's so funny. You realize there is already an O-1 visa, right? I hate to be a bearer of bad news but the vast, vast majority of H-1Bs are not PhD holders for which no suitable American PhD exists. If you go out into to the working world for awhile, you'll see that.
Immigrants make up 14% of the population but make up over 20% of entrepreneurs. 44% of fortune 500 company founders were either born outside US or to immigrant parents in the US.
Interesting. I think this gets at guywithhat’s sibling comment:
> you'd have to do a study to show that the talent couldn't have been trained in the US, and that an increased supply of workers didn't drag down salaries, either short or long-term.
If the median H1B for software is exactly the same as the overall median, it makes you wonder if the median would be different if the H1B was not an option available to employers.
I saw this in my specialized science field too, in California a couple of decades ago. Real wages for that work have dropped 5 fold at least, partly due to automation, but I saw labs that were 100% immigrants, many H1Bs. Not complaining, just observing. were H1Bs necessary though? No. Many US born in that field found themselves jobless upon graduation. It was all about cheap labor
yup, anecdotally the majority of postdocs these days are internationals who are willing to work 60+ hour weeks on $50k a year, for the infinitesimal chance to land a R1 tenure-track faculty position. americans have no interest in getting a phd and then subjecting themselves to this kind of indentured servitude.
Whoa whoa whoa, that's (1) not correct[1], but (2) shameless goalpost motion in any case.
The whole premise of your original contention was that we should measure like-profession salaries to see whether or not there is an effect. Then when no effect was shown, you switched it up in favor of an argument that (again, incorrectly) predicts that such an effect can't be shown at all. That's not good faith discussion.
[1] Immigrant labor is arriving, by definition, in a pre-existing market. If immigrants can't be hired more cheaply than existing labor, by definition they can't be pulling wages down.
> Using other official sources, the median pay for US software engineers overall is... ~$120k.
So, it seems that if we remove H1b workers and assume that the demand would have stayed the same, then domestic salaries should have been higher. Assuming, of course, that companies won’t simply offshore.
The assumption that companies won't offshore is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Companies already do a lot of offshoring - you think any rational actor in this space that was hiring H1Bs isn't going to simply relocate them to more friendly jurisdictions for immigration?
On top of this, these are workers who would have otherwise paid tax in the US!
It feels as if you're insinuating that we shouldn't be taking measures to prevent offshoring and there's nothing to do but allow our labor markets to be subverted.
>you think any rational actor in this space that was hiring H1Bs isn't going to simply relocate them to more friendly jurisdictions for immigration?
This was true before and after today.
Put another way, if all the H-1B jobs really can be offshored quickly and easily the way so many Indians and anti-Trump people here and elsewhere confidently predict, *that would have happened already*.
I'd argue that it doesn't happen more because it's (relatively) easy to bring labor onshore.
But yes, if that path doesn't exist, I don't think that global companies are going to start hiring American, they're going to continue hiring globally but take the path of least resistance towards bringing this talent onboard.
Overall the US economy employs about 800,000 software engineers, with 200,000 or so of them being H1B holders.
Now you can argue you would prefer that those 200,000 jobs go to Americans, but on the scale of the overall economy, it really doesn’t matter. What’s far more important is the massive impact those 800,000 software engineers have on the rest of the economy. Four million IT jobs, the entire finance and healthcare and retail industries that are propped up on technology built by those people; whole technology companies like Uber or doordash that create entirely new labor markets.
Risk 25% of that capacity on the idea that we would rather have those industries built solely on domestically-grown engineering talent? Why would that be a good tradeoff?
It's ludicrous. US companies will not be able to dig up 200,000 qualified software engineers in the domestic population while every other skilled profession is experiencing a similar brain drain.
The prospect of a $100k/year/employee visa tax makes opening an office in Europe so much more compelling.
I guess the people who can't be offshored will see their salaries go up so that's cool?
"Computer science ranked seventh amongst undergraduate majors with the highest unemployment at 6.1 percent, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York."
Obviously there is not going to be a drop of 200k overnight, but I think the graduates of CS will be thankful there are more opportunities for them. These opportunities will drive more students to take CS classes in the US.
Maybe? But what about training and talent pool? Imagine how many companies would not take off because there’s no one to implement the founder’s idea. Imagine you’re a startup and you have hiring difficulties because all the good ones are over at Oracle or Microsoft (doubting the existence of FAANG).
If h1bs are statistically a lot more centered in higher income urban areas, while overall populations of a given profession are more evenly distributed across the country...
Then that $120,000 salary median can still represent a 50% undercut of similar Urban salaries for a profession.
I'm going to contend that that is the case. But I don't have time to chase down the statistics
The problem you will have selling this to this crowd is we have been in the meetings. We know that 'we're going to use a consulting team on this' means lower wages. We know that 'we going to outsource this' to a company full of H1Bs is being done... to lower costs.
Maybe at FAANGs what you say is true. But at every place I've been when H1Bs ended up added (normally via consultancy or outsourcing) it was always to cut costs. And the only costs we were cutting was staff.
The math of bringing an employee onsite on an H1B just to depress wages does not work unless it is below the 25th percentile of wages (which is $90k).
Once you are breaking the $100k mark and want to only save costs, you are better off opening a GCC in Eastern Europe, Israel, or India, which is what most companies started doing once remote work became normalized in the early 2020s.
All this did is make a free "Thousand Talents" program for India, especially in chemical, petroleum, biopharma, and biochemical engineering - industries where the delta between US and India salaries aren't significant but the talent gap in the US is real.
There are much smarter ways to crack down on H1B abuse by consultancies - this ain't it.
Edit: can't reply, but here's why this is dumb
Assuming I am in Dallas (a fairly prominent domestic IT services hub) and hiring an H1B employee.
In Dallas, a wage around $95k base is fairly standard based on JPMC, DXC, and C1's salaries in the area.
That $95k an employee is has an additional 18% in employer required taxes and withholdings. Add to that an additional 5-10% for retirement account and insurance plans. That $95k employee became around $115k-125k.
Once salaries start breaking into the 6 figure mark, that 23-35% in overhead starts adding up very fast. On top of that visa processing before this rule costed around $15-20k in additional legal fees on the employer's side.
If I'm at the point where I'm paying a low six figure salary, I'm better off opening an office in Warsaw or Praha or Hyderabad where I can safely pay $50k-60k in base to get top 10% talent while getting a $10k-20k per head tax credit over a 3-5 year period depending on the amount I invest building a GCC because my after tax cost at that point becomes $50-60k per employee. These credits tend to require a $1M investment, and with the proposed H1B fee, this made that kind of FDI much easier to justify than it was before.
At least with the current status quo, if I was hiring an ML Engineer at MS or an SRE at Google (a large number of whom are H1Bs as well), I could justify hiring within the US, but adding an additional $100K filing fee just gives me no incentive at all to expand headcount domestically.
You don't use the stick if you also don't have the carrot.
> You are not taking into account section 174, It takes you 15 years to depreciate foreign salary vs first year
That's a rounding error now that it costs $100K to renew or apply for an H1B visa. And for larger organizations breaking the mid-8 figures in revenue mark, section 174 changes never had an impact one way or the other - it was mostly local dev shops and MSPs that faced the brunt of the
section 174 onslaught.
> Honestly, even Germany is probably better bang-for-the-buck than Hyderabad
Germany needs to severely reduce employer contributions and taxes to become cost competitive against Warsaw, Praha, or Hyd for software and chip design jobs.
That said, this is a net positive for Germany's biotech, mechanical, biopharma, and other engineering industries that aren't software or chip design related.
This is a pet peeve of mine, but there is an english name for that city and it's Prague.
There is no point in using the local spelling because it adds no clarity, is less obvious to pronounce for any reader and the locals are not really gonna thank you for doing this either. Just seems like a form of light cultural white-knighting to me.
You are not even consistent because Warsaw is not how locals spell that.
The most prominent exonyms are of cities like Paris, London, Moscow or Beijing.
I.e., places culturally and historically significant enough that older historical pronunciations have become ossified in foreign languages.
English having a "Prague" spelling means the name of the city was important enough to have entered the English language back in the day when English was still borrowing heavily from French.
It's a peeve of mine as well moreso when they don't carry it out for English placenames that get transliterated into a local language but some of these folks will carry the localized version -like they won't insist on "New York" instead of Nova Iorque in PR or BR. But even above, they are inconsistent with Warsaw carrying the English spelling.
I don't know much about the other cities you mentioned, but there's no way you could get top developers from Warsaw for $50-60k in 2025. You may be hard pressed to find them even if you 2x that. As a point of reference, a nice family apartment costs around $1M here now. Times they are a-changin.
Offering a perspective from Berlin - a decent-to-good senior engineer goes for $120k-$130k so I'm guessing for Warsaw, you could get someone similar for $90k-100k
Of course it all depends on who are we actually talking about. I think talented seniors with 5-10yoe and proper communication skills expect North of $150k.
> Interesting, there are plenty of localities in the US that hire 5-10yoe developers at south of $100k.
I don't doubt there may be people who would be fine with that, but I guess no one who values their own skills would go for it if there are plenty of East/West Coast companies hiring remotely.
> Is there a good resource for data on wages in Poland? I mean, I am going to look, but I thought I'd ask.
I think you can start from looking at the local job offers, e.g. https://justjoin.it. Just remember there are a couple of nuances:
- most developers in Poland don't want to be FTEs, because the tax burden on that type of employment is at least 2 times higher than on B2B contracts; effectively, we ended up having a market where everyone is hired B2B, but with all the usual FT benefits (paid vacations and sick days, equipment, private insurance, gym memberships, free food and whatnot) - it's sort of a gray area, but the related law is not really enforced; thus as a foreign company you compete with the local B2B rates + benefits
- people are aware that US is a different market generating more revenue
- the work-life balance may be quite different, so they expect to be paid accordingly
- Warsaw is generally more expensive than other cities in Poland, so you don't need to limit yourself to one city in your search, the same way as you wouldn't hire remote developers from the Bay Area only
- there's a reason these offers are hanging in there :)
I guess all those management meetings where we brought on teams staffed by H1Bs in order to cut costs, when our only costs were wages, didn't make sense.
Funny things is the agencies/consultancies/outsource companies all solds us on it would cut costs when the only thing changed was labor. But apparently they could cut costs without cutting labor costs? How does that work?
While the permanent residence process is clearly broken for people from India and China, I don't think it's accurate to characterise H1B workers as indentured servants. The paperwork for changing jobs on an H1B is fairly easy and is not subject to the H1B lottery.
Cap-exempt H1B holders working for universities are restricted to switching only to other cap-exempt employers, but even then I never felt I had to work 60+ hours a week.
I am specifically talking about tech, I personally knew many H1B folks that worked insane hours literally so that they were seen as ultra productive and wouldn't get cut.
Another job willing to do the paperwork, willing to sponsor, that has access to an immigration lawyer. It's not just 'finding a job' it's finding a job at a company willing/able to do all that. It's definitely a much higher bar.
The paperwork is far less onerous than for sponsoring a new immigrant.
In my experience recruiters saw H1B transfers as routine but would ghost me once I explained that I required a new visa sponsorship since I worked or a cap-exempt employer and could not simply transfer.
It is the distribution that matters at a wage level cluster defined by DOL. There are four (i.e. entry, qualified, experienced, and fully competent) and those are higher than the medians.
Your second paragraph doesn't follow the first. 90-118K might feel like a lot to you, or to many, but it doesn't mean that those wages aren't dragged DOWN. If you live in SF, NYC, Seattle or other HCOL areas, 90-118K is definitely not HIGH. And software jobs pay WAY more than that. H1's definitely are paid BELOW the prevailing wage for the same job, in the same area. So compare apples to apples.
OP's comment still makes no sense then. H1bs are not hollowing out "middle class" wage earners then - the most you could say is that they are slightly reducing income of high-income earners.
But also, the H1b median salary for a software engineer is ~$120k, which is almost identical to that of the US median overall - so all of this hullabaloo seems pretty groundless.
<< the most you could say is that they are slightly reducing income of high-income earners
First, I would like you to reconsider 'high income' and putting $120k in that category. It was a good chunk of change. In this year of our lord 2025, it is not. It is, for my region anyway, barely acceptable middle class income.
The median income in San Francisco is $69k. In New York City, it's $41k. Median household incomes are ~2x those numbers.
A $120k job in any region of the country is 'high income'. You are feeling a different effect, which is that we have designed our country such that even high income people often do not feel economically secure.
Stop. Just because that is the median income does not automatically make it high. The value of the income comes from what it is able to purchase. That value has been steadily eroded over the year. If anything, it is indictment of the existing system. If anything, the proper way of looking at it is that the actual value you are able to get for your work has been greatly reduced. The number is meaningless to anyone, who is able to look at basic reality ( or does not depend on status quo for one reason or another ).
The sheer balls on people to suggest that high absolute value automatically means it is high. And that is before we get to how those jobs are are not even in the same category...
I am going to stop here, because I don't want to get mean.
If you barely consider yourself middle-class with an income 50% over the median then you are probably at least living in a "high income" region :P
And your self-classification is questionable, but that is very common. Maybe a good trigger to experience gratefulness and satisfaction for the economical situation you are in?
I think you misunderstand me greatly and, more importantly, greatly misunderstand the zeitgeist. I am unbelievably thankful for being paid for what I am doing the amount I am paid.
But, and this is the most important part, just because I am in better situation than most, does not make the overall state of the population that much less shitty.
Pretty much. All this did is now create a thousand talents program for India.
H1B visa abuse by consultancies and mass recruiters is a real issue, but this now incentivized companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Pfizer, Cheveron etc to expand their Indian offices.
Edit: can't reply
> Was there any reason for them not to? It's cheaper than H1B anyways.
Spending an additional $10-15k in visa filing fees isn't that big of a deal for an employer who's already paying around 25-35% in withholding and benefits, but at $100K that makes it enough that if you needed to sponsor 10 people on an H1B, you now hit the monetary amount to avail GCC tax rebates and subsidies in most of Eastern Europe and India, where they will give you an additional $10-20k in tax credits and subsidies per head.
Basically, opening a new office abroad just to save on $10-15k of filing fees per employees wasn't worth it, but now that it'll be $100k per employee, the math just shifted.
> Why is this parasitic organization allowed to incorporate?
VC now, not a director anymore. But help me find a new grad with 3-4 years of exploit development and OS internals experience in the US. I can't.
On the other hand, I can in Tel Aviv. There's a reason the entire cybersecurity industry has shifted outside the US.
Large sectors of the US tech scene just lack ANY domestic know-how.
So you’re going to hire foreigners in the US or you’re going to ship the whole operation overseas. Why is this parasitic organization allowed to incorporate?
OK. But I'm not fighting against them for jobs here. I'm not fighting against H1Bs who are willing to put up with different shared housing situations than I am for housing here.
Guest workers have no long term stake in living in the US unless they win a green card. Six years and they're out. Given this state of affairs, they will be compliant and not demand increasing compensation when they don't have to plan for a future in the US. Get too uppity and you get the boot. The suppression is hidden within this dynamic and sinks the prevailing wage for all workers.
A better perspective is that the median H1B holder created $100k+ worth of value for some US company. Salaries are lower than the value you create, or else your employer would stop paying you.
There could be some rare edge case where you are undercut by a direct competitor, but overall America is much richer with H1Bs that without them.
Value for who? Certainly not the majority of Americans. Depressed wages increase profits, which go to shareholders. Most Americans do not benefit from the H-1B grift. I’ll even argue it hurts US citizens by importing immigrants who aren’t necessary from a labor supply perspective (for those on the visa who are not exceptional talent), who compete for housing with citizens when there is a shortage of millions of housing units.
A few select tech and financial services companies, and their shareholders, benefit the most from the program.
I hire a programmer to code my app, SuperConnect++. I charge $0.99 to download the app. People buy the app if it's worth more than $0.99 to them.
If 150,000 people buy the app, then I have ~$150,000 of revenue. I can pay a programmer $100,000 a year and have $50,000 left over. 150,000 people benefited from the app.
Now say I have to pay an additional $100,000 visa fee for my programmer. My cost of $200,000 is less than my revenue of $150,000. I don't build the app. I don't get $50,000. 150,000 people who would have bought the app don't benefit from it. The biggest loss is to the Americans who don't get to buy the app.
There are other possibilities, maybe I increase the price to $1.99 or I hire an American. We can see that those are both bad. The former extracts $150,000 extra dollars from American consumers. Since unemployment is low for Americans and an American programmer can't have two jobs at once, the later just means that some other project that the American programmer would have worked on is not completed.
Unemployment for tech workers is not currently low, and it is taking months, or even years to find a new role, therefore this argument doesn’t hold water. Wages > consumer excess and profits. The world will go on if you don’t build the app, and perhaps someone else will. The evidence is clear this visa is abused at scale, and this action has been overdue.
Over 650k tech layoffs have occurred in the last 4 years. Companies have tried as hard as they can to offshore and use visa labor to avoid hiring US citizen workers. This doesn’t account for new job creation needed for workers entering the workforce. Corporations are also hiding jobs from US citizens (citations which you can find in my other recent comments).
To make this concrete, suppose that Elon Musk never immigrated to the US. SpaceX and Tesla are never founded, or are founded in some other country.
The American electric car market is never kickstarted, none of the American employees of SpaceX or Tesla are hired, there is no space renaissance.
Keeping out Elon Musk is somewhat good for United Launch Alliance and for Ford, but it's worse for all the Americans who have to buy worse cars and pay more for satellite internet.
To make this concrete, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla Motors. Musk later invested and, most certainly, made it vastly more successful than the two founders were on track to do, but Tesla Motors was already founded without requiring Musk's immigration to the US.
> suppose that Elon Musk never immigrated to the US
That’s certainly one version of how events may have been different - a sort of “It’s a Wonderful Life” scenario. (Though comparing Elon Musk to the kind and ethical George Bailey would be quite a stretch!) But it’s not inconceivable that other possibilities would have emerged.
It can be both. Median price of a home is $400k. Homebuyers need household income of ~$117k to afford typical home in U.S. Their income from ther visa enables their buying power to compete against citizens. About 300k H-1B visa holders own homes in the US per FWD.US. Other comments in this thread speak to the wage suppression and lower wages.
There is shortage of everything now. Maybe immigrants needing gas is raising gas prices too. (OK, i know you didn't say that, but its a joke :P) We could go back and forth posting links that contradict each other, or recognize that scapegoating immigrants isn't productive.
"The shortage of housing can be attributed to a range of regulatory and policy failures. These include burdensome permitting processes, outdated zoning regulations that dictate everything from lot sizes to parking requirements, complex legal frameworks, price controls, and restrictive financial regulations."
We would have to look at that by industry. For example, if median developer pay is $130k, then both of your numbers are below that and would bring the median down. $118k for highly skilled workers (purpose of H1B) seems low to me. Additionally, the upper bound for the middle class in all 50 states is above $100k.
The H-1B also includes professions like teacher and medical technician where the average wage is closer to $60k / year. Doing a broad "all professions" for H-1B misses out on the various areas where they work and appears to assume that they are all professions that regularly pay in the 90th percentile of American overall wages.
> Any suggestion that the program is dragging wages down instead of dragging wages up is not just misleading but factually wrong.
The stats you provide here don't support your claim.
H1B visa holders can be paid more on average while still having a downward effect on wages...
Imagine that some car model costs $200,000 to buy in the US. However, an entrepreneur realises they can can import the same car from a poorer country for just $100,000 then sell it in the US for less than the manufacturer themselves. The manufacturer finds out about this and says, "hey! you're selling my car for less", but the importer says, "no, actually, you'll find the median car in the US is $50,000 so I'm technically increasing car prices".
So what you're saying could be wrong in two ways... One you could be wrong in the sense that even if it does increase median wages, that doesn't mean it necessary increases the median wage of US citizens if now a significant percentage the best employment opportunities are going to H1B visa holders instead of citizens.
But secondly, and the point I was trying to make with the car analogy, is that you could be wrong about the average wages going up too if H1B visa holders are taking jobs which would pay even more were it not for HB1 visas. So if the average wage of a SWE in the US is say $150k, but the average H1B visa holder is being paid $120k, H1Bs are clearly not "dragging wages up".
And realistically it's far more likely H1B visa holders suppress wages given how relatively high US wages are.
I'll end this comment by saying that personally I think this idea that giving the best opportunities to immigrants is probably directly wrong for many reasons. Of course, allowing in businesses and individuals who will create jobs makes a lot of sense, but what you really want is the best opportunities going to your own citizens, then to bring in cheap labour to fill the crappy jobs citizens don't really want to do, but are now increasingly doing when they leave university like working in a bar or becoming a barista. If there's a great job a company can't fill with the domestic workforce perhaps they should train someone for that role or take a risk on a recent graduate like in the old days?
I've seen other analysis showing the 80% of the wages are below the prevailing wage of the equivalent role. It's definitely about wage suppression and having an indentured servant.
your link says that those numbers are after some time spent in US, and initial payment is 75k for 25p and 94k for 50p.
Also, those numbers are bumped up by bigtech who doesn't discriminate by visa, so pays in bodyshops are even lower and tech salaries are way higher than that in US.
Are you really not familiar with management and corporations? Firstly, stating those numbers does not prove your point but it is all belied by exactly the reason all of us that are aware of the realities know, which is that for the most part part H-1Bs are sought after because of them being cheaper. The implications from those like Gates, that the average person in the U.S. on an H-1B is a Turing or Wozniak or whatever is laughable, This is not to denigrate them but the so-called "genius visa" is a farce and the notion that there are not Americans that can do the jobs is also quite ridiculous. These things are heavily gamed and people from the countries that produce the majority of such applicants know that. I think you if you analyze it further, you may find it is all a lot more cynical than you might suspect. Why do you think H-1B visa holders in tech primarily come from a small set of countries that are not centers of tech innovation? Is it really that Europeans can't figure out bubble-sort?
Haven't you heard how cheating that works? This is what was filled in on the H1B applications. The government doesn't check that, and so companies don't pay.
Second, Indians have to pay their bosses to get a job. Their real pay is at least $20k lower. And there's far worse as well.
> People need to understand that most reformists don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration to the US.
And how are “they” planning on determining who is “truly exceptional”? And what makes you think the “truly exceptional” ones are still going to have any interest in coming here when they see what happens to the people who the current regime deems “not exceptional”?
I sure as hell wouldn’t come to the US knowing I may be deported to a third world prison if I post the wrong thing online.
I don't think you need to define 'truly exceptional.' You just need to put in a limit and the scarcity will force the slots to go to the best and rarest talent. I'm all for bringing the truly best and brightest to the US. I'm not for replacing large swaths of the domestic labor force with an imported lower price equivalent.
I don't think there's an H1B category for online political edgelords anyway -- we have enough of those already on both sides of the political spectrum, so I don't think anyone cares if that type of person is afraid to come here. If anything, maybe it's better to have less of that kind of thing so we can focus on getting things done instead of political partisanship?
> And how are “they” planning on determining who is “truly exceptional”?
For example by implementing a $100 000 fee for their H-1B visas, which ensures that companies will only use those visas to contract truly exceptional talent. That's a very small price to pay for a company to be able to hire a person who is among the greatest in the world in her field.
The hollowed out middle class is surely because of the class of jobs that have been growing the fastest, seeing the highest salaries and salary growths, and have been the best jobs in America for 2 decades.
It’s not because of the other jobs which the H1Bs aren’t even allowed to do abd have seen falling salaries and degrowth.
Exceptional migrants can still qualify under O-1, which hasn’t really changed at all. Most tech startup founders can qualify for O-1, unless your startup is really pointless.
I suspect that in the case of tech companies, the end result of this won't be more jobs going to Americans, it will be either remote workers in low wage countries or outsourcing to low wage countries. Which, in the long term, might lead to fewer tech jobs in the US overall.
Still, I can't help but feel a little bit of glee at all the tech companies who did their best to suck up to Trump, and now he stabs them in the back.
How valid is this premise in an increasingly global world?
Most of the companies that are paying salaries could (and already do!) have offices in other jurisdictions where they could hire the same talent.
Better to bring this talent onshore, where the wages are taxed, than force these companies to hire from satellite offices?
It doesn't make much financial sense for companies to stop sourcing talent globally just because they can't be brought onshore, especially given enough time.
Purely anecdotal, but for me personally this wouldn't change who or how I hire, just the location.
This seems virtually impossible to enforce. It's trivial to restructure hiring a developer to write software, as licensing software from a foreign development firm, or any number of other workarounds.
This is not just a hypothetical, this is something that already happens when companies are looking to optimize their tax burden. Corporate structuring and income shifting are big businesses in their own right and serve to find the minimum amount of changes required to be able to legally reclassify income.
In the case of this bill specifically, in the unlikely even it passes, a simple corporate inversion will solve this problem. Instead of the US company owning foreign subsidiaries, the structure is inverted: the parent company becomes foreign, which will own a domestic US corporation. When the multinational wants to hire or retain offshore talent, it simply pays out from the parent company. Again these aren't hypotheticals, these are real tax avoidance strategies that are already in place and are well-trodden paths.
You can come up with an infinite amount of regulation to try to halt this (this problem is also called tax base erosion) but it ends up doing more harm than good - eventually you end up with a tax code and regulatory environment so complex that that alone disincentivizes new investment.
The goal is not just to retain existing capital and talent by forcing them to be locked in - it's to compete for the next dollar, the next startup, the next factory - new investment will follow the path of least resistance, while older companies eventually close up shop due to one reason or another.
If your worldview is one of "We already have the best capital and talent, so we don't need to bother to compete to acquire new capital and talent", the world you live in will stagnate and wither with respect to societies that will bend over backwards for this.
corporate charters should be treated as the tools they are. such businesses do not exist without being tied to a particular set of laws in a particular jurisdiction.
With that in mind, would you say the administration is going about this the right way? Because this is going to hurt all H1B candidates, not just the "middle".
I think one unintended outcome of this would be that the jobs would be completely outsourced to outside of US. The ones remaining would be government contracts that have provisions against it. The government could add tariffs on services, but we need to see if that just moves the companies outside of US or not. Capitalism in a democracy is hard to control.
Agreed, however the top end usually comes to US to do masters and then tries to get job using H1B. If this is where to be instated in this form, it almost precludes any fresh college graduates from getting a shot at this.
The big tech companies have the financial means to invest in anything. They are essentially printing money.
However, which startup can afford an additional cost of 100,000 dollars for a fresh PhD graduate who is essential for their niche?
The true economic benefit of the H1B visa program for the US economy lies in the long tail of smaller firms that require a limited number of specialized personnel, which, by definition, is scarce.
A PhD comes as a student with F1 student visa that expires the day of their graduation.
O1 is unlikely to be granted to a student who has not graduated yet. What are they going to show for evidence? Manuscripts in preparation? Or class grades?
I guess they wouldn't have much to show for evidence. Which is exactly why they would be correctly classified as not being a specialist, and therefore undeserving on an O-1 visa.
These visas are not meant to allow company to hire underpaid employees that quite literally just graduated.
A company conducts a technical interview to assess a candidate. Their public record is not their only criterion of hiring. USCIS relies exclusively on public record (and maybe recommendation letters)
> In the last few decades, there has been growth of abuse of the program to get mid level talent at below market rates which really hurts the middle class in America.
That's a weird definition for "middle class", there are only 65k H1b visas issued every year. If you really are talking about the middle 60% or whatever of all workers, immigrants on H1b's are irrelevant noise. At most, these visas might be seen to impact specific professions (tech in particular, lots of doctors too) that most people don't consider representative of the "middle class".
Honestly: a lie. One you chose because it appealed to you, and then constructed a narrative to support it. We could easily afford to have a middle class in this country if we distributed wealth differently, and more immigrants would help us do it.
I don't think it follows that preventing that brain drain would have lead to appreciably better outcomes for those countries. The real sucking factor for the united states is the second to none availability of capital to spend on R & D. If you keep the brains where they were raised, there is no mechanism for them to actually turn their ideas into fruition because there is little funding to support this either in private or public sector. The reason why you hear about research talent going back to China is because they are offered PI positions and generous startup grants or something analogous in most cases, with the government there committed to invest billions in research. You can't really expect that in the global south. You can't even really expect that in Europe in a lot of cases.
> If you keep the brains where they were raised, there is no mechanism for them to actually turn their ideas into fruition because there is little funding to support this either in private or public sector.
In such a world, why wouldn't you see 1. foreign R&D companies, 2. indexed into a thriving foreign equities market, 3. gathering the interest of domestic investors who want to diversify beyond domestic investments, by 4. moving their money and/or investing in domestic proxy investments?
I say this as a Canadian whose managed mutual-fund holdings are apparently largely composed of foreign (mostly American) proxy equities — and who has met many Canadian-based VCs who don't do much investment into Canadian companies. If not for talent immigration, the American investment landscape would probably look similar!
The U.S. is where the money is. In canada between public and private sector about 30 billion dollars are spent on research and development. Across the entire EU, this figure is more like 440 billion dollars. In the U.S., the figure is 885 billion dollars.
My point was that in this alternate hypothetical world, there likely wouldn't be the large number of US domestic R&D companies to serve as valid targets for such investment, as many of the clever people who start them or staff them wouldn't live in the US. Those people would instead be starting and staffing those companies wherever they did live — or in whatever country they could immigrate to instead of the US, with that country then supplanting the US's role as a global R&D center. Which would put American investors in the same position that other countries' investors are in: having money, but few domestic R&D companies that aren't already plump with cash, while most opportunities are foreign.
(Or, if we really lean into the "alternate history" bit, then the US might not have so many rich investors to begin with, as those investors would have been the ones living in that other global R&D center country, who became ludicrously wealthy when their investments into the domestic R&D companies in that other country bore fruit.)
Well, sure, anything could happen hypothetically. The financial environment is ultimately why investment happens in the U.S. and that starts at the top with the way the Fed is set up. Everything else follows.
If you're a US investor, investing in US R&D is easy, you have a good idea of how things work and how to get justice if you're defrauded.
If you want to invest in another country, that's a big change. There's certainly opportunity there, but without knowledge and contacts, it can be very hard to get things done.
One track to investing in foreign R&D is foreign nationals come and work in the US to earn skills, knowledge, and capital, and then they take those earnings and invest them in their country of origin, maybe living here or there.
Yes, I know; but we're talking about what would happen in a hypothetical world where US R&D innovation mostly stops happening, not for lack of money, but for lack of talent; so US investors no longer have any interesting domestic options that are likely to bear any fruit at any multiplier they'd be interested in.
Sure, investors could just park their money in what few dumb domestic options there are. That's the "patriotic" approach, and in less-aggressive markets, you'll see some investors [esp. big institutional investors] building the hedge parts of their portfolios out of these kinds of investments. But when the only domestic options are dumb/boring, any "smart money" investor will either take their money and leave the country for greener pastures, or they'll pick up the skills required to play in foreign markets.
> I don't think it follows that preventing that brain drain would have lead to appreciably better outcomes for those countries.
Well sure, it depends what the counterfactual is. If those countries just physically prevented the people from leaving, and nothing more, I wouldn't expect that countries' outcomes to improve. But what the countries suffering from brain drain presumably want is for there to be attractive opportunities for those skilled workers in their own country.
Gifted architects and builders are presumably born every year in Silicon Valley, but we are far too rich, developed, and democratic to want new buildings.
Other countries are free not to want the things that Silicon Valley talents generate. More for us!
As always, so much zero-sum thinking in all these discussions.
Often, the person may not have been as productive, happy, or well compensated in their own country.
Also, over time, some of those people make money in the US and take that, their knowledge and skills and go back home to share there. Everyone is better off.
I was discussing this elsewhere, and dug up something I wrote 11 years ago, and I think I'm still pretty happy with it:
> Also, over time, some of those people make money in the US and take that, their knowledge and skills and go back home to share there. Everyone is better off.
That doesn't seem to be specific to H1B visa issuance does it? This seems to me to be more of a general argument in favor of immigration in general to spur economic activity, which as far as I'm aware is "correct", provided you have to also show your math with things like a potential rise in housing costs/rent, strains on services, perhaps some folks don't actually pay taxes, etc. Some of those items might be short term or temporary, some may not. I don't know.
But if we were to take your argument at face value and I generally do because that's what the economists say and makes sense to me, why don't other countries encourage this specific type of immigration? China, for example, or perhaps Japan or Korea? What about New Zealand or Switzerland?
This is already the case. About 30% of Switzerlands population are immigrants (one of the highest percentages in the developed world) and it has a freedom of movement treaty with the EU.
I’m sure you have better data but here is what Wikipedia says:
In 2023, resident foreigners made up 26.3% of Switzerland's population.[18] Most of these (83%) were from European countries. Italy provided the largest single group of foreigners, accounting for 14.7% of total foreign population, followed closely by Germany (14.0%), Portugal (11.7%), France (6.6%), Kosovo (5.1%), Spain (3.9%), Turkey (3.1%), North Macedonia (3.1%), Serbia (2.8%), Austria (2.0%), United Kingdom (1.9%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.3%) and Croatia (1.3%). Immigrants from Sri Lanka (1.3%), most of them former Tamil refugees, were the largest group of Asian origin (7.9%).
That’s a bit different than what you seem to be implying - according to Wikipedia the immigrant population of Switzerland is just Europeans, mostly Western Europeans at that.
With respect to Switzerland, what are the immigration rules and polices if you are Indian, or Chinese, or Brazilian, or Indonesian, or Nigerian? I’m just picking on those countries due to a mix of population levels and relevance to immigration in America. It’s rather surprising to me that Switzerland seems to have little meaningful numbers of immigrants from these higher population countries. Why is that? Is there maybe a specific policy we could point to? Do people from Italy really like the Alps and the Chinese don’t?
And going back I think to what is implied by the person I responded to, if what they’re saying is true about the economic value of immigration, and I think it is, why doesn’t Switzerland have, for example, unrestricted immigration from all over the world? Why are half of its immigrants from Italy alone? (Again just going off the Wikipedia article and I am happy to look at any other figures)
Are they immigrants or just Italians living and working in Switzerland because of the EU?
Sure, I agree, I guess what I’m trying to understand is why don’t they have even higher rates of skilled worker immigration?
Think back to what the person I replied to said about the economic benefits of immigration in general (again which I believe are true based on what I understand).
For that matter we can just say the United States offers temporary work visas for skilled workers through the H1B program. Case closed! In the case of maybe New Zealand or Switzerland they represent less than 1% of the global population, most of the talent lives outside of those two countries. Are they importing enough high skilled foreign workers? I’m not sure. Switzerland for examples seems very expensive to immigrate to and get citizenship. But I’m not an expert there, just what I’ve skimmed through online.
You are missing alternative costs of the fact that more people compete for the same resources, Americans get much lower ROI for their education, it hollows domestic expertise. Companies become dependent on foreign workers. Local jobs pay less, people have less money to pay for products and services.
Short term - shareholders win, long term - everyone loses except the country of origin, where they can bring the knowledge back and develop their economy.
It's like outsourcing, just the foreign workers are onshore.
Seems like you forgot the American worker in the equation?
People who are purely consumers (usually living of real estate gains or entitlements) are of course a huge part of the population, and benefit from everything brining consumer prices down - including cheap labour.
And many people are both consumers and workers, so they are benefitted from lower prices at the same time as they're disadvantaged by lower salaries. If they've already got real estate and the biggest expenses in life paid, they are more interested in lower consumer prices.
Then you have the people who have a much bigger interest in higher salaries than in cheaper consumer goods. Primarily young workers who need to get a foothold in life. For them it is of utmost importance that salaries increase, even though consumer goods get more expensive, because without a foothold in life they have nothing to live for.
They generated economic activity while they were in the US, no? That seems to be a net positive. You'd otherwise have to be able to argue that, if you replaced them with a US citizen during the time they were here, the greater economic activity would have been generated.
American companies are overwhelmingly owned and operated by Americans who can extract value from the H1B employees well in excess of their salaries (even with the new cap and fees)
Are the folks utilizing the H1B visa program working on the world's hardest problems? Or are they working on lucrative problems? Some kind of mix? Does anyone know what the breakdown is of H1B visa holders working on the world's hardest problems either today or historically?
I'm 62, I've been a mid-tier engineer all my life, working with tons of H1Bs starting in the '90s. My current employer is 90% Indian contractors now. None of us are working on "The world's hardest problems", we are building bog standard micro services.
Also: whatever you think of this issue, it's very much r/LeopardsAteMyFace in terms of some of the big tech companies cozying up to the administration.
I'm from the US, but lived in Europe for quite a while, and my kids have dual citizenship. I think that people moving to places where they are better off is a good thing.
The weirdest thing about the zero-sum rhetoric to me is: when one person is demanding to benefit at the expense of someone else, if I'm neither of them, why am I supposed to care?
Suppose I'm not an American--like plenty of HN commenters--or alternatively that (as in reality) I am an American but I have good reasons to think that the personal benefit I derive from the presence of immigrants is greater than the cost to me as an individual, even were I to concede more generic economic arguments about wage competition. Then... why am I supposed to prioritize the interests of American tech workers over foreign immigrants?
I don't in general endorse an "I got mine, screw you" approach, nor one that says "hey GDP is going up so screw the losers", but if someone else is taking exactly that attitude just with a nationalistic inflection, it's hard to extend them a lot of empathy.
One man's rising gas prices are another man's oil industry boom.
The H1B process is unfair to engineers because it drives down their compensation in a way that doesn't affect nurses or welders. If immigration were completely irrespective of profession and based solely around whether the imported laborers get paid enough to contribute more than they receive in taxes/public services, nobody would have any standing to complain about their wages being driven down because every single person benefits in the long run from the economic growth.
As things stand, tech workers and unskilled laborers get screwed by the current status quo because they don't reap the benefit of cheaper goods and services in all the other industries, but everyone else benefits from cheaper electronics/software and landscaping/housekeeping/food service while their wages grow.
You're not wrong on paper, the current immigration practices are just screwy.
EDIT - The hard statistical proof that most of the H-1Bs are tech workers:
I'm writing this reply not to the lazy commenter, but to anyone reading this thread...
Yet again, we have classic HN speculation masquerading as authority.
Should software developer salaries be comparable to accountants or to surgeons? That's an arbitrary value judgment.
Software engineers have less purchasing power than they would without the H-1B visa program, and that's indisputable. 64% of the visas go to IT workers and 52% go specifically to programmers, which implies beyond all shadow of a doubt that their salaries decrease further than the cost of the goods and services they pay for.
This also impacts non-software tech: see recent layoffs statistics at Intel, what percentage are H1B and why aren't companies required to re-prove H1B necessity?
Can we just over-hire and claim we need H1Bs because we can't find enough talent to fill the rolls, then submit that we over-hired and lay off all the US talent? This seems to be a bit of what happens even if not intentionally.
Precisely, I have been saying this for a while: engineers are smart enough to invent things but too stupid to gatekeep their profession. You have bootcampers, H1B workers, self-taught whatever, anyone can call themselves an engineer overnight. In 5 years you are now a "principal engineer!" I would even go further and distinguish between software and other disciplines of engineering. A web developer who is called a senior engineer is on paper equal to embedded engineers who spent at least 5 years in education plus god knows how long in experience to get the same title. This is wrong. I don't see a CPR trainee suddenly being able to call themselves a registered nurse!
If you look at the background of founders in tech you’ll soon realize that without immigration this entire industry would be a shadow of what it currently is; it’s not about the amount of compensation, it’s about whether there’s a job at all.
I'm writing this reply not to the lazy commenter, but to anyone reading this thread...
You're just passing off your own speculation as authoritative, and you didn't even read my comment to comprehension.
I didn't say we need less immigration in the tech sector. I said it hurts tech workers when there's a deflationary effect on their earnings but not the goods and services they pay for, and hence the same immigration practices should apply to every industry.
On paper, you would think this is the case, but in practice 64% of H1-B workers are in IT and 52% are programmers:
Again, it stands to reason that if the deflationary effect on tech workers' salaries is disproportionate to the deflationary effect on all the other goods and services they pay for, then tech workers are worse off from the H1-B program. I've seen claims less ironclad than this accepted as fact in peer-reviewed life sciences-related research.
Your comment is just another classic HN case of speculation masquerading as authority.
This is so absolutely fundamental to US strategic advantage.
A huge reason we have so many unicorns is because doing business and scaling in the US is easier than EU or other places.
A huge part of why the Manhattan Project was successful was also because of substantial brain drain from Europe. I think Scott Galloway wrote about this or may have popularized it.
I've read brain drain in this thread multiple times. I might agree this happened back then, but I don't know what people mean by it right now. Where is the term coming from suddenly and why is it used to uncritical?
In this thread it's thrown around as if everyone is referring to something specific related to immigration.
Edit:// checked US news. I can see what you all refer to now. To explain media seems to assume the US is having a "brain drain" because of fleeing scientists, some other countries make fun of it and call it their "brain gain"
In New Zealand the brain drain discussion has been going on for decades. We are remote, have a limited economy, wages are low. As a result, many smart kids graduate from university, go travel overseas (particularly Australia and the UK), find jobs with better wages, and never come home. It's referred to in the media as the brain drain.
If you're only talking about the exceptional sure. But when Microsoft fires x and applies for ~x H1Bs the same day... That doesn't seem like what you're talking about at all.
If an employee is exceptional and a skilled unicorn wrangler... 100K is nothing.
Part of the problem is you don't know ahead of time (certainly not with 100% certainty) who's going to be an exceptional unicorn wrangler, and who's just going to be a pretty good engineer, unless they already have an incredible track record elsewhere. This will filter out a lot of possible future unicorn wranglers.
Not sure if it applies to H-1B but if a company does mass layoffs, it automatically makes it so that the PERM applications (required for green card, which you need to keep the employee past the visa validity period + extensions; up to 7 years iirc) will be automatically rejected for some time. So it screws over your existing H-1B holders, making your company way less attractive.
Source: I came to the US on H-1B in 2012. I may be misremembering which stage of the process the mass layoffs affect.
> A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them do so.
That's largely a myth, though. The vast majority of smart, driven people have no path to lawfully immigrate to the US.
By a wide margin, the main immigration pathway are family visas (i.e., marriages and citizens bringing in relatives). H-1B visas are a comparatively small slice that's available via a lottery only to some professions and some backgrounds - and the process is basically gamed by low-wage consultancies, with a large proportion of the rest gobbled up by a handful of Big Tech employers. And that's before we even get to the fact that H-1B doesn't necessarily give you a path to permanent residency, depending on where you're from.
For most people who aren't techies, the options are really very limited, basically "be exceptionally wealthy", "be a celebrity", or "be one of the world's foremost experts on X".
I'm not sure what you're saying here. Yes, if you're truly exceptional, you can get in the US. You can also get into any other country in the world. And the Trump administration doesn't seem to be interested in changing that.
But only a tiny sliver of what you would consider successful, skilled people can qualify for O-1. To my original point: if you're "merely" hard-working and good at something, you - as a general rule - have no lawful pathway to immigrate to the US.
Here's another way to look at it: let's say that in any country, roughly 10% of people fall into the category of "talented and hard-working" - not superstars, but the kind of people who would conceptually enrich the economy. Worldwide, that's probably what, 400 million adults? Further, let's say that about 10% would be interested in living in the US. And before all the EU folks sneer at that: that's probably a big underestimate, because a good chunk of the world is living in places with a much lower standard of living. So that's 40 million who probably want to come. And the total number of employment visas is ~100k/year. We aim for the global top <0.1%.
A country can only take so much people a year. There must be adequate employment, housing, education, health services and other infrastructure to support more people.
This is especially true for immigration that is not tied to employment.
If you can choose to only take the top, which America mostly could as it is the most desired immigration country in the world, you would prioritize the top.
If there's a limited amount of spots, why won't you prioritize the superstars over just talented and hard working?
So the top 0.1% of the total population, that's likely a good deal (on top of the employment oriented visa which have less of a strain on the economy).
> There must be adequate employment, housing, education, health services and other infrastructure to support more people.
The same logic applies in reverse: there must be sufficient people to create adequate employment, housing, education, health services, and other infrastructure.
Have you considered that a lot of the people wanting to immigrate are able to provide a lot of those things? (P.S. I wonder why ICE keeps targeting construction crews lately -- and is it possible allowing more immigration might actually help us get more housing? Food for thought.)
Taking the well-being of abstract concepts like a country over the well-being of concrete individuals is a slippery road towards a particularly unappealing version of collectivism. Me emigrating from Eastern to Western Europe was among the best decisions I have made in my entire life, and I couldn't care less if the outcome of this is my country doing "worse". My country by itself doesn't feel nor think anything, but I certainly do. One of these thoughts is me not believing that I have a civic duty to be less well-off materially and mentally just so my taxes get re-routed to a country I accidentally happened to be born in. I vote with my feet.
Don't worry. The actual text declares that DHS has the discretion to give exceptions to companies. [1] I'm sure this does not at all imply that what this policy really means is that companies who bend the knee won't see this extra charge.
> A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them do so.
This is a double edged sword given that it means there’s less incentive to invest in US public education and fostering our own talent. Instead of brain drain we’re dealing with brain rot.
A hugely overlooked point. If FAANG etc want talented people, and couldn't hire H1Bs, they might have more of an incentive to try to influence education and to train people with aptitude but lacking learnable skills.
As of now, both the K12 system and college education seem in freefall in terms of quality and applicability to careers. No doubt those companies will devote their money to lobbying to keep hiring H1Bs instead of training the talent they need here, since they're just profit-optimizing functions, rather than humans with morals.
The Manhattan Project engaged thousands of scientists, but over 16 notable principal scientists (with major published credits) were foreign-born and either retained their citizenship or became naturalized U.S. citizens only after escaping persecution or war in Europe.
As of 2025, about 10-12 CEOs of the top 50 Fortune 500 (F50) companies were born outside the United States, representing roughly 20-25% of F50 CEOs. This number has grown over the past two decades, reflecting increasing diversity among leadership at America's largest corporations.
Nearly half of all Fortune 500 companies in 2025—specifically 44%—were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants, meaning the original founders were not born in the United States or were the first generation after immigration.
I don't know if that's easy. If this was flipped around, 100% of the top Fortune 500 would be born inside the United States if no immigrants were allowed in.
A better test may be comparing company performance worldwide instead of only in the F500. That's a different list, the Global 500.
Admittedly my frame of reference here is now a decade ago when I was living in California. But we would routinely hire people on H1B, and it most definitely wasn't because we thought it was a cost saving. Between the >=$20K in legal fees, similar budget for relocation expenses to bring someone into the country, and having to pay them as a foreign contractor for anything up to 10 months while we wait for the applications to re-open for the year. And then pay them the same as any local talent we hand on the team.
Hiring local people was preferable in every way. But the market was hot and it was seemingly almost impossible to actually do that.
We would have to filter for these more. In reality the majority of H1B visa are issued to companies like Infosys or Tata who often have below average people.
They really should just outlaw H-1Bs for body shops. There is no rational justification for it given the blatant abuse of the visa program they have long demonstrated. If a company needs work done, they should be forced to sponsor a guest worker directly.
> but one thing worth noting here is that the primary problem that damn near every other country on earth has isn’t immigration, it’s brain drain.
It's great if you only root for the US, but taking more global perspective, let's have other countries improve their situation as well. There are almost 200 or so countries, I am ok with them improving their economy using their equivalent of H1-B programs.
This is a golden opportunity for others to step in an eat Americans' lunch so to speak, let's see if they capitalize on it.
> but it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.
No, it has not. And not because the people were not capable. It is because most of those projects depend on having the right kind of ecosystem. Massive venture capital, stable institutions, cutting-edge infrastructure, tolerant regulation, network effects, and huge government spend especially in space, defense, and R&D.
Those elements are overwhelmingly concentrated in the U.S. and particularly in Silicon Valley.
Jan Koum didn’t build WhatsApp in Kyiv he built it in California. Ukraine in the 1990s barely had reliable phone lines, let alone the mobile networks, cloud infrastructure, and capital required to scale a global messaging service.
Sergey Brin didn’t found Google in Moscow. Russia had brilliant mathematicians,
but no open internet culture, no ad driven funding model, and no free flowing capital markets. No chance of a SpaceX out of South Africa or Canada. Those countries entire annual space budget wouldn’t even cover a single Falcon 9 launch.
These are not just anecdotes, but the proof that without
the combination of American capital, infrastructure,
and government spending, projects on this scale simply would not
have been possible. The brain power was there, but the ecosystem
that turns raw talent into global impact was not.
Maybe talent in third world countries. I think it's mostly mid-tier people from first world countries.
People with actually talent and intelligence realise how messed up the USA is (and has been for some time) and prefer things like healthcare and gun control.
And if they really want the lack of work life balance and/or high paid roles, they can consult from US company like I do. Now I get the money, but I live in a decent country.
I don't think there is any amount of money you could offer me to move to the USA. Well ok, maybe when it gets to $10 million / year I would have to start considering it.
Meanwhile the vast majority of people in real world don’t consume a steady diet of r/politics et al, has actually spent an appreciable amount of time in the U.S., and has come to a different (nearly opposite) conclusion. I wonder which is more correct.
No, I spent multiple months working in the US and concluded I didn't want to live there long term. Not so much guns and healthcare as how screwed up the culture is and how little community there is. You guys are lonely and you really don't seem to get why.
>> hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from
Not so straight forward. Ambitious people leave underdeveloped countries because there are little opportunities. It's not like they are going to build same great product there as in California.
The elephant in the room is that many of these highly successful people who have brought great economic advantage to the US over the years happen to have brown skin.
As for why this policy is being adopted: sometimes an elephant is just an elephant. The huge price increase hurts brown people (mostly), and possibly curbs immigration. It will play well with a certain segment of Americans.
There are many subtleties to the H1-B visa debate, but I don’t think they are at play in this policy change.
What other country do you know of that can, with a wave of a hand, import a million highest-quality, ambitious people from across the globe? These folks aren't clamoring to go to other countries; this is the US position, and it was built with lots of hard work. With these changes, let's see how much this hurts in the foot.
Being an immigrant, I think it’s net positive for everyone. I brought skills that, at the moment I immigrated, my home country could not leverage, even though it paid for my free education. I built on these skills and if my home country ever needs these skills, I would be excited to contribute.
I think some people underestimate the power of those willing to migrate to the US.
I’m in my early 40s and moved from Western Europe to the US 11 years ago, and I feel I was the last generation eager to come, the perception of US is changing fast. This is not an H-1B problem but still a parallel one on how to attract people.
>it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.
It damn sure hasn't worked out well for a lot of talented, perpetually underemployed (many deep in perpetual debt) US kids. And I'm pretty sure that what those talented folks learn here in the US has made its way back to those countries, considering (e.g.) the level of competition we see from Asia these days.
love it or hate it, it hasn't worked out well for/in the minds of native-born us citizens either, a sentiment which I think this policy is going to tap into hard.
That was my thought too, and then I wondered if the workers are $100k more expensive to bring here then maybe the jobs are just going to go to the same people, but in their home country.
Ok that may be true but I would also argue there is such a thing as elite overproduction[1] via immigration. That is, we are basically importing a new elite for a fixed number of roles in society. Let's presume also that the children of highly talented immigrants are also highly talented. In some sense this kind of social engineering could be harmful to both nations involved.
I misread this initially as the problem that damn near every other country has is also immigration. This seems to also be at least somewhat true for first world countries.
Looking at the politics in Europe and Asia today, the question of who is allowed in and why is a central point of debate that rages and threatens to tear apart much of the fabric that was built over generations.
Sites like jobs.now show the H1B situation is incredibly corrupt. So many hard to find jobs where they ask applicants to physically mail in their resume, so that later on they can make it an H1B job.
I don't think being against exploitive mass migration - which by its definition is brain drain of other countries, which every bleeding hearter likes to ignore - is the same saying no one should ever immigrate ever.
A lot of the H1B's in the software industry definitely match the description you stated - talented folks coming from places which (I'll add) have superior education systems. The problem isn't immigration, it's the undercutting of wages and the fact that these H1's (who we ALL work with) are trapped, working with fear and under pressure, due to the leverage the employer has.
H1B program == leverage over the H1B workers due to the employment tie-in to residence, leverage over other non-H1B workers as well, due to the wider talent pool at LOWER wages.
I don't know whether Trump is doing is good, but the H1B program helps Owners more than it helps Workers.
Not quite. This type of visa helps folks like me live in livable countries with good enough salaries to help our family and elderly don't die in our home countries
It’s not a strategic strength of the country as a whole to displace out of the economy the top talent, with a constant stream of new workers. This is just a local gaming by industry heads chasing end of year bonuses based on short term financials. We saw the offshoring of talent in manufacturing destroy domestic capacity. We are now seeing a similar phenomenon as there is pressure from many sides to offshore tech or migrate employment from citizens and permanent residents to temporary residents.
The employment environment in Silicon Valley has been extremely strange since 2022. I haven’t been able to find a job in my field since then, despite being at the top of my game. I’m practically bankrupt and currently making ends meet in a minimum wage job.
I’ve worked with plenty of coworkers on H1B both on boring old enterprise companies and BigTech. Absolutely none of them were better (or worse) than American citizens.
On the other hand, those working for WITCH companies…
And trust me, I’m in no way “anti minority”. Not only are some of my best friends minorities - so are my parents…
> but it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.
The ethics of emigration is an interesting area that's under explored, especially in non-emergency scenarios. We have obligations to our own societies, for example, but how this affects emigration requires clarification.
In the UK it is mostly immigration policy. Thanks to something called Boriswave, corporations could import knowledge workers at close to minimum wage (so locals couldn't even compete for those jobs) and now it changed a little, but still it's fraction of what local worker would command for similar job. This has basically collapsed the IT market. Then you have more people competing for the same resources, meaning rents going up, you wait longer for a doctor's appointment and so on.
Just don't get me wrong - I don't blame immigrants. If I was in a poor country and had talent, I'd grab any opportunity to get more experience and get foot in the door so to speak.
It's corruption of the government.
Now, by the way I understand H-1B, $100k still seams cheap for essentially getting a slave.
After adjusting for inflation, slaves from the 19th century prices would be worth somewhere from $30k-$150k in present day dollars, according to the best research.
Shutting down H1Bs is extremely stupid because >50% of our unicorn founders are first generation immigrants that started out on the H1B. They are the greatest creators of jobs in the entire economy. Shutting down the H1B is a dark horse for the end of American success.
It’s just populism with no long term planning. They’ve decimated the job market, people are hurting, have given folks someone to hate, it’s an easy win for them.
A lot of Trump's support comes from people wanting to and happy to blame immigrants (of all kinds) for legitimate grievances - such as unemployment, expensive healthcare, housing, and inflation. The distinction between legal and illegal immigration is blurred not only by Democrats but also the economic populists occupying Trump's base. This is aimed at them.
You are arguing from the position that Trump cares about american and wants to see it prosper. This is not reality. Trump is very likely a russian asset, and as such wants to see the US broken and crushed. Brain drain would be an exceltent way to crush a nation.
The $100,000 fee isn't the real route to a visa. See the proclamation text: [1]
(c) The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.
"At the Secretary's discretion" means "get your bribes ready". Lobbyists are probably already working the phones on this.
This is the reality, combined with the fact that this was pretty much the status quo already. O-1 visas were also a commonly targeted with lawmaker bribes. This just codifies what was already happening and screws over the smaller companies that don't have the resources, networks, guanxi, etc to play the game.
Every change this admin implements needs this examination first. Everyone is in here having earnest discussions about policy pros and cons, but it ain't that country anymore.
The companies the admin favors are being given backdoors for every policy that's presented, and the way to become favored is to present bribes, whether they come in the form of gold plaques, lawsuit settlements, crypto investments, or stock market collusion.
This thread is a poignant example of why I think tech folks might be one of the most gullible crowds out there - despite being perceived as smart. It's like a perfect storm of attributes and incentives. So here we are, completely preoccupied with picking apart details and effects of visa programs for a blatantly obvious kiss-the-ring initiative that couldn't care less about that.
Good maybe we can starting ending the catch 22 system where Indians are claiming they have experience back home and then taking jobs from citizens who can't get their first job because they don't have experience while competing against a >1 billion population. The graduate market is a mess.
Actually it’s much more sinister. It’s another way to force companies to kiss the ring. The government apparently can grant exceptions if they deem it’s in the good of the country.
> The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.
IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse.
I think a very high application fee is actually part of a good solution, but is useless by itself.
A flawed proposal:
* Dispense with the 'need to search for a qualified American' which just complicates the process without achieving the stated goal, and includes a ton of legal and bureaucratic expense and time.
* A large application fee paid from the company to the federal government.
* The worker's relocation expenses must also be covered by the company.
* The worker gets a 10 year work authorization on the day of their arrival.
* The worker gets to leave their sponsoring employer on the day of their arrival, if they choose to. The employment contract may not include any clawbacks of anything.
The latter bullet is the key one. That's the one that uses market forces to truly enforces this person is being paid above market wages, and is being treated well, at their sponsoring employer. (which in turn means they don't undercut existing labor in the market).
It also means that employers don't really look abroad unless there really is a shortage of existing labor. But when there is a true shortage and you're willing to spend, the door is open to act quickly.
The obvious defect is that it creates an incentive for the employee to pay the federal fee themselves (hidden) plus more for the privilege of getting sponsored, and the company basically being a front for this process. Effectively buying a work authorization for themselves. I'm not sure how to overcome that. Then again, the current system could also suffer that defect (I don't know how common it is).
No company would ever sponsor someone if the last bullet is part of the deal. You're just killing the visa program another way with that wishlist item alone.
If they are using the program as intended they would. They are supposed to be looking for skills that are impossible to find in the US. If they are offering a good deal to the employee then the employee should stay, just like someone with full work authorization would.
If they are just using the program to pay less than they otherwise would for labor that does exist in the us, well, then we have another issue.
I would modify the proposal to include a larger annual fee rather than an application fee, so that the initially sponsoring company isn’t solely bearing the cost. There should also be a floor pay rate for the visa holder, something the 75th or 80th percentile of both the company and of income in the MSA the visa holder is located in.
Why is it pointless? I think thats exactly what the people advocating for H1B for specialized workers want.
I dont know if thats a good idea. It does leave a bad taste in my mouth. Im also not sure its a bad idea either, it seems useful from an economic perspective. What i know its not is "pointless", it does do something.
As you'll see from my other comments about H1-B visas, I agree. However, it doesn't change the fact that the person's suggestion would just be another way to kill the program, not a way to fix it.
If enforcing employee rights kills the employment program, then it stands to reason that the program is built on the premise of them being exploited and therefore shouldn't exist, at least in the form it does.
A lot of those bullet points could and perhaps should be shuffled around and the terms changed, but not in a way where the employees are more or less tethered to the company.
As a counterpoint to my own argument, one could argue that those programs let people escape even worse living conditions, so I guess it could be exchanging a greater form of oppression for a lesser one, which is still better than nothing.
That's pretty common in Europe. Temporary work permits can be valid either for a specific job or a specific industry. In the latter case, as long as you can find a job that meets the requirements in a reasonable time, you can quit and stay in the country.
But those work permits mostly concern the individual and the government. The employer is not as much sponsoring them as providing evidence.
Really?
Most if not all EU work permits, especially highly-qualified ones are tied to an employer for at least the first 2+ years. If you get fired you have up to 3 months to find another employer who is willing to take over your residence permit.
Uhh. No. That's a common misconception held by people that don't actually read their T&Cs. Your worth authorization is tied to "a" employer for the first two years. The employee is completely free to quit and enter into a contract with another employer. All you have to do is go get the name of the employer updated. It's just a formality and nothing else.
Yes, you have three months to find a new job if you're fired, but it's Europe, you most likely got at least a 3 month notice as well.
Here in Norway it's 6 months[1] for skilled workers, and if you get the same position somewhere else you don't need to reapply. If you change position you need to reapply.
You are arguing about semantics of residence permit vs work authorization which is not the core of the issue. If you get fired and don’t find a new employer then you leave in 3 months.
Also, it is definitely not just a formality to change employers. For example, on a blue card the new employer must prove to the ministry that they couldn’t find anyone local or EU to fill this position aka “Labour Market Test”. The position needs to be registered in a special gov database to prove that, etc, etc.
The requirements are far from uniform, because each member state sets its own policy. For example, Finland requires the labor market test from ordinary employees but not from those with a Blue Card or those applying for a specialist permit (similar to the Blue Card).
The idea would be that you would pay that employee at above market rates, so they wouldn't ditch you on day one because you pay them more than any of their other alternatives.
Right now, the H1B system is used to bring over cheap labor, willing to work for compensation and conditions worse than native labor. This is not the stated goal of the program, the idea was to bring over highly skilled labor doing jobs that no-one native is able to. The system detailed above is supposed to be a way to change it from how it currently is to what it was supposed to be.
Not for an interchange cog. However you can keep someone with a golden handcuffs deal at above market rates if there’s some reason to bring that specific person.
Almost all European visa programs have the last bullet point with the stipulation that they have 90 days to find another visa sponsorship job if they leave their sponsor.
This is not true at all. Employers will still sponsor talent that they need.
If you are sponsoring an employee for a visa and "it's a great thing they can't quit, it's the main thing that's keeping them here!", then you are abusing the system and should be excluded anyways.
Locals have always been allowed to quit the new job on day 1, and it has never been a crisis for employers.
A company that is confident it is offering worthy salary and career should have no extra reason to worry a foreign worker will quit during first week, than that a local worker would do the same thing.
The only difference a fee would make under such conditions is that locals become cheaper to hire, which is the point.
Part of the proposal is that the employer pays the government a large fee to sponsor the visa. They're not doing that for local workers; it's an entirely incomparable situation.
If you just want someone and not this particular applicant, yes but if you want a particular person to work for you, you will sponsor them regardless of this bullet point.
I totally support bringing in actual specialists, or fantastically talented people from abroad… but it’s painfully obvious how infrequently that happens. I worked with an H1B doing L2 support in the mid aughts. The position required significant knowledge of networking, but nothing close to even a mid-career enterprise network administrator, and it wasn’t a rare skillset for the area. We had plenty of very local candidates when we hired people before, but suddenly, new management decided it was an incredibly specialized, difficult-to-fill, rare job that paid locals an eye-watering 70k/year to start but paid an H1Bs far less than that I assume.
I thought there was no-one else on the market? If you think it will kill the visa program, that means you thought hiring underpaid developers was the goal of the visa program. No-one would change companies if if get paid decently: You leave a bad boss, but you can stay with a with a 10-15% lower-than-market salary just because of the friction of changing (Cue the downvotes: “I’m changing for a cent more” - yes you do when you have energy but most employees absolutely don’t). And employees will stay because they need time to settle in the new country and the welcoming company is generally equipped to make integration easier for newcomers.
You never get someone to pay a large application fee without some kind of reasonable prospect of getting an exclusive right.
Else, if company A pays a $100k fee, company B has an incentive to give the worker $90,000 more to jump ship. And this devolves to no one paying the $100k fee.
Only if employees are actually interchangeable at the rate you’re paying. You might bring someone from oversees who knows your internal systems and is therefore worth far above market rates to your company relative to any other US company.
What if we make the fee per-year? "It costs $10,000 to sponsor a new H1B immigrant's entry, and then it costs $5,000 per year per H-1B employee you have." H1-B holder is free to leave, and the cost of that happening to their employer is fairly low. Then let's say after 5 years of H1B employment, you automatically become eligible for citizenship, since you're clearly a valued worker.
* The worker gets to leave their sponsoring employer on the day of their arrival, if they choose to. The employment contract may not include any clawbacks of anything.
> IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse.
This is not true. Transferring your H1-B to another employer is entirely possible, the new employer will have to file the application as usual, but the application is not subject to the annual H1-B quotas.
At least this was the way it was several years ago. I doubt the process has changed since.
Would they now have to also pay the $1k fee for a "transfer"? AFAIK, it's considered a new application, but as you stated, its excluded from the quota/lottery.
The other thing I've heard is to sort the priority of who gets H1B by projected salary which would go a long way to eliminate anyone trying to get people to train their lower paid replacements.
Forcing citizens to train their foreign replacements is a violation of the terms of the program and illegal. Disney did that and, while not being held accountable, they were forced to reverse their criminal decision.
Signing bonuses almost universally have a 1-year clawback (or are otherwise only doled out periodically and not all up front), so not a good analogy here.
They had no problem offering 7-figure salaries to PhDs with research experience in AI a few years ago. Those are the exceptional workers the program was supposed to be bringing in the first place, not dime-a-dozen JS vibe coders.
> IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse.
> I think a very high application fee is actually part of a good solution, but is useless by itself.
This is always going to be bad if you compare to what any functioning democracy should be doing in this situation which to revert the deterioration of wages and punish/reeducate abusers. I admit it's idealistic, but if you could suspend the need for political realism here a moment there is a chance you could see this is only logical.
> The worker gets to leave their sponsoring employer on the day of their arrival, if they choose to. The employment contract may not include any clawbacks of anything.
I'm not familiar with current H1B law, but what prevents this from happening today? I've hired away an H1B holder in the past; the process wasn't particularly difficult.
My understanding at the time was that the tricky thing for H1B holders is that they can only have a 60-day gap of unemployment before they need to leave the country (or find a different visa resolution, I guess).
Now, if this new fee applies to H1B transfers as well as the initial application, well, that'll actually make it harder for H1B holders to change jobs.
The last one is tricky because who is going to sponsor a worker at the price tag of 100k with no guarantee of performance. That is rife for abuse. You could get google to sponsor you and then hop to your friends startup on day one.
It is reasonable that if you get a temporary visa to perform work in another country, and you decide you don't want to do that work anymore, you leave. They aren't enslaved or anything if the work is not worth it you can attempt to transfer your status to another employer or leave.
> * The worker gets to leave their sponsoring employer on the day of their arrival, if they choose to. The employment contract may not include any clawbacks of anything.
This would be workable if it also results in the person losing their visa. There must be some downside for the employee, otherwise it's an invitation for abuse.
If the worker gets to keep their visa then it's just a backdoor way to get a company to pay for their visa and relocation so they can immediately quit and then go do some other job they actually want (at no expense to the next employer).
The final scenario you describe already happens with immigrant visas. Once you have your Green Card you are free to quit the sponsoring employer and work for whoever you want.
> It also means that employers don't really look abroad unless there really is a shortage of existing labor. But when there is a true shortage and you're willing to spend, the door is open to act quickly.
You underestimate the ability of INFY/TCS etc.. to game these laws.
The last bullet is a good idea but wouldn’t work in practice. Otherwise a company could hire someone else’s H1B worker for $10k more per year and avoid the $100k fee.
Maybe a company that hires someone else's H1B worker for $10k more per year in the first year has to pay the $100k fee and the first company gets their fee back.
It seems like there are two conflicting forces here. We want to ensure that we accept mostly high-skilled immigrants, so we can't do a pure lottery. But anything less than a pure lottery and immigrants are forced to "perform" or be kicked from the country, they will end up "both paid lower and unable to escape abuse" as you say. I don't know that it's possible to solve this satisfactorily.
>> IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse.
This is not true. Typically you want to stay until i140 which for me took 1 year or so back in 2020. If I want to switch there are multiple other reasons I'd end up delaying the switch anyway (wait for vest, bonus etc ...)
Instead of a $100k lump sum by the first employer, what about $10k each year by the current employer? Or even $2.5k each quarter? That way there is no particular incentive to poach a "paid-off" H1B employee, and the company doesn't have to worry about making a $100k investment up front.
You care about that, and you say that's the problem with H1B but I think that, really, a lot of tech workers in the US, and even a lot of the HN crowd _really_ care about protectionism. They want to suppress competition for their jobs, they want to keep their salaries high. I think this is myopic, but... What the heck, your country is speed running some interesting trajectory, this measure is the not even the biggest one on the radical measures pile.
What's myopic about keeping your salary high? Most people work for themselves an their families, not how their countries will appear economically in three decades? The situation of wage suppression helps investors and the owning class more than anything.
If you see near, but you don't see far, that's myopic. Even you agree with this in your post. Therefore, I don't see where the confusion comes from.
You can argue you only care about the now and, sure, if that's all you care about, who am I to say your priorities are wrong?
I do think that you're wrong though, I think it doesn't make you better off neither now nor in the following years. But, again, who the heck am I to tell you how to run your country. I guess we'll see how this plays out.
For that matter it's not necessarily my country, despite my being here, and I don't necessarily have just one country I'm attached to. I'm not particularly nationalistic. However I do care about how retirement might look and how much I will have saved. It's almost as if you are implying I should accept a wage cut for the good of my country. (How that's good for the country and not just for a select few percent at the top of my country eludes me)
They should set a very high salary as a criteria for hiring someone from abroad. You want exceptional people, not regular people that you pay less than the ones you find in your own country.
Isn't getting specialized workers (who you supposedly can't hire from the national talent pool) incentive enough? My understanding of the H1B system is that it was supposed to be a "last resort, exit hatch" sort of a programme.
hard disagree on the 'search for qualified citizen' or something to replace it. American policy needs to put Americans first.
Your other points are a good start. The main thing I would add is a floor on salary. H1B for a >$200k job makes some sense, it shows it's essential, the employer really wants to fill it and is having a hard time finding a US citizen. H1B for average or below average salaries is where the real abuse is. It's basically a form of indentured servitude.
The search for a qualified citizen is a sham process. Why shouldn't it be eliminated?
Make the incentives align with the priority, is what OP was getting at.
I'm with OP. Make it crazy expensive and let the employee quit if they want. Employers will immediately build the 'search for qualified citizens' into the process themselves.
I agree the current process is broken. I disagree that you don't replace it with something workable. Like many govt regulations, it's several decades out of date.
Heck, a simple "I submit under the penalty of perjury that at least 10 US permanent residents have had good faith interviews for this position." type submission would be sufficient for me. HR people aren't going to want to commit a felony for their company, so the scams are going to go way down.
I mean I'll admit I'm a bit of a radical on this issue, but I think the most sensible work authorization policy is "you're welcome if you're not a criminal, terrorist, or public health risk, and on that last point here's some penicillin and a flu/covid shot, let us know when you're feeling better"
My ancestors came here ~140 years ago when the only "visa" process was a look in the mouth at Ellis Island. I don't see any fundamental reason why we need to have stricter regulations than that, and I reject dragging the Overton window further right on immigration.
In 3 months after implementing this policy there will be ports of entry full of people who paid any money to get to the US and that ready to share beds and work for $4/hour. Salaries will plummet, rent will skyrocket, crime will go up, quality of life will drop. Your neighbors will have to move out and new tenants will be 20+ people who don't speak your language and share none of your values.
Funny thing is those who opened the gate will be protected from consequences of their own policies in their gated communities.
That's what we see here in Canada after reckless immigration policies implemented by past government.
I wish I lived someplace where we could take the huddled masses yearning to breathe free instead of a place where they're literally rounding up my neighbors for the crime of wanting a better life.
For what it's worth I know multiple people who have been turned away from Canada because their immigration laws are even stricter than ours. So I don't know how much you can attribute your lack of housing to immigration.
> * Dispense with the 'need to search for a qualified American' which just complicates the process without achieving the stated goal, and includes a ton of legal and bureaucratic expense and time.
Most H1B go through perm process that does this already.
Everyone in these threads always points out all sorts of issues with the H1B system, which are mostly true, but it's not like there's a suggestion for a replacement here. This is a de facto shutdown of the program, not a reform. I'd be happy to see a reformed skilled immigration program for the US, but this isn't it.
The US makes up about 4.5% of the global population and it seems silly to think that the FAANG companies and the new AI startups chasing behind them are going to restrict their hiring to this tiny slice of the global talent pool.
The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US.
I myself became a US citizen two years ago after being on a H1B. I was paid the same as all my peers and for all its shortcomings the program worked for me. It stunning to think this has been closed off, killing the main path for skilled immigration into the US.
In this supposed competition with China, Trump is deeply dedicated to giving China every advantage possible.
From defunding science, fining the biggest universities, defunding green energy, making hiring ambitious foreign workers economically unfeasible, replacing technocratic administrators with incompetent lackies with quite literally zero experience, imposing inordinate tariffs ... It's just win after win for the CCP.
Yes, but all these things will have bad long-term effects. The short-term effect would be payment into the federal budget and increase in local employment.
Even with tariffs, the initial effect was to increase purchases before the tariffs hit. Later the companies started eating from their margins instead of increasing prices right away. So it all resulted in increased economic activity and then increased tax payments into the federal government. However, because this is tax on consumption, it will eventually reduce business profits and personal wealth of the consumers. Meanwhile, Trump can claim that the economy is booming and he is collecting huge tax revenues without any negative effects.
Is it? $100k per hire isn't much of a cost to pay for large companies. Smaller companies may -- may -- end up having some trouble with this, but consider that $100k often amounts to less than a yearly base salary (and will pretty much always be less than a year of total comp/total employee cost), not to mention the costs of legal staff that they're already paying to deal with this stuff.
What this may do is cause some of the "body shop" consultancies to drop some of their "low end" business, so they'll focus more on targeting positions with higher salaries. That's... probably a good thing.
And yeah, we may see some higher rates of offshoring, but I don't think that will be significant. And I'm not even really convinced: offshoring is already possible, and in strict dollar terms is already cheaper than going through the H-1B process to bring someone to the US. If companies preferred offshoring, they'd be doing it; clearly the already-higher-cost H-1B program is still their preference.
I agree that this isn't going to fix the H-1B visa system, and is not a reform or even a particularly positive step toward a reform, but I think you're overestimating the negative impact. I really don't think this will change things much at all.
That's almost as much as the media H1B salary. It's a huge cost overhead. I don't understand how you can be dismissive of a number almost as high as hiring another engineer.
$100k for a startup is a no-go from the onset. This makes foreigners basically unhireable for startups, and probably shuts down founding startups as well?
> The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US.
I’m honestly tired of hearing the argument “if we do X then business will move to another state or out of US”.
Good riddance to the companies that flee from jurisdictions enforcing workers rights, don’t allow exploitation, etc.
The most important thing is protecting people, not fearing the cries of money-making machines.
Particularly in tech, where the network effects and first mover advantages are so strong.
California could introduce a million dollar minimum wage for software engineers, ban electricity on Thursdays, raise corporate taxes to 60% and still probably have more new unicorns founded in the subsequent year than Europe.
The business must go where the talent pool is if the talent can't be brought to the money. This H1B change is intended to remove a sizable portion of the talent pool from the US, so companies will have to follow (and spend US investor money on wages abroad).
>The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India
Such offshoring was possible before and after today.
Put another way, if all the H-1B jobs really can be offshored quickly and easily the way so many Indians and anti-Trump people here and elsewhere confidently predict, *that would have happened already*.
Some AI recruitments have seen 9-figure contracts. $100K is actually a surprisingly well-considered number and would still see the intake of legitimate talents, obviously contingent on the specific details. Indeed, those people wouldn't have to compete with masses of consultant trash and the whole lottery system could be done away with.
$100K actually seems perfectly coherent with forcing the program to winnow down to actual talents. People truly good enough to get the employer to pony up $100K to pull them in -- presuming there isn't some kickback fraud happening -- will truly be the best of the best.
> The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in
Paradoxically the #1 reason H1B employers bring in H1Bs is to bridge offshoring work. Pull in a dozen Indians and they're your bridge to the big Indian office, which is precisely why Infosys, Tata et al are such H1B users.
> Some AI recruitments have seen 9-figure contracts.
These are crazy outliers who would go through a different visa path anyway. US tech companies still need mid-level workers making low-to-mid six figures. Weirdly O1 visa holder spouses will get an O3 which doesn't allow them to work, making it worse than the H1B/H4 visa for some set of people. (H4s allow spouses to work)
I wasn't aware that we've already reached the end of 'work that needs to be done'.
Does this utopia come with four-day weekends?
Countries become wealthy because people in them work and make stuff. It's incredible to see people actively advocating for making their country poorer. "No, no, we have too many people working..."
> People truly good enough to get the employer to pony up $100K to pull them in -- presuming there isn't some kickback fraud happening -- will truly be the best of the best.
And what stops those people, best of the best, working somewhere else, with much better living standard(EU) ?
In the past, it's because of salary, but now, the 100k/year will either make company to lower their package, or try to extract much more from the employee.
No, this is just another tariff. If it costs $200k/yr to employee an H1B Software Engineer, and you expect them to work for you for 3 years, it raises the cost of employment from $200k/yr to $233k/yr. It'll discourage people from applying on the margins, which will bring the application rate down and acceptance rate up.
That is, at most, less than half a million people in the field and the majority of those jobs aren't the ones looking for overseas hires anyway. If we take CompTIA's number of roughly 5M tech workers it's 140,000 people, not "literally millions."
Out of curiosity, why do you believe that's the case?
I think there are certainly abuses of the system, but we should be focusing on stamping out that abuse, not just generally "slowing it down". A $100k price tag is not going to affect abuse all that much; yes, it will make it less profitable, but probably not to the point where it will fix anything.
As a US-born citizen working in the US, I would rather work with a smart, motivated person from another country than a mediocre person from the US. The problem is that there are a lot of non-exceptional people being brought in on these visas, so let's focus on stopping that as much as we can. And while there are plenty of exceptional people who are US citizens, there are also many more who are mediocre or worse; we should be importing talent in order to raise that average.
Is it weird that there are like entire orgs practically of H1Bs at big tech companies these days? And if you hang out in the towns where the big offices are, the demographics are completely different from not that long ago and it’s not from the general demo shift in America since Chinese and Indians are not that large of a percent of immigrants overall. Like is there such a big shortage of workers that all of Redmond needs to be Indians now? If serving the economy demands that, perhaps we should reconsider whether serving the economy should be our top priority.
As humans, Indian people are as great as any other humans. In my experience, though, first generation families from India and China practically tend to be quite insular socially. They hang out amongst themselves. Which, like, I don’t blame them for, if I were them I’d probably do it too, but it has a strongly detrimental impact on the social environment for people who aren’t in those groups. When a house goes to one of those groups, it feels as if it disappears from the neighborhood. If the flow is slow enough then they are in theory functionally forced to integrate socially with the existing inhabitants, but the flow is not slow.
And by the way, what reality do we live in that your local megacorp can decide to radically alter your population demographic and people support the megacorps ability to do that? There was no vote for the existing inhabitants about whether they wanted to take the trade off, the decision was made for them by businessmen. It’s pretty weird when you think about it.
Oh! This is unexpected, I thought it’s only for new applications, asking every h1b holder to pay 100k is just unfathomable. We will see thousands of layoffs and people moving out on an unimaginable scale.
This is announced with so much confusion and ambiguity too. Does it apply to current visa holders? Don't know. How do companies pay the fee? Don't know. Also announced on Friday night to go into effect Sunday midnight. Probably a feature though not a bug.
> Deleted the below posts out of an abundance of caution. Despite the words of the Proclamation, an unnamed White House official told New York Times that they intend to apply the $100,000 only to new applicants only.
> If that is correct, the implications are not as urgent.
I've been hearing that H1B holders are currently trying to stay within the US in fear of not being let back in or because of shenanigans like this[0]. Wonder how many people are currently looking for a flight.
Companies have abused the program. At the top end it’s an excellent program, and then there’s the rest where companies are making fake claims that they can’t hire Americans and need to import folks. This is what the administration is cracking down on. The idea isn’t crazy IMHO. If you want to import someone vs hiring and training an American then pay an extra $100k. If the skill is truly needed and rare companies will do that. If it’s not, then pay up.
Some saying companies will just offshore the roles but I doubt it. That was always much cheaper… if it was just about cost they would have done that already.
If this is truly per application, the companies that try to boost their chances with the lottery by creating multiple applications for the same person are going to get hit hard. Phantom companies that only exist on paper so people can tweak the probabilities are now liabilities.
Unfortunately that doesn't work in practice since the consulting firms submit multiple applications for multiple candidates to get one candidate in. I believe charging extra for each application is a good way to discourage this practice but I'm not sure if $100k is the right number or not. To me it seems a bit too high.
The odds are now per candidate, not per application. If they submit multiple applications, it does not up chances for that candidate in any way.
And yes, it does work, because we have data from the year before this change, to the year after to compare against. The "Eligible Registrations for Beneficiaries with Multiple Eligible Registrations" dropped from 47,314 for FY 2025 to 7,828 for FY 2026. Source: https://www.uscis.gov/archive/uscis-announces-strengthened-i...
> If they submit multiple applications, it does not up chances for that candidate in any way.
I believe the parent commenter's argument is that they instead play the game with multiple people. The increased chance is not per person, but achieved by using more people, each with their own chance.
I don't know if they do this, I merely find the argument itself intriguing with the shift in perspective, and that you as the reader has to keep track of the change in context from the individual one level up.
Again, it doesn't matter. You could apply for 100 candidates hoping to get one candidate accepted. For these firms, individual candidates don't matter. They want to get X number of cheap employees into the US per year. And they never file for a green card.
When faced with an arbitrarily small, insignificant problem, in lieu of the status quo, the solution he/she advocates is to completely dismantle the status quo without any form and reason instead of actually focusing on the solution.
This straight 100k to the top is not a good way to implement this. It should be a percentage (say 50%, we can talk about what the number should actually be) of the total compensation that is being paid to the H1B. We should also just completely remove caps on H1B.
This allows companies that truly want extraordinary talent to pay a premium to acquire it with no red tape . It also makes it far less likely that they can significantly underpay foreign workers to work in the united states and undercut American employees (at a 50% surcharge, you would have to pay 2/3 the prevailing salary to break even (assuming all employees are the same)).
The 50% number is something I made up, I think we can have an honest discussion about what that number should realistically be (and it should probably be different for different industries). But my main point is it should simply be a percentage tax paid on top of all compensation for foreign employees. This is the correct way to balance domestic companies undercutting domestic labor, while allowing them to access genuinely extraordinary talent with no impedance.
Or we could have a functioning smart government who lets say, Nvidia or Apple hire more folks and Infosys less instead of having a lottery? Folks on H1B pay federal income taxes
I disagree, why would they then not just hire the H1B at 50k and pay a 25K fee.
100k flat annual fee plus the new minimum 150k salary returns the H1B program to its original purpose of allowing US companies to hire truly exceptional foreign workers who have skills US workers do not. This allows companies to do just that and pay for it and at the same time protects the jobs and job prospects of US workers
I'll be honest that I read a different article on the same topic and did not know about the salary floor. So I wasn't thinking about that. I'm... mixed on that, but it does add a wrinkle to the equation.
I prefer a purely compensation relative approach because it let's the market decide what the actual salary for a software engineer is (with a percent of compensation premium for a foreigner and a 0 extra cost for a native). The market can dynamically adjust what a software engineer makes (not fixed price control) but it just cost more to hire foreign people.
In direct response to your first sentence, I think even foreign workers (who largely work harder and have more on the line than domestic workers) would question the wisdom of working for 50k a year as a software engineer in the US. They are actors in this system as well, and you can't just assume that you could offer 50k and get them to accept.
What's the basis for saying that the "original purpose" was to let companies hire "truly exceptional foreign workers"?
My understanding is that the H-1B was introduced by the 1990 immigration act, where the H-1B is supposed to be for "specialty occupations" other than nursing. But the same act introduced EB-1 and O-1 for people with "extraordinary ability", which sounds a lot closer to your "truly exceptional" understanding. I think maybe you're projecting a purpose onto the program that was never really there. The H-1B quota when it was introduced was 65k, so it's not like it started out being dramatically rarer than it is today.
IMO, the fee is the wrong thing that needs adjusting. It's the salary that should be adjusted. The minimum salary for an H1B should be $200k. It's something like 50k right now which is ridiculous especially with all the restrictions an applicant is under. It both suppresses wages and abuses the worker.
Can every industry pay $200k? I bet software, AI, or finance would be okay paying $200k, while e.g. hardware, aerospace, or biotech would have a harder time.
The idea of requiring a high salary is reasonable, but I'd make it rather e.g. 120% of the median salary in a particular industry.
Dare I say - If you're desperate for skilled workers, they should probably be highly compensated due to simple supply and demand.
If you can't find somebody skilled enough here to work for 200k or less, then you should probably be paying 200k or more since you're looking for a role that is niche and low supply.
There's also a bunch of organizations that are desperate and can't pay. E.g. a lot of rural and VA hospitals are staffed by H1B physicians. A rural hospital in the middle of Idaho won't attract a cardiologist through salary (i.e. the 500k/yr they can make in cities) and probably won't be able to afford a 100k application fee to get one. Also for lots of researchers and post-docs, 100k is more than their annual salary.
This fee is a great way to ensure that there's very little medical services available to rural populations and to help kill science in the US among other things.
The MD shortage is entirely artificial - limited by the number of taxpayer-funded residency slots, itself a result of federal congressional action (or inaction). You may ask, why is the taxpayer on the hook for resident training, when there already oceans worth of government and citizen money flowing into healthcare? Because the healthcare industry lobbied for it.
I don't think the EB-2 is an alternative. If the applicant is outside the US, the process takes ~3 years to get the applicant into the US and up to 4-12 years if the applicant is Chinese or Indian.
I don't think the EB-2 process allows the applicant to stay within the US while waiting for the priority date to become current so staying in the US and working during that 3-12 year period won't work without another visa type.
There are plenty of first-rate medical schools in the US, it's very possible to increase the supply of qualified doctors to re-balance. Yes it will probably mean a similar scenario where doctors are paid somewhat less than they have been previously, but hey, look how bad engineering has gotten these past 20-something years relative to where it once was as a comparable profession to medicine.
Except for the DOE student loan programs just capped loans for med school to 200k lifetime so unless students are fairly wealthy, they're going to find it hard to become a doctor.
The cost of becoming an MD is astronomical. I have a nephew currently studying for it and he's looking at $500,000 in student loans. For a school in idaho of all places.
Part of the shortage is also because very few people can afford to become doctors.
> it's very possible to increase the supply of qualified doctors to re-balance.
In many cases, the rebalancing that is needed is from subspecialties to community based primary care in rural and other underserved areas. Some new medical schools appeared in the 1970’s to address the need for more family medicine docs. What happened was completely predictable… more subspecialists. Graduates follow the money trail when choosing residencies and fellowships.
> My rural patients are so much more insufferable than my urban ones…
I retired from medicine, having spent my career at a well-known institution in the upper midwest of the U.S. Over the course of my tenure there, I took care of patients from all parts of the world, all walks of life. Some of my most cherished patients hailed from rural farm communities. Whatever that commenter’s issues might be, this doesn’t line up with my experience at all. The work of the physician is to tailor their work to meet the needs of the patient by understanding their needs in ways that may be difficult to discern through ways other than empathic understanding.
It is not about that one commenter, I would not have posted it for a single anecdote. I read through most of the comments. While there are voices like yours, the many people having similar things to say as the OP, and what exactly they say, DO make it sound like they have something interesting to say. Given the quality of many of the comments there, I don't think simply ignoring it with a counter-example is correct.
I'm from Idaho and grew up in rural Idaho. My mother was a nurse for such a hospital.
Rural hospitals are lucky to have any doctor on staff let alone a cardiologist. They are mostly staffed by nurses for quick patch-up work and life flights to major medical centers.
H1B doesn't solve the problem of poor communities getting poor healthcare. Frankly, it costs too much to become a doctor which limits where doctors can be employed. Plenty would like to work rural, but not with $500,000 in student loans. And no, that's no joke. I have a nephew going to medical school in Idaho and that's what his loans are.
It might be that in that industry, paying someone the $200k might mean the position doesn't make sense compared to the value delivered, and that you should instead open up another offshore office
Since we have relatively reliable economic data on median income per industry, it would be really stupid not to use that data in a formula such as the one you suggested.
To go further, I believe there’s good data on cost of living, geographically. It would probably be wise to use that in the formula as well, so as not to disadvantage smaller areas, where cost-of-living and salaries are lower.
> To go further, I believe there’s good data on cost of living, geographically.
I like the goal of making sure visa works are paid well for where they live.
I would not want to restrict the visa worker geographically though. Or alternatively I am unsure about the overhead of tracking the location visa holders and enforcing salary changes.
Might also have unintended knock on effect of encouraging job growth in low cost of living areas.
This already happens. One of the ways of qualifying for a National Interest Waiver for doctors, for example is by agreeing to work for some time in a designated underserved area.
Who would have a harder time? The company that wants to bring in employees? Sure. But I'm also sure that the top experts would be lining up to take such a job. The companies wouldn't struggle to find someone abroad.
The percentage could be reasonable, but I think it's too easily gamed. You just know the company would try and say they are bringing in entry level people for whatever they want and use whatever lowest median they could find. There needs to be a fairly significant minimum salary to avoid such monkey business.
An H1B job should be cushy. Otherwise, the company should simply raise salaries to find local workers.
This is why I say about the median salary across a branch of industry. A company is free to bring in anyone they want, but not free to pay them entry-level salary then. They should rather pay entry-level salary to local folks, e.g. recent graduates. The point is to bring above-average workers from abroad, as you say.
I don't think it's easy to game the median number, or the third quartile number if you prefer. Unless the salary distribution is severely bimodal, it should work reasonably.
The entire market works through supply and demand. The basic idea is if you can't find someone willing to work for $x an hour you have to raise x until you find someone.
The h1bs are often used to abuse that system by just importing someone willing to work for x, with the added bonus of it being very hard for them to ever leave your company.
Is it too complex to just look at the companies taxes and be like... "Hey you are paying H1B workers 25% less than their peers. You get hit with a fine".
If you couldn't undercut H1B salaries there is little incentive to use them except for their desired purpose (you can't find any local workers).
Even paid identically, a company might prefer H1Bs for retention purposes. Having an indentured serf who's difficult for other companies to hire and is at constant risk of deportation if they lose their job is a winning prospect for the worst companies.
It also prevents wages from rising, can't find anymore local talent at 80K/year so you hire H1B at that wage. If that didn't happen, wages would rise until they found someone local. I think something like equal pay and then a 10-20% fee that is funneled into american education/up-skilling efforts.
A great way to circumvent this is to build a large headquarters in an undesirable location. "No American software engineers are applying for my job in <random midwest town where I will be the only software employeer>! I need H1bs!"
the counterfactual is 'is there an equally qualified nurse who didn't get the position?' There is a lot of under-employment for highly qualified US citizens.
Hmmm, so a nurse can come from any country with any level of English and work in a US hospital without re-certification? There is a smell to this claim…
Because I don't really want to penalize a company for bringing in foreign labor. If a company can't find someone for a specific job or role then I don't care if they go abroad to find that person.
What I care about is the current system isn't being used to find hard to find labor, it's used to bring in cheap labor in an abusive situation.
We as a nation are really better off if we bring in the best in the world to work here with a cushy salary.
Multiple registrations are being filed for the same person in order to game the system. This is discussed in some details in a USCIS report [1]. The increased application fee is presumably to stem that practice.
"If a company can't find someone for a specific job or role then I don't care if they go abroad to find that person."
You're believing and repeating the propaganda. The H1B was sold to Americans as for this purpose and then very deliberately turned into a loophole for importing massive amounts of foreign labor.
How silly is it to accept the idea that Big Tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Tesla are not be able to hire Americans for any role they want. They're the richest companies on the planet!
These companies use the H1B to increase their labor supply, suppress wages, and gain indentured workers.
If they couldn't cheat by importing cheaper foreign labor they would have to compete against each other much more than they do for American workers.
This is all about big companies rigging the system. They do not care if it's good or bad for America, the foreign workers, or anyone else. It's simple greed.
this is also believing and repeating the propaganda, just a different propaganda.
and entirely different propaganda is that without being able to hire so many people constantly, the work just doesnt happen, and companies downsize to save money rather than grow to make more money.
a greedier facebook doesnt dump a ton of money into VR or ai glasses.
US has the highest salaries for software engineers in the world. If this is what suppressed salaries look like, then what do you think they should be paying? I think if the labour pool is further restricted by measures like this one, it can only lead to companies doubling down on opening R&D offices abroad.
The fee should help ensure that only higher paying jobs or truly hard to find roles would be worth paying for as well (not that this is the right option, but playing it out). You would gladly pay 100k if the role already is high paying, it will be a small fraction of the cost, you won’t do that if it’s a couple year salary. It will also help curb abuse through multiple applications. I agree hard to find jobs for highly talented people (who are paid well) should be brought in.
Well, again, I don't really care about prioritizing local hires. The 100k fee really only penalizes the company from hiring abroad.
I'd much rather push everything into the salary of the person being hired. Both because it ends up raising the median salary for local workers and because it stimulates the local economy where that person is brought in. It's also a yearly fee. I think there's value in getting a very capable person working in your company and having a high salary is one way to make such roles highly competitive. A highly capable person will ultimately make everyone they work with more capable.
If country has 10 qualified people but 15 positions to fill you cant find it by just hiring in the country. Then you just end up with a circle where the people move around.
Yes, I also can make up imaginary math. 6 is bigger than 3. But 9 is less than 12.
There are extraordinarily few roles handed out to H1Bs where there aren't enormous numbers of domestic options. Indeed, by far the biggest users of H1Bs in tech are shitty consulting firms like Cognizant, Infosys and Tata doing absolute garbage, low skill development.
Yes, there are exceptions. There are truly unique talents in the AI space, for instance. Not someone to build Yet Another agent, but someone who actually understands the math. They are extraordinarily rare in that program. And for those exceptional talents, a $100K fee would be completely worth it. But they aren't going to pay it for an army of garbage copy-paste consultant heads.
In actual reality it's just a way to push down wages by forcing Americans to compete with the developing world in their own country. In Canada we have "TFWs" filling the same role. It is a laughably unjustified, massively abusive program.
You may have policy opinions but what would incentivize the current admin to require more money given to foreign workers vs keeping wages low (which also helps suppress wages for non-foreign worker peers industry-wide) while collecting more fees for federal use?
it is very difficult to determine this. Companies that do h1Bs are all multinational, so they can locate dev offshore and just say they did it internally. There's also the reality that even if you go out and try to evaluate the revenue that comes from IT, you basically can't get clean attribution even if you want to. many H1Bs are not working on customer facing product, but internal projects and that makes treating things like application maintenance or service desk pretty difficult to calculate for ultimate revenue outcome.
It's not in this article but in others that this will be addressed.
"The proposal would increase the wage floor for H-1B visa recipients from $60,000 to $150,000, eliminate the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, and replace the current lottery-based selection process with a highest-bidder system."
IMO the minimum salary should be $0 and Americans should be free to hire whoever they want, without paying a fee and asking permission from the government. Non-citizens should be subject to the same minimum wage and workplace regulations as everywhere else. Whoever wants to come to America should be able to freely come, treated the same as anyone else.
But that would be a free market that respected human rights, and Americans don't want that! Equality? Freedom? That's just marketing!
This is actually smart. Many H1B visas are used to undermine fair labor wages for already local talent. We should ensure that H1B visas are for actual unique talent and not just to undercut local wages.
H1B is ripe with abuse - this article by Bloomberg says that half of all H1-B visas are used by Indian staffing firms that pay significantly lower than the US laborers they are replacing:
This is very short term thinking, in that it assumes a constant amount of work and ignores the global competition for labor.
If the US loses its massive lead in the network effects of a large labor pool, the amount of work in the US will shrink, both by moving to other countries and less overall innovation.
This is not a beneficial move for most software engineers.
A common problem in latam and other geos is brain drain. Most of their best minds simply leave the country looking for better opportunities. That is impactful for the countries economies, the country invest a lot in people,but others see the benefits.
During last century, USA has been the most benefited from that kind of immigration.
Personally I think that this is a very short sighted decision by USA administration. But overall, I think that this will benefit the rest of the world. Maybe in a few years even USA will start exporting their best minds abroad!
> During last century, USA has been the most benefited from that kind of immigration
This is inaccurate. The U.S. had a highly restrictionist immigration system from 1921-1965. The foreign born population dropped from almost 15% to under 5% by 1970.
During that time, the U.S. had a small number of highly skilled immigrants, such as German scientists fleeing the Nazi regime. You’re talking about a very small number of truly exceptional people. A $100k/year fee is not going to shut down this kind of immigration.
Between 1921 and 1965, about 9.6 million people were admitted as lawful permanent residents. That's not what I'd call a "very small" or "highly restricted" inflow.
We have been around 1 million per year for decades. If we still had that policy, adjusted for population you’re talking about cutting legal immigration by one-third to one-half.
And that’s not counting a large increase in “gray market” legal immigration (TPS, asylum, etc.)
Employers pay these fees, not the employers. A white collar worker already costs close to $100k in overhead, benefits, and payroll taxes. The true geniuses are easily worth $100k to a university or employer.
> How many people on here can truly say that they were considering between two different countries. That doesn’t happen at scale.
/me
I started in Slovenia, considered London, actually got an offer in Canada, but ultimately chose San Francisco. Figured that if I’m going to the trouble of moving abroad, I might as well go to the center of the industry.
Got lots of friends who chose various EU companies based on desired lifestyle/work/partner balance. You have lots of options as a good engineer. Especially before the last 3 years of market shenanigans.
>There is a global competition for coming to Western Europe, Canada, and the US.
As someone who lived in all three geographies and interacted with immigrants who lived in there, here is my raw take:-
Western Europe:- Love it and people are so nice but they are also (I am sorry to say) racist. Proof:- How many immigrant CEO's do you see from companies based in Western Europe? The top 4 largest tech companies in the US have two indian CEO's for more than 10 years now.
Canada:- Super nice and immigrant friendly more than the US, but the size of the country (approx 10% of the US) doesn't have the financial/economic/social infrastructure that is needed to support a large number of immigrants. Also tech salaries are miserable compared to the US
US:- For all its faults, US is truly the only country where immigrants looking for a better future can immigrate and assimilate into. For how long this lasts remains to be seen but I don't think that is going to change anytime soon.
Same, three actually, none of which the US. A closer representation for the US brain may be who is considering between different states? Here is the thing, other countries do not necessarily work exactly the same way as the US or individually have large enough local markets to contain all aspects of the overall tech industry, just locally.
The slate of policy choices in the US is removing it from that list of countries, and will strengthen those countries' labor forces.
Right now SV salaries command a huge premium, because all of SV is predicated on increasing productivity, increasing the economic pie, and rewarding those who do so with a fraction of that gain in GDP.
Treating SV labor like plumbing or construction labor fundamentally misunderstands the dynamics and the creation of wealth.
Keeping the lights on is an absolutely essential societal function, and for keeping an economy running. But expanding the technological capacity of the US is what made us so much wealthier than any other country in the world. And expanding that technological capacity faster than the rest of the world comes from attracting the best technological innovators from the rest of the world. However, with China's and India's size, it's likely that they will now be able to overtake us without relying on much immigration.
I was about to ridicule this, but then I thought about it. My wife is in a skilled trade in SV, and that actually sounds about right. She has nothing to do with software, but probably earns, dollar/hour, about the same as a mid-tier L6 SWE at Google. I do R&D program management, government though, so the conversion to quality of life is kinda weird. Most people would see our house and assume I'm a director.
Did you have to choose? Or did you have the option? I would wager to bet that a significant amount of people in the US cant afford to move to another state.
I can confidently say yes. Choosing between working in two different countries separated by an entire ocean is an option. Moving to a different state is expensive for many, but moving to another continent is only afforded to a privileged minority.
By US you mean corporate America?
What if they maintain that massive lead on the backs of the US citizens?
The exploitation of the US worker needs to end, if the company does not have 100K to bring in global talent then that company cannot "massively lead" in any domain and the "talent" is neither global nor talented.
I am an American-born worker at a giant tech corporation. My coworkers are all immigrants, my job was created by immigrants, if they left I'd be unemployed because there's no way I can build this whole thing by myself. The work would simply disappear without them.
and so who owns the shares of "corporate america"? Newflash: Teachers' and firefighters' and cops' pensions are all invested in "corporate america". As well as pensions of union workers. As well as 401ks of all the other middle class people. Come on.
"the exploitation of American worker" ? American workers have one of the richest standards of living in the world.
To me that just reads like following the gamblers fallacy. Just because you already threw a bunch of money into the pot doesn't mean you have zero choice but to keep playing until you likely lose it all.
How many American teachers or firefighters would trade their own kid's job away to a foreigner in exchange for some hypothetical marginal increase in 401K returns? Not many. The only Americans who like that deal are managers who care more about their headcount than they do about their countrymen.
you keep thinking about it in Soviet zero sum terms. First of all, the foreign engineer doesn't disappear if you don't give him a visa, he or she just works somewhere else and still takes your kid's job away. Secondly, it's not a zero sum game ! that's the most important thing to realize. Number of jobs is not fixed ! it's not a fixed pie! you are on hacker news. A startup forum. And you are talking about number of jobs as a fixed pie.
Oh now they care about teachers, firefighters, cops and puppies? Is that what this H1B is about?
> American workers have one of the richest standards of living in the world.
What are you even talking about? Being able to hold more tokens that can buyback the products of the asset class does not make for a "rich standard of living".
Having to run gofundme's for medical care is not "rich standard of living".
Them trembling on every unscheduled meeting with their boss is not "rich standard of living"
if you are going to argue that Americans don't have a rich standard of living, that is just an absurd argument. It's obvious to anyone who has lived or worked somewhere else.
The competition isn't for labor, it is for net productivity. These are not the same thing. As anyone who has ever worked on a team can tell you, "more team members" absolutely does not equate to a more productive team. In fact we have a plethora of phrases and anecdotes which indicate the opposite is often true.
I suspect the very best engineers will be worth every penny of that $100k/yr and the amount of abuse will drop. There is the very real risk that companies will move to outsource more roles, but I will personally be boycotting them.
I’m incredulous you’d expect otherwise? This is clearly pandering favor with a certain demographic, in a way that didn’t upset the big money going to Maralargo.
Why would they intervene with outsourcing the jobs instead of H1Bs? And more importantly, how?
There is no way around it, you either outsource or lose (and they already outsourced almost all factories). Companies will move HQs to India and "outsource" some operations to the US.
You're applying economics when the problem is fundamentally racial. Trump has exposed the dark underbelly of the US. The comments in this thread as well as elsewhere just show the fundamental lack of empathy - which I know is a made up word unless someone with the "right" political leanings was harmed.
Of course the visa is a privilege and there are tons of abuses associated with it. There are methodical ways of going about it and actually fixing the problem. Slapping a $100k fee with unclear language and no heads-up uproots while uprooting lives of so many people have lived in the country for years if not decades, maintained legal status, and paid taxes including Social Security and Medicare is "a smart move" according to the top comment.
But we all know what the real problem is. If majority of the H-1B visa holders had the right skin color, they would be welcome with open arms regardless of any abuse of the system. Just like how South African refugees are welcome while other those from the "wrong" kind of country are not.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." ― Lyndon B. Johnson
It has nothing to do with “skin color,” but economics, culture, and worldview.
“The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family. The opinion advanced in the Notes on Virginia is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived, or if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism? There may as to particular individuals, and at particular times, be occasional exceptions to these remarks, yet such is the general rule.” — Alexander Hamilton
Urban-environments in the hyper-individualist age have no culture (no, drinking and watching "football" is not culture). Even Church-attendance is so low that these people you hate are buying up these abandoned buildings to create communities.
What you're complaining is that "they" have a culture, while you don't. I guess it's semi-understandable if it results in mob-violence and ganging-up, but I haven't seen this happen outside some Islamic-communities (even there, I think it's typ. only the S. Asian ones).
he hasnt been particularly right with that, in hindsight. the people most excited for freedom and republic are the new immigrants escaping dictators, while the american born folks are either accepting of or promoting a move towards monarchy.
maybe it was true before the US became the global propagandist, but almost everyone on earth is a native born american now.
That’s only true if you define “native born american” as someone who watches Marvel movies. There is no immigrant community of significant size that is culturally American below the surface. None that embodies the self-flagellating communalism of Yankee America, nor the reflexively anti-government individualism of southern america.
Even the groups who superficially assimilate into the progressive culture embraced by Yankees do so as subordinates, not peers. The Yankee will condemn his own ancestors and discriminate against people who look like him. Most immigrants are happy to be the objects of that pity, but do not behave in the identical manner. They respect their own ancestors and retain their own ethnic attachments.
Virtually everything Hamilton worried about applies to contemporary immigrants to a T.
Don’t play the race card, you sound emotional saying that.
You admitted that there were tons of abuse. This gets back to the law’s original intent. This is the best fix that corporations “pay up” for.
It’s just politics. You have CS grads facing employment headwinds against AI, H1B, and high interest rates. They aren’t going to vote for the incumbents if they’re unemployed. Now they’re going to have a $100k discount to hire them instead of from a WITCH company. FAANG will still hire H-1Bs.
... and is done for these employers already (though not to the level that is being proposed)
Public Law 114-113 (December 2015 to September 2025) : additional fee of $4000
Public Law 114–113, part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, imposed a fee of $4,000 on H-1B petitions and $4,500 on L-1A and L-1B petitions. The additional H-1B fees would apply to all petitions postmarked on or after December 18, 2015, and until September 30, 2025.
Yep. There is a huge amount of American talent wallowing in low-level, dead end jobs because corporations have been actively incentivized to hire cheap, captive foreign labor rather than foster American talent. I am absolutely thrilled to witness this return to sanity.
Do you think those countries will be nice and invite us to be reverse "H1Bs" into their countries or will they keep the pie to themselves? If they think like you they'll invite the whole world talent pool into their countries.
The US has the nicest biggest pie in the world. Why would somebody move to a place with less opportunity?
The opportunity created in the US is due to the concentration of talent, high productivity, and extensive networks of people creating innovation that inflated the pie even larger.
Go ahead and move to any of those countries from the US, it's prettt easy, because everybody wants to be like the US! The only possibly better passport was a Canadian one!
Something deeply sick has infected the US when we no longer recognize the source of the wealth of our nation. Nobody could touch us. At least until we started to intentionally make ourselves poorer.
Strong disagree. This is a dumb move in that the US wins wins when people move to the US, especially young, skilled people.
There are big issues with the h1b, particularly how strongly tied to the employer the employee is and how few of these we give away. But this basically closes the door for hiring foreign talent to anyone but BigCo.
It is a sad shotgun shell on the right foot on a long streak of the US feet shooting it's way out of relevance.
Student visas still exist. O1 visas still exist. Other routes I can't remember off the top of my head exist. The door is not closed. Indeed, even H1B visas still exist, assuming that young talented person is worth $100k more than a US citizen.
> the US wins wins when people move to the US, especially young, skilled people.
I personally lean towards this being true, but it is a claim that needs to be demonstrated comprehensively for your argument to hold water. It is not trivially true.
How so? Anybody who has a student visa had to prove that she or he has strong ties to the home country and no intent to remain in the Untied States, and that she or he only needs to get education in the US to come back and apply it for the home country's benefit.
If these people have not defrauded the US then they would not know what to do with a work visa as they'd be hurrying back home as soon as they received their diploma, pulled by those strong ties and the desire to finally put the education to use at home.
Student visas in the US come with the right to work for some time after graduation. If the foreign student isn’t valuable enough to stay after a degree and multiple years of work I think it’s fine to send them home.
But me personally, I advocate many fewer student visas.
What world are you living in? Many Chinese come in on student visas, get jobs at FAANG and then have to move back to their country after losing the H1-B. These are the people we want, doing the jobs that we want them to do, and we’re too nearsighted to figure out how to keep them.
Again, these are the most talented, most affluent minds that China has to offer. Sure, let’s have them work for the CCP rather than keeping them in the west.
Indeed, though if you make that route too easy (or with limited oversight), you end up with diploma mills that aren't actually educating anyone. Incentives are hard to align well.
It wouldn't be hard to select and accredit at least the better universities. Giving an automatic work visa to every foreign Ivy graduate should be a no-brainier. You could take the top 30% or 50% ranked US News universities and accredit those, or some similar heuristics.
Brazil isn't a great example here since it is a Portuguese speaking country leading to relatively low immegration, but for Germany, for example a work visa takes 1-3 months to process, and unlike h1b there is no quota.
This doesn’t really tell us much, and isn’t really relevant to H1B either. If we had 0 immigration, all S&P 500 companies would be founded by non-immigrants.
These other visas are incredibly complicated to get. And funneling everyone through student visas is just inflating demand for uni degrees.
What someone's labor is worth is up to the market to decide. Also those $100k are taxed out of the employer and employee's value.
On the benefits of people moving to the US: it's been widely studied and it's basic economics, immigrants bring both supply and demand, so the size of the economy grows and so the opportunities to current residents.
Take the extreme: when people leave a country or city the economy there collapses, see Detroit or the increasingly old and depopulating European countries.
Or take the extreme on who comes: fiscal studies show that even low skilled immigrants are net positive fiscally. Only very old and unskilled immigrants are a fiscal burden.
Finally, thinking that we can capture the world's economy in a bottle and live lavishly without competition is delusional. If we stop letting people build here, they will build elsewhere and without us. We are increasingly less relevant.
Let's turn this around - would the US win if young, skilled people were net-leaving it?
Imagine spending 25 years raising, educating, feeding, and clothing a person, investing over a million dollars of money and labour in them, and then they just pack their bags and leave.
Educated, skilled, young immigrants are a colossal gift to the host country, and a crippling debit on the welfare and prosperity of the country they have left.
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Anyone who has ever given it more than thirty seconds of thought knows that countries become wealthy when people living in them work - and make stuff. So what do you do to improve a country's prosperity?
Obviously, in backwards-logic, you start raising barriers to people who want to do useful work in it.
(Because dealing with the systemic issues that have resulted in the country becoming prosperous not being correlated with the plurality of people in it not becoming prosperous would upset wealthy people who don't actually build anything.)
I genuinely don’t know: how many H1Bs were granted this year while we have read about numerous layoffs? Were those H1Bs truly necessary? Were they paid at or above market rates?
My limited experience with H1B labor is not folks who are young nor particularly skilled. They are cheaper and faster to staff.
I'm by no means xenophobic. Bring in all the immigrants you want. But I can't agree that H1Bs are working as designed and pull in labor that doesn't otherwise already exist in the US.
But if you want to attract young talented and skilled people into the US, I don't think H1B is a good way to do it. I would imagine is more likely to result in people leaving after gaining skills and experience and set up shop back home where the money they earned stretches farther. Many of them are forced to do so after their employer tosses them away so why would you come here with any different plan to start with? There is no clearly laid out path to come here on an H1B and guarantee you get to stay even if you do stellar work.
The only way to do that (and preserve H1B) is to entirely disconnect the subcontinent from the application process. Their top companies exist only to scam immigration programs around the world, it is their raison d'être.
Yeah exactly. And they embrace that fraud and turn it into a cornerstone of their economy. I too have worked with extremely talented people from the subcontinent and not one was on an H1B. The H1Bs I worked with were less competent than an undergraduate intern. Thankfully I only had to do that once during an on-prem install in Tyson’s Corner.
I’m curious what visa the “extremely talented people from the subcontinent” were on. If they have a green card or are naturalized citizens, there are very few paths to those statuses that doesn’t involve an H1B.
I'm against these top sweatshops, but is the answer to that is ban the entire subcontinent?
Also, I don't know how many h1bs have you worked with. I have worked with many (hundreds), and it's the same spectrum of talent you'd find anywhere. This is probably not the intent of h1b, but banning a set of countries is not the solution. Changing the criteria is.
The fact that it’s the same spectrum of talent (in your experience) is a glaring indicator that the system has been systematically abused by Indian WITCH to the point it’s no longer fit for purpose. Unfortunately systems constructed in high trust societies (1950s USA) must adapt with the arrival of low trust societies. Much like the European refugee conventions established in the echoes of WW2 and now gleefully exploited by these same low trust societies.
I didn’t include China. I also don’t think there’s any reason to close the borders to Indians. Rather, simply close off access to their Frankenstein cottage industry of scammers.
I agree that H1B abuse should be fixed. Its also bad for other H1Bs which have the skill and didn't abuse the system (which many of them are).
Maybe this 100k thing will fix it and maybe this wont. My main complain with this administration is always the chaos and impulsiveness which doesn't bring much confidence that they are actually capable of actually fixing the problem, as it always doesn't seem well thought through or executed. More like headlines to get some cheering from MAGA crowd.
> My main complain with this administration is always the chaos and impulsiveness which doesn't bring much confidence that they are actually capable of actually fixing the problem, as it always doesn't seem well thought through or executed. More like headlines to get some cheering from MAGA crowd.
I think it could also be that they don't want to fix any problems, but they do want the chaos and media attention that provides catharsis to the voting base.
Why are you using quotes around steal as though I used that word somewhere? Read what I wrote, repeat it to yourself when you fall asleep, come back tomorrow.
Yes, scam. Scam. India. Scam. India. You’ve never heard of these two together? Google is your friend. Diploma mills, good old fashioned racial discrimination, hiding job listings in obscure outlets to avoid domestic applicants, man they are truly talented in this endeavour. Maybe if they put so much muscle into improving the home country everyone would be better off.
That’s a cute ad-hominem but ultimately off base because that’s not how the diploma mills scam works. I really encourage you to research those topics a bit - it is genuinely fascinating how complex the scams get. There’s also a bit of self-reflection that arises when you learn that these people don’t understand why scamming and cheating is wrong - they’re genuinely incapable of comprehending this. It makes you appreciate people who aren’t like that, including yourself! (hopefully)
> these people don’t understand why scamming and cheating is wrong
Moreover, they openly brag about it. My wife's brings stories from her hair stylist that's very chatty about the ways they literally move their family from India to US and Canada. People fake marriages, divorces, report abuse etc etc. I'm still not sure if it's all true, but the very fact she brags about it is astounding.
Great, so if they're as obviously bad as you claim, then it should be easy to weed them out for any competent HR department. And if the HR department isn't competent, the company is going to fold. Either way, problem solved.
You felt it appropriate to jump on your little throne and pass judgement on large groups of people, but cried ad-hominem when I slightly criticized you. Sensitive much?
How is the problem solved? You have an entire industry dedicated to scamming immigration systems around the world and your solution is to simply avoid getting scammed? It’s a lot easier to cut them off as per the article. The problem IS the scammers.
As always with this administration using a cannon to kill a mosquito for the right reasons. And then people debating the reason rather than the cannon.
The logic from this administration and it’s supporters is opposite of Benjamin Franklin. Rather than thinking that it is better a hundred guilty persons should escape than one innocent person should suffer. They think it is better a hundred guilty persons be punished than one innocent person’s suffering. We have seen this from the South Korea detainees debacle and here too.
There is fraud in H1B system. People do take advantage of it. People do suffer from ghost jobs. But the question at the heart of the matter is what is the basis for a flat 100k fee? Because lots of numbers from this administration seem to be pulled out from thin air. There are reasons fines are set low in comparison to a company revenue but POTUS doesn’t seem to know.
So the replacement is the talent stays in their own country, making local wages there where their talents are leveraged via offshoring instead. They still work to their skillset, wages remain suppressed but their country of origin get their personal taxes instead. But at least the talented individual gets a lower quality of life, that will teach them to roll the dice wrong on the geography they were born into.
We can still use policy to disadvantage the economics of offshoring, we just haven’t gotten there yet. This took time, that will take time.
Does it suck that billions of people were born into lesser global economic circumstances? Absolutely. Does that mean we should allow corporations to exploit labor (both imported and citizens who have to compete against that imported labor) at the disadvantage of domestic citizens? No. This is workers vs capital, not immigrants vs citizens.
There's a logically fallacy in there. Throwing up border walls does not stop capital. Capital can still exist outside the borders and work with the supply chains of the other countries minus 1. And pick an inflow metric that capital cares, and the US does not control more than 50% of it. number of consumers, GDP, income growth, all of it. The capital will continue to service the bigger number that remains offshore through cutting the US out of that pie reciprocally.
The US as a feature of it geography and population (Japan, UK and the Philippines) can choose isolationism as a policy. But the rest don't have it as an option due to direct contact to neighbors or economics too small to sustain. Most of the world will not follow the on-shoring path, because they cannot.
There is nowhere else to invest. China, Russia, and Africa? No trust. Europe and Japan? Too old. That leaves India, which may or may not attract material capital inflows.
Who, funnily enough, will probably be the largest impacted by such things as locking down H1Bs.
Old and still accessible beats inaccessible. BTW the source of the USAs demographic resistance to aging has been the sheer fact it was that immigration melting pot of bringing in young talent to offset its local aging population. A few decades of this path and the US can be just as dismissed as Japan who have taken this path decades in advance.
All countries will end up like Japan, it’s just time (explained in the links I cited). Some countries are likely willing to eat some economic gains out of other preferences. That’s a choice. It’s not all “line goes up.”
India’s total fertility rate is already 1.9, below 2.1 replacement rate. Its demographic dividend (and any potential capital investment opportunities) is already on borrowed time. So capital would rotate and reallocate there, while there is still time, regardless.
Per slide 8 of your second link: Except Africa and half of Asia who will still be above replacement rate for the remainder of our natural lives.
Per exhibit 5 of your first link: The US still to be as bad as Europe and Japan you disparage as "old" and that is based on 2024 analyses. A few more years of these events if sustained will drop that further.
And per Exhibit 1 of that same link, sure India will be at 1.9. And the US was at 1.6 two years ago, which is worse.
Most of the world will be below fertility replacement rate by 2030. This is important, because the faster fertility rates decline, the faster the light cone of capital returns into the future shrinks (people = profits = returns).
So, to tie this all together: for the reasons I’ve laid out in this subthread (with citations), I’m not too concerned about the need to cater to the demands of capital. It needs returns more than humans need it considering population growth is almost over, and it will continue to slowly exhaust investment opportunities as the global demographics transition continues.
I am an American-born tech worker and every job I've had that didn't involve bagging groceries was created by immigrants. Without these workers my career wouldn't have been possible.
Over a long enough time-span it isn't zero-sum. Under any sort of limited time span, which is what people with limited amount of life live deal with, it is zero-sum. It doesn't matter how much money you spend, the economy has material and man power limits than cannot be exceeded no matter what someone manages to pull out of their butt. On top of that, the value of money IS affected by the total amount of currency in circulation as history has shown many times over, and only in a theoretical economic vacuum where customers are infinite does one guy holding a trillion dollars not devalue someone else's $1.
Why does America have all the tech jobs in the first place? It is because of people like Elon Musk immigrating to the US and building the tech industry.
Ha! And who worked at Bell Labs, the US company? Immigrants.
Mohamed "John" Atalla, raised in Egypt, and Dawon Kahng from Korea, who together invented the MOSFET transistor, which underpins modern electronics and computing. Both immigrated to the United States for graduate engineering education and made their breakthrough at Bell Labs in 1959.
Yann LeCun, born and raised in France, immigrated to the U.S. in 1988 to work at AT&T Bell Labs, where he became head of image processing research and contributed significantly to artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish-born inventor of the telephone, was a founder and major figure in the creation of the Bell Telephone Company; AT&T, created by American Bell in 1885, later established Bell Labs.
Immigration has always bolstered the American tech industry, but the bulk of the industry has always been American. Just look at the distinguished members of Bell Labs. Many are immigrants, but most are American. The reason why immigrants come here is that American industry is already very strong. It’s not mutually exclusive to claim that Americans build a strong tech industry and that skilled immigrants have invented many new technologies here in America.
You are right about Bell Labs, the majority were US-born.
But let's consider one of the biggest innovations of recent times: Artificial Intelligence (transformers/LLMs specifically). Where was it invented? In America. Who invented it? Let's take a look. The seminal research paper that kicked off this revolution (titled "Attention is all you need") was written by 2 Indians, 1 German, 1 British Canadian, 1 Pole, 1 Ukrainian, and 2 US born people. So only 25% US-born.
Have you watched OpenAI's demos and how many of their researchers are Asian? Would you prefer for them to remain in Asia and contribute to DeepSeek instead?
this is not smart. If you want to reform an H1B program, reform it. This is not a reform, this is a bizarre attempt to do what? stop companies from hiring foreigners? they will simply hire them in their foreign offices or offshore.
reform is a type of action that tries to identify a concrete set of issues and fix those issues, implies a positive change.
this is a change in the direction of significantly reducing hiring of foreign workers by American companies, which is bad for everyone. It's bad for American companies, because it will reduce their growth. It's bad for American workers because when our companies don't grow, neither does our economy and that hurts Americans. So it's a change, but it's a dumb change.
In other democratic countries, reform is mostly proposed in parliament. Experts and other government institutions are publicly consulted. Reform is seldomly passed under emergency grounds, and H1B rules are an unlikely area for emergency executive action that has a transition period of not more than 2 days.
Of course in other democratic countries their parliaments haven't purposefully and willingly seceded their powers to the executive branch and spent the last 50 years completely ignoring the entirety of the people's will, needs, and desires as they gathered and concentrated as much additional power as possible.
Are H1B visas undercutting wages significantly? I haven't really looked since the zero interest rates era, but back then H1Bs were getting paid the same as everyone else. I got the impression that companies would like to hire citizens (for their own convenience), but there were more jobs than people.
The economy kind of sucks right now but it ain't H1B visa holders that are the problem.
Please read the Bloomberg article I linked in my original post. It says that half of the H1-B visas are taken by staffing companies and they pay their staff significantly lower than the US laborers they are replacing.
Looking at it solely from a perspective of competition between labor glosses over the fact that insufficient labor is also bad because it keeps companies from growing and hiring more people.
So sure, while the fewer jobs that they can fill could have higher wages (not a given, because lack of labor can stunt or kill companies) there could be much fewer people employed overall, which is clearly bad overall.
Of course, that assumes there is enough room for companies to grow. There are strong indications (e.g. the various labor and unemployment surveys) that this is the case in the US. In fact, there is a credible theory that the reason the US managed the inflation crisis so well was due to the immigration crisis.
I elaborated more here (along with a couple of relevant empirical studies about how H1B actually impacted employment and wages of native workers): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45308311
Did you look at the Bloomberg article I linked in my original post? It says that half of the H1-B visas are taken by staffing companies and they pay their staff significantly lower than the US laborers they are replacing.
I could not read the full article so I don't have all the details about the report, but the scope pretty limited. There are equally numerous reports about e.g. BigTech H1B salaries being much higher than typical. So that raises the question, which is the greater effect?
Better instead to look at larger scale studies out there, including the ones I mentioned in the comment I linked. The results are much more nuanced, but generally they find negligible or mildly positive impact on native workers, suggesting they are largely orthogonal to foreign workers.
The point is that the dynamics are more nuanced than simple supply vs demand.
H1B holders have to be paid the higher of the prevailing wage or their employer's normal wage for similarly employed workers. So if a contracting company can ensure that the position their employees have is sufficiently different than the position a parent company is seeking to replace, there's an arbitrage. (This famously happened at Disney in 2014-15, with some workers directly training their H1B replacements.)
It can be a cheaper source of human resources without direct outsourcing. This will just offshore jobs, not foster recruiting of citizens.
The intent is obvious, but the foresight into potential outcomes is shortsighted.
Labor is expensive, more competition will rise overseas, as it will become more expensive to operate.
It also crushes the opportunities of a gigantic number of individuals who are here today who had a plan in place to exist in this ecosystem. Additionally the institutions that supported them will also be hurt. Although, they might have been aware of the writing on the wall over the past year.
I believe that the United States has long benefited from being able to attract talented people from other countries. They pay taxes, they participate in the economy, and they make the US more innovative and competitive in the world.
If there are abuses, then let’s fix them. But this is too heavy handed, and may have an impact on US competitiveness for generations to come.
This is idiotic. We’re already pushing China and India into a partnership with Russia. The sheer volume of people in those countries mean “on average” more brilliant people than we do.
The US competitive advantage is built on us being a destination for the best and brightest. Between this and the crackdown foreign students at US Universities why would the anyone want to come here?
The misuse of H1Bs is a small problem compared to the value it provides.
Doubtful. Not sure I'd be hired. I was hired at like $160k/yr. Would my employer have paid over half my wages to import me? I'm not so sure. Am I not bright enough? Do ya'all not want me here? It's possible. I'm no genius but I think I'm pretty good at my job and I dare say above average, and I don't think my employer could fill all the positions they have with equal or greater talent with only American citizens.
The question is more are you irreplaceable - is there no way an American could do your job even if they may need more training?
We pay taxes, we compete for limited schools and jobs, yet far more people want to come here than leave. Americans have become a lot less wealthy the last 40 years relatively thanks to stagnant wages and skyrocketing prices.
The last thing we need is an unlimited supply of competition that only moves in one direction. Average H1B salary is like 60k, rich companies like MS are employing thousands of IT workers. These are jobs that anyone here could do with a 1-2 year online technical degree.
> I don't think my employer could fill all the positions they have with equal or greater talent with only American citizens.
I assume that's because the wages are too low, since you have already described your skill level as merely above average. Unless I'm significantly misunderstanding something, Americans would be better off if your company had to pay higher wages, even if the company ended up shutting down as a result.
Speaking as an employer, I’d be a lot more picky if I was going to sponsor a candidate to make sure I could make my investment back. (We’ve never sponsored someone though)
The potentially sad thing/abuse that might come out of this is that employers will keep even higher margins from the H1 person and make them pay back that money faster. Even through some shady deal back in their home country.
$15K extra per year? Absolutely. $100k pre-payment? No. That's impractical since the visa holder may get hit by a truck or return home due to an emergency, etc.
If we’d fix the green card caps so that Indian workers could get green cards we wouldn’t see as much abuse. The system is broken, so you’re suggesting break it further? The US benefits from a lot of smart immigrants, we should be making it EASIER, not harder, to attract and retain the best talent from all over the world. The United States is ceding its leadership here and we’re going to pay for that for generations.
The policy topic is irrelevant. This is not normal reform. Looking from the outside, the United States is clearly democratically backsliding and is imposing decree upon decree of emergency measures, without a functioning parliament, with a sand-in-wheels judiciary, along with an enormous cult of personality, without any empathy towards the victims of sudden policy changes and black-bag jobs.
Do you personally know any H-1B visa holders? I can only assume that by your comment that you do not. The ones who play by the system have their entire livelihood and home held over their head while under an H-1B visa.
Punish the companies and staffing firms abusing the H-1B visas instead of creating a blanket, anti-immigration policy that will only bolster those abusing the H1-B visa, because those already abusing are the ones who have the funds to pay this fee. Companies who do things legitimately will not be able to easily absorb this fee.
I will lose friends and colleagues because of this imposed fee. This will kick out all the good people we actually want working in this country. This will further reduce good people wanting to come to this country.
If you want a good job in tech, go look at Walmart’s job board in the coming weeks. They literally have thousands of Indians doing all kinds of jobs that could easily be done by Americans. I liked my time there, and there’s lots of great people, but it felt very clear that the system was being abused.
From my datalink, above, it seems the SFBay (Sunnyvale / Castro Valley / &al) has comparable H-1Bs to Arkansas — but these employees are spread all over The States. Not sure about citizen workforce, but I'd recon' they're similarly proportioned.
It's obvious to me that the problem with H-1B visas is the same as that of undocumented workers, in that we've created a second class of people who are trapped in a system seemingly created specifically to exploit them, while simultaneously making things worse for the rest of us.
It's my opinion that anyone already here should have a path towards citizenship, or legal permanent residence. The exploitation of people needs to end, and the dignity of everyone in this country should be respected.
Of course we need to have rules, and borders that are secure. It's unreasonable to want to abolish them or close them completely.
Interesting decision. I'm on the F1 -> H1B pipeline myself as a software engineer. And my wife is a researcher working on Genetic Engineering.
Of the both of us, I've been the strong proponent for moving the US. and with each passing day, its getting harder to make a strong case for the pain, and uncertainty of moving here.
Lately everything has been counter to what one would expect from a pro-growth, accelerationist country.
But I understand where the reasoning is coming from, though.
The H-1 program started as a "correction" to the tightening of immigration rules as a whole over time.
Consider that, in 1905, my great-grandfather got on a boat in Italy, sailed across the Atlantic, arrived in New York, went through a very simple immigration process on-site, and at that point was legal to live and work in the US for as long as he wanted. He eventually naturalized as a US citizen in 1920, only needing to prove his residency and present the record of his legal entrance 15 years prior.
We're a long way from that state of affairs now. The H-1 program was developed because we weren't getting enough of an influx of skilled work due to the reduction in immigration caused by new, more-restrictive immigration laws enacted over the prior decades.
(and even with that regime, Italians/Irish/Catholics etc. were discriminated LOL).
Today, US is forced to comply with anti-racial position so it can't quite do what it really wants - to open the doors to white-immigrants but to restrict it to everyone else. This happens in the background with the way the green-card process is structured, but frankly, I think everyone is well-served if we stop this farce and just have racial quotas. US empire is failing, so there's no need to keep up such pretences today.
There's quite a bit of research on how anti-racism was a strategy adopted by the US/West after WW2 to prevent the then freed countries (starting with India ironically) from seeking revenge for the centuries of total devastation and mass violence imposed on them.
I don't think their statement implies that. Note that they said it will be the end of the American success story, not the end of the American immigrant success story.
The nature of the American success story changes over time and with that the nature of immigrant success also changes.
In the last decade or so tech, especially information tech, has been one of the biggest contributors to growth in the US economy, and first generation immigrants have been a big contributor to that. For example, first generation immigrants have founded many of the tech unicorns (although I think he overstated it a little--my searching suggests it is closed to 40-50% rather than a majority).
In earlier decades the biggest contributors at various times included manufacturing, farm technology, defense, the Gulf Coast petroleum industry, and construction.
There were certainly immigrants involved in all those but not nearly to the extent that they are in present day tech, especially at the top.
O-1 is a subjective visa which means the process is heavily gamed. Pay conferences to host your papers, pay newspapers to write meaningless articles about you, get a famous personality to sign off on your recommendation letter (I know startups used their board of advisors only for this) and on and on. It’s mostly a joke at this point. O-1 can be scrapped and you wouldn’t lose anything
The H1B really should have just been an O-1 from the beginning. Being a software or genetics engineer isn't really that interesting, we literally have millions of software engineers, and more genetics engineers than we have good jobs. If someone is truly exceptional than they deserve an O-1, and if you truly can't find any engineers in the US at your salary then maybe you should move overseas.
Might be, but that's how you end up in a situation where all the technical skill is outside the US and the products inside are a marketing layer over technical efforts.
Similar to what ended up happening with china and manufacturing.
It's not just this specific issue, honestly. Throwing wrench on all economies, that my wife and I bet on is what's horrible.
Research fund cuts on premium institutes, the wonky arrests etc.
Even yesterday, I had to make a case for why all of this certainty might be worth it. And it was not easy.
At this point though, I certainly agree that the US is not in a trajectory for appreciating external contributions.
And the requirements for O-1 aren't even that difficult. I know people who are frankly not exceptional (not mediocre either, though, of course), but have worked with lawyers to systematically fulfill the requirements of the O-1 visa. It does take time to do, and I assume the legal assistance isn't cheap, but I think a lot of people on H-1Bs who don't even consider it, could do it.
You don't have to live in a country to be hired as a contractor by a company. The only difference is that the contractor will pay taxes in the country of residence, so ultimately it's a bad deal for the US.
My mega corp employer has started an office in Mexico staffed with mostly contractors from India. Makes sense to have in the same timezone and much cheaper than our other low cost office in Texas that has mostly h1bs.
This is really smart. Plus you can truck freight across the border, you don't have to fly stuff. There are whole manufacturing cities setup on the border for these kind of setups.
Time zones are probably the biggest limiting factor, followed by remoteness. In my experience, it's really hard and pretty slow to onboard a remote worker if you haven't already worked with that person in the past. And at a startup, you don't usually have the luxury of time on your side.
> Remote work from Europe is harder in this regard, and from India... would be night shifts only.
I do not mind working all day until I pass out, and I do not mind adjusting my life to a different timezone as long as I get paid enough, and considering that USD > HUF, it is probably a no-brainer.
So yeah, hire me for full remote! Unfortunately traveling is out of the question due to disability.
If you hire someone in say Australia you would be subject to its fair work act, and its courts. You'd need to sus out the tax situation too.
What if they are a contractor? Well usually the law treats these things like ducks and asks if they quack. If it quacks like employment it is subject to that law.
I find that Employers of Record (EoR) make this a non-issue.
I work for an American startup, remotely from S. America. I'm hired according to the (extensive, and expensive) local labor laws, while my startup likely knows absolutely nothing about the intricacies of how my countries' labor laws work, the EoR just handles everything and sends the employer a bill every month.
It's not a bad thing if FAANG gets every single H1B visa. There has long been a complaint that FAANG is willing to pay 300k+/head in salaries but instead Cognizant gets the visa and pays 60k/head. If we have a limited visa pool it makes no sense to give visas to low paying employers until FAANG is completely saturated.
Do startups often hire H-1Bs? I've only worked for a few, but they didn't start hiring H-1Bs until they we're fairly sizeable and had taken on a couple rounds of funding.
Certainly the $100k fee is going to make the application much more expensive (though you can amortize it across 3 or 6 years, right?), but it was already not exactly cheap to deal with the legal costs around H-1B employees.
> Among BigTech, maybe like ~20 companies will be willing to pay this per employee.
I think that's a vast, vast underestimation. Most companies, even not-so-big ones, will continue to pay it. Maybe they'll think twice a bit more for future hires, and try harder to find someone local, which I don't think is a bad thing. Or, of course, this could just represent another factor in downward wage pressure across the board, which is bad.
I dont know of a single person here on a visa making less than 150k salary. They get the same stock, bonus and benefits that every one else gets.... it's well over 300k to have that staff member when all is said and done.
You're not adding on 100k a year, you're adding on 100k for a 3-6 year employee.
Even if that works out to 20k a year, it's pocket change in the grand scheme of things.
> it does amortize if the employee stays long enough.
And I expect workers on H-1B change jobs much less frequently than citizens & green card holders (and holders of "safer" visas), since changing jobs on an H-1B involves more risk that can end up with you being required to leave the US.
I don't think there is any reasonable evidence to suggest that most workers here on H1-B visas make more than 150k median salary, much less that they are awarded similar options as other employees.
I'm glad to hear this has been the environment you've worked in, but I don't believe it reflects the majority of skilled workers in the US on H1-B.
Even inside the tech industry, H1-B positions are often paid much lower than others within the company (even before benefits are considered).
$150,000 median yearly salary would mean H1-B positions are taking home 10k a month. I've worked with too many people in these positions to believe they're being paid reasonable wages - unless you have an extremely in-demand skillset, H1-B holders are often treated like indentured servants by huge companies/teams.
If this is public information, I'd love to know what the median salary is rather than taking your word for it on a specific area I am not familiar with.
Level 4 is also described as "This is the fully competent wage level. It is for anyone who have sufficient experience to plan and do work that requires judgement and do independent evaluation, selection, modification and skills. Usually these roles would have management or supervisory responsibilities."
Do you think that the median "Software" developer being brought over on a H1-B is Level 4? Even if you think a large number of them are L4, do you see the issue with trying to exceed a median salary at 150k if the L1 is 117k and the L4 (management or supervisory) is only 212k ... and we're using data from one of the most expensive corners of the US?
Because the person they are importing is probably brighter than you. If you're talented and smart you come to the US and likely the Bay Area (or west coast) to work in tech. Why? For the same reason that baseball players all end up in the US and Soccer players end up in Europe: they all want to play against, and with the best in the big show.
All the H1B's I have worked with are whip smart, hard working, and in general amazing people. I cant say the same for all my localy sourced colleges. The tragedy of the economics in most of these cases was that they were making the same amount of money as their peers and not more...
In a lot of cases companies are getting a Steff Curry or a Lionel Messi and paying them the average of the rest of the team...
> All the H1B's I have worked with are whip smart, hard working, and in general amazing people.
That's surprising; for me, H-1Bs have run the gamut, with a range of talent and ambition that's pretty similar to the range of talent and ambition I see with US-born workers. And I think this is perhaps the problem: your experience should be the norm, if the H-1 visa program is functioning properly, but I don't think that's the case.
Among my friends who have been on H-1Bs, they tend to be high performers, but that's just selection bias at work.
Mathematically if we collected all the brightest people from both these nations, say the top 5 percent of their population thats 100 million people in that pool to pick from.
No, his campaign pledges stated:
6. Ensure Our Legal Immigration System Puts American Workers First Republicans will prioritize Merit-based immigration, ensuring those admitted to our Country contribute positively to our Society and Economy, and never become a drain on Public Resources. We will end Chain Migration, and put American Workers first!
https://rncplatform.donaldjtrump.com/?_gl=1*18i1due*_gcl_au*...
He has been pretty good at sticking to his campaign promises.
I don't see how nearly killing the H1B program goes against that pledge. If anything it sounds like something that they could spin as following this pledge.
I think it is kind of a footnote. Many things this administration has done are illegal and struck down by the first lawsuit but later let stand by a friendly Supreme Court.
How is a president winning the election and then packing the SC corruption? It's not like people didn't have a choice, they did vote for the guy. Twice!
That's true on administrative state issues (Trump being allowed to fire people in the exec. branch). It's not clear this is a 100% guarantee for everything beyond that. (Maybe a 65% guarantee).
Apologies if this comes across as pedantic, but it isn’t a footnote. It’s part of the actual article, just included near the end in the “Looking Ahead” section. If they omitted it entirely or put it in an actual footnote, then yes I agree that would be a noteworthy omission. But it feels extreme to call it ridiculous when it’s right there in the article.
The other thing I’ll say is that even if this is struck down by the courts (which is not certain give the Supreme Court’s recent support for the president), that can take a while and this could still have a real impact on people. Many people thought the president imposing tariffs was unconstitutional, but as right now those tariffs are actually in effect. Companies that employ H-1B workers (and the workers themselves) will need to start planning for this immediately regardless of whether or not it is eventually struck down.
The last thing I’m wondering is when you say it’s ridiculous, do you just mean sloppy reporting? Or are you implying that the author has some ulterior motive? And if the latter, what do you think that ulterior motive is?
The one ruling they arguably didn’t comply with was overturned by the Supreme Court, who held the district court didn’t even have jurisdiction in the first place.
They've complied with a number of unfavorable court rulings about immigration, but precisely because that's what they're supposed to do it goes much less viral.
I do! This dynamic drives it as well. A lot of people on social media are passionately convinced that "Trump can do whatever he wants" is the anti-Trump position and "Trump's power is still limited in many ways" is therefore a pro-Trump position. I never know how to engage with that perspective other than to say it doesn't sound right to me. If you're an anti-Trump person trying to figure out how to stop him from doing bad things, it seems pretty important to know that lawsuits are a useful component.
Boy, that's going to be a popular rule. I'll bet K Street is getting their engines gassed and greased for this.
I'm deeply unhappy about H1B abuse. I've watched it happen, in front of me. It's definitely a real thing. But I also worry about the legit folks, that want to take advantage of it.
Yeah, this is one of those things where the abuses have real negative consequences for our country.
However, when used by people that we (theoretical, rational economic actors) actually want here… those truly exceptional people who may not look exceptional on paper… Well, getting those people here has been one of the magical things about the United States of America, so far.
Messing with that is dangerous. It needs to be done, but it needs to be done very surgically.
They are, unless you have the ear of our current President God-King and can get an exception.
"The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States. "
I have seen an endless stream of unqualified people scamming and abusing H-1B, O-1, EB-1, and EB-2 programs — you name it. I can understand why the average American might come to resent these programs.
On the other hand, I know many highly talented immigrants in the USA whose contributions to society would be missed if they just couldn’t focus entirely on their work - let alone if they were kept out of the country altogether.
My point: They have identified the right problem (H-1B abuse), but the proposed fix is too drastic and undermines sustainable trust between immigrants and the country. I’d like to be proven wrong, though.
Its a proclamation, not an executive order. This is important to keep in mind because Congress granted explicit statutory authorization to the President in the Immigration and Nationality Act 212(f) and is unlikely to be cut down by the courts for this reason:
"Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."
Also interestingly, it seems to only explicitly impose restrictions on entry into the US. But most visa holders are already in the country, and atleast according to this proclamation, they'd be unaffected.
People seem to be missing the part where DHS reserves the right to allow exceptions for any company they desire. Now they have another way to play favorites.
One thing that really pisses me off about the whole populist anti-immigration stance is how thankless, hypocritical and selfish the whole thing is:
People want to avoid negative effects from immigration (cultural/language/crimerate)- fine.
But are those people acknowledging how much economical growth was driven by migrant labor over the last half century? Hell no. Would the average alt-righter be willing to sacrifice any fraction of all those compounded gains? Absolutely not- every dollar of tax is too much, even to pay a fraction of the damage that is and will be caused by them (=> energy price/co2 taxation).
As a self-identifying moderate patriot, selfish complainers of that ilk seem a worse plague on their nation than the immigrants they keep whining about.
This is an oversimplification and a pretty extreme case of over-categorizing people into groups. People who have problems with immigration aren't automatically alt-right. People who have problems with immigration understand that immigration has also historically provided economic growth - those aren't mutually exclusive things.
If you're worried that people might be mixing you up with the virulent xenophobes, perhaps its time to do something about those virulent xenophobes because there are a lot of them and they exert a disproportionate amount of political power while relying on arguments that are frequently specious or outright dishonest.
Now, you likely feel 'but I'm not like that, so why is it my problem?' and the answer is twofold. One, unless you actively push back on those people they're going to drag you down with them into a moral and legal pit, and two, because (unlike immigrants) you can vote and donate and lobby. There's a lot of weird stuff going on in the country right now, as I'm sure you're aware. It'd be nice to just look at policy in the abstract and deal with things compartmentaly, but there are times you have to step back and look at the bigger picture.
Thank you for the advice, but I don't worry about that, and I do not have that feeling at all. I don't experience any conflation with xenophobes in my real life. I find them repugnant, and vote against them and speak against them, except where we incidentally align. I am 90% liberal leaning (US liberal).
The fact of experiencing negative things that happen to be related to immigration (or employment/contracting) policy does not make you a xenophobe, generally speaking. Cultures can sometimes clash and economics have concrete effects on the American Dream - it's an unfortunate reality, but it is reality.
I'm not saying that everyone critical of immigration is a selfish hypocrite, but "mainstream" alt-right (even/especially european flavors) appears that way to me.
I had a former employer with an Indian subsidiary for this very purpose. The problem is that there is no loyalty to the company and it becomes a revolving door of inexperienced people who couldn't get into H-1B. Always fun when they lie you about testing a feature that you haven't implemented yet. Incidentally, they also introduced ransomware into the entire corporate network (domestic IT was also barely competent).
They do that already, lots of US tech companies have SWEs outside of the US. With the new policy, it will add incentive to do it even more. Companies will have to either lower the hiring bar or hiring offshore.
I don't believe it... I think companies just aren't hiring people (or maybe they aren't offering enough pay), not that qualified domestic candidates don't exist. But I could be wrong.
Having interviewed hundreds of software engineers, I’m not convinced that the talent is out there but just hiding. Nor do I believe talent is fungible.
Pulling in smart people from all over the world is good for America.
I’m sure there are US citizens who would have been better candidates if we had a better education system or grew talent. Maybe this will encourage that, but it’s going to take a long time.
But if they're hiding, you wouldn't have interviewed them in the first place, right? I don't see how this is comparable.
All the smart engineers that I know absolutely struggle to find jobs. There are regularly job threads here on HN or freelance subreddits and other places, that are chocked full of great people desperate for work.
But maybe that's really just a small fraction of the people, I can't know for sure.
you don't believe it why ? you look at American education system and you think it produces multitudes of talented engineers? is it so inconceivable that we need a lot of smart people and we don't produce enough of them locally ?
So let's have a thought experiment. We can agree, even if the US primary education system is crap, that the university system is world class. After all, people wouldn't come from other countries to study abroad in the US if it were not competitive.
So our CS graduates take the same courses, study the same material, and pass on the same grading scales as these international students from countries like China, India, etc that have come to attend American universities. Therefore it seems unlikely that they are categorically incompetent due to a flaw in their education, even if we make some allowance for them not studying as rigorously as their international peers for whatever reason.
However, if the news can be believed, we're now seeing a significant number of CS graduates who are unable to find employment. This is coming on the tail end of a bunch of highly publicized layoffs.
The notion that there "Aren't Americans to do these jobs" just doesn't track. I'm sure that there are lots of corporate executives who are saying that there aren't enough qualified Americans to do these jobs, but they're saying that because it's in their best economic interest to say that, not because it's actually true.
there are too many CS grads without experience who are not very good. We have world class universities, by no means that implies that every new CS graduate is world class. A median CS graduate most likely cannot pass a basic interview in CS
H1B hires are already expensive. Most large tech companies spend quite a lot on legal services.
The assumption that a lot of people make, apparently including Trump, is that companies are hiring H1B for no good reason. Or maybe because they think it's cheaper? It's not. In virtually all cases, H1B hires are because there simply aren't any suitable American applicants with the necessary skills.
Yeah, I don't understand how people can be arguing that there aren't enough Americans to do this work when we've just gotten off a round of mass layoffs all throughout the tech sector and there are stories about CS grads being unable to find work now.
It's transparently obvious that the draw of these employees isn't skill, it's cost. The bottom/middle rung in this field is being hollowed out when it comes to domestic hiring because companies don't care who fills the position so long as they can keep the salary low and the employee locked in, and H-1Bs are the perfect fit for that.
In my experience it is actually largely because H1B holders are locked in to their employers, so the balance of power is incredibly favorable for employers.
There are plenty of American citizens and permanent residents with the necessary skills, just not the willingness to put up with bullshit from B-tier employers.
Because H-1B workers had the ability to demand higher compensation via sponsorship and relocation to the US. Employers could say "no we won't sponsor you" but these workers are in demand due to their technical skills and could counter with "then I'll join another company that will".
If you remove the option for sponsorship then these workers will still be working their jobs because they're talented and in demand, they'll just be doing it from their home country instead for lower compensation.
That's a misguided assumption that doesn’t hold up in practice because it assumes H-1B workers were "brought over" based on employer need for a domestic worker. The need isn't for a domestic worker, its for a skilled worker and the skilled workers want to work in the US because it yields higher compensation and opportunity.
Many H-1B workers request sponsorship from employers despite having the ability to work from local offices because they have in-demand skills that give the leverage to ask for it knowing that it will result in better opportunities.
Tech companies are extremely motivated to have people working in person in their Bay Area offices. That's why you see the extraordinary numbers that you do on levels.fyi along with the insistence on RTO. But no matter how high they get, these numbers will never meet highly capable Americans' lifestyle demands, because the Bay Area doesn't have and will never build the housing or commuting infrastructure to support them in that quantity. Wage gains go straight into real estate.
The question is, if tech companies can't have their Bay Area offices filled with the caliber of people they want (who will accept being forever-renters or super-commuters), will they relent on US remote / small sites, or will they instead try to shift their trillion-dollar Bay Area office cultures to their Bangalore sites? My money's on the latter.
Silicon Valley's big H1B employers also have international engineering sites. US teams tend to pull in their favorites from the international sites, and the international sites can use the possibility of relocation as an incentive.
They do already. British Columbia is a really good place to open up shop because it's on the same time zone as Silicon Valley. Many companies have done so. I'm surprised there haven't been more tbh, but maybe now with this change we'll see an acceleration.
Of course it depends on the nature of the business but push that too far and you can lock yourself out of projects that require work to be performed on US soil.
I work for a very small company and we've seen by that stipulation a couple of times on anything _remotely_ close to defense/MIC/security.
And the administration can tighten those screws further if it desires.
(I am the only H1B in the history of the company, now a citizen. It would have been impossible to have taken this path with this alleged financial burden)
Canada is going through a bit of a moment in scaling back relatively unskilled immigration as it became clear a there were heaps of scam colleges bringing in folks to get useless "hotel management" degrees etc, but IMO there will be sustained interest in Canada in continuing to have eased immigration pathways for real engineering talent.
Brazil and Canada will absorb a lot of big tech headcount. Google et al are already moving lots of headcount to both countries. This will accelerate it, even if it’s struck down
this news is tied with the tax code corrections... All R&D work in a foreign country is to be depreciated over 15 years, it can immediately be depreciated for an American worker.
The cost of hiring in the US versus elsewhere is already greater than $100k for the type of tech firm that can just open an international office. I took the base salaries of Google SWEs on levels.fyi for NYC, London, Bengaluru, and Toronto, multiplied them by the standard 1.4 for overhead, and realized the US is already significantly more expensive than most developed countries, let alone the Global South. Companies clearly value employing in America despite the cost.
This is going to kill H1B and immigration from countries like India, China and others for skilled workers. Even though $100K isn't a lot considering the overall investment that goes into hiring a full time employee, employers wouldn't risk that kind of money apart from all the document processing they have to. Maybe big tech will hire a few hundred every year but others won't even bother.
> Maybe big tech will hire a few hundred every year ...
A few hundred? All of the tech companies I've worked for are > 50% Indians in the US. Especially in big tech. I could be wrong, but my understanding is there there is not enough software developers in the US, hence the temp workers. Is there expectation that the demand will drop?
It is, however, a great opportunity for Canada and Western Europe to snatch all those people who now aren't able to come to the United States.
I know for a fact that multinational companies are expanding in exactly those areas (plus India) for exactly the reason that it's become very difficult to hire and move people to the US.
Those workers aren't paying taxes in the United States, and obviously the companies hiring people outside of the US aren't going to hire people for those positions in the United States.
You think immigration in Western Europe is easy? It depends where, for one thing. It's getting more onerous and there are pressures to make it more so. How good is your French? More importantly, how might a 60K Euro/yr salary feel when you're paying 2-2500 a month in rent to be near work ?
Canadian salaries are also notoriously low in tech.
US is the outlier. Canadian tech salaries are much higher than European, and when working remotely for a US company the compensation overlaps the US salary bands very substantially.
However the ceiling in the US is so much higher that it still makes sense for many to tolerate the chaos and uncertainty of moving here for work.
Exactly. It's an adventure of sorts, and if you're in tech you're in a small percentage of the world population that can gain some degree of wealth. A lot in some cases. It's a risk that's attracted people to the US for centuries. Many people, and I'll admit to being one of them, hope to get some savings, and then move to one of those low wage European countries with a better quality of life!
Yeah it's even worse than that. These big cos will be incentivized to move whole teams out of the US since it will be easier to hire from other countries for offices in Paris / Zurich / Warsaw / etc.
Isn't that already the case, though? Offshoring has been a thing for decades, but companies clearly prefer to have employees on site, in the US, if possible.
Yes, this new fee will make that more expensive to do, but I'm not convinced it will no longer be worth it for most companies.
Right. The current problem with H-1B is that we end up with a wide range of talent, ambition, and work ethic among the people brought in on that visa. In my experience, the total mix is not much different from the range you'd find in US-born workers. But we should be granting visas to the best and the brightest to come here.
I wouldn't mind a new policy that would raise the median "quality" of the H-1B visa holder, even if that meant the total number is lower. Sure, Canada and Western Europe can take the mediocre people we'd no longer be granting visas to, but so what.
But this $100k policy is not going to increase the median quality of candidates. I actually don't think it's going to have a huge affect on things; it's just a token effort to "do something" that Trump's base will eat up, and he'll declare it a success even if there's no improvement or it makes things worse.
Everyone is discussing the merits and downsides of this, but I'm yet to see the obvious be pointed out: it's extortion.
It's interesting to read all the analysis in the comments, but I think people are giving far too much credit to the admin in terms of having considered the impacts, the effects, some kind of desired direction for things to move, etc.
It's really much simpler than that: the mob boss has to get a cut of the action. One clue is the "fee" being annual, not one-time. Another tell is that there are no details as to what the collected money will go towards.
By all accounts those arguments were pretty correct, no? The tariff rollout was delayed multiple times, changed multiple times. What we have now doesn't very much look like what Trump announced back in March/April.
And the tariffs may disappear soon, depending on SCOTUS. Not that I depend on SCOTUS doing the right thing anymore, but I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised on this one.
Huh? What we have now looks almost exactly like what Trump announced back in April, except for the (admittedly important) USMCA exemption. What other differences do you perceive?
The TACO president doesn't just back away from a bad idea without announcing he got something in return. He'll declare exemptions or delays for companies or industries that kowtow to him in some way - maybe he'll demand these companies make contributions to "non-woke" engineering universities or remove "DEI hires" from their boards, who knows.
Unrelated, but I don't get the "taco" thing. I'm Mexican— it's a head-scratcher that people use the name of our food as an insult to Trump. He doesn't look like a taco, and the acronym is a sentence, not an adjective/phrase, so it doesn't make much sense spelled out in most contexts.
RINO republicans don't look like rhinoceros. That the word makes no sense by itself means that you'd have to ask what they meant by it. If the acronym were "DUMB" or "CLOWN" or whatever then I don't think it'd stand out as much.
Also, you're right that it's often used in a way that wouldn't make sense grammatically if it were written out, but that's true for most acronyms I think; e.g. JPEG or GIF.
"Look at this funny Graphics Interchange Format I just sent you!"
taco is an acronym that stands for the phrase trump always chickens out, it was coined or popularized earlier this year when Trump backed off of The Liberation Day tariff stuff when the bond market got nervous.
Eh, Trump's administration is so cravenly corrupt and incompetent in every facet and manner that I think it will happen, purely because it's one of those "throw 'em a bone" tactics for the commoners. It's the same reason the aggressive ICE actions have redoubled.
And FWIW, I think the H1B program, like the TFW program in Canada, is outrageously corrupt and has zero legitimacy, and the laughable foundations that people use to justify it -- namely a completely unsubstantiated labour shortage -- is such a ridiculous lie that it deserves to be obliterated. It is a way for the ultra-rich to stomp on worker rights and compensation.
> I think the H1B program [...] has zero legitimacy
That's demonstrably false, even just by my own experience with people, so not sure I can take what you're saying seriously.
Yes, there's corruption and abuse, but I've also worked with some fantastic, excellent, smart, ambitious, hard-working people on H-1B visas. They would not have been in the US without it.
I've also worked with some mediocre fools who were on H-1B visas. That's the problem we should be focusing on, and there's no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I think there's a lot of visible frustration (and sometimes racism) in tech discussions online, due to the bad economic climate. This is visible across different platforms. In the past year, I've seen massive rise in people making outlandish claims like this. I expect the trend will grow and soon they'll find a new scapegoat.
I'm a little bit confused by the text of the proclamation. It says people outside the country have to pay a $100k fee. Isn't an F1 student on OPT inside the country and not subject to the fee? Or are they required to leave the country to apply and are subject to it.
The proclamation gives me the impression that foreign students are exempt from the fee.
They are not directly affected when applying for h1b but think about it what this means to both employers and students. It's a signal that immigration policy can change on a whim. For employers, hiring foreigners has always been cumbersome and now it's even worse due to the uncertainty. For students who starts working on h1b, you are in "immigration jail" in the US for years
Anyone on H1B who is working in US or is arriving into US for work will have to pay. F1 on OPT is F1 Visa and not on H1B. If they choose to get a H1B at the same time, if they use it to work then they have to pay.
I guess you didnt read the proclamation... 100k payment is only enforced at entry. F1 students when they are ready to apply for h1b are already inside the US
Is it really at expense of universities? From what I understand, most are getting Master Degrees but very few are doing research. I've seen plenty of H-1B coworkers with Master Degrees but very few did research, it was just extra computer science courses.
Majority of CS/EE/MBA type grad programs across all universities are heavily enrolled by foreign students. Most of them end up paying out of state fee.
This is a significant chunk of revenue for many colleges to keep their budget in shape.
Even in conservative states, lots of colleges are reliant on this stream of income. A loss of this stream is going to put a strain on them to balance their budget, or seek more help from govt.
Yes, 100%. Also, many universities will find it impossible to recruit new faculty as most Ph.D. students are international students who end up working in American universities.
This is already the case with Indians and possibly Chinese. The waiting time for h1b to green card for Indians is several decades right now and maybe 5-10 years for Chinese. Things might get better if the climate discourages future immigration from these countries but there's already a big backlog in place.
> India was the largest beneficiary of H-1B visas last year, accounting for 71% of approved beneficiaries
Having worked with the recent generation of Indians, I can safely say this can be a good thing. Baseline morality and work ethics for many (not all, but many) in the recent generation of Indians are so low. It’s a generational shift that I can tell. Get rich quick, wannabe try too hard to fit in and have fun with wild Wild West mindset that just has a completely different tone from earlier generations of hard working Indians who helped build some of the major products we use today.
That is an intellectually dishonest argument. You are invoking whataboutism knowing full well it doesn’t serve anyone well.
These kids that come from often wealthy or upper middle class families with faith and cultural grounding would be far better off in their life trajectory (and country as a whole with brain drain) if they stayed back, led innovation in their own country, and pushed their corrupt bureaucratic government ecosystem to change. Instead of opting for a mediocre hedonistic lifestyle in the west where they know they have no lasting stability (mind you it is 100+ years wait time for many in the current immigration process to get green card), often get stuck working in the same company and not able to move, can’t start things on their own again because of visa rules.
No one wins in this in the long run. Except maybe some corporations.
Yeah, "those others are less ethical than us Americans" doesn't pass muster in 2025. Reminds me of the anti-immigration arguments from the days bygone, that the immigrants coming from the corrupt authoritarian countries will vote against democracy in the US. While it might be even true(!) voting against democracy certainly came from the natives first, fast and furious.
Relations between the US and India have been strained recently because India refuses to implement sanctions on Russia for the war in Ukraine. I wonder if there is a geopolitical motive behind the timing of this decision.
It's downright scary working with indians in a highly regulated industry. "Can we pretty please (with a cherry on top) [do something that bends or breaks federal regulations on national security or public safety]?" No, we fucking can't. Couple that with the occasional browbeating or hierarchical scolding.
The executive order says that companies will be exempted based on discretion of executive branch. So it won't apply to any company that kisses the ring.
This insures that tech and finance get all the visas. A lot of things like rural medicine gets staffing through h1b sponsored physicians and likewise for post-docs and researchers. If this gets implemented across the board, a lot of science is going to disappear and a lot of medical care (especially outside of cities) is going to get a lot worse.
I like the idea of an auction, but why would we not charge a significant application fee? It ensures the company is serious about the position, and it raises money citizens won't have to pay. A high fee/tax seems like a win-win
I have worked for many US based startups, all remotely. Timezone difference (I am in India) is a big issue unless the company is very well structured to work asynchronously.
Companies hiring top talent may still hire with a $100K additional charge but even at $250K - 400K salaries, this is a lot of additional cost.
Perfect number to make H1Bs a tool that is out of reach for startups but still meaningful for large entrenched corporations. Nailed it. Maybe they can even waive the fee if you give the US government 10% of your company.
H-1B is the default visa for international faculty hires. You can get it in a few months with relatively little effort. O-1 is more expensive, takes longer to get, and requires more effort from the applicant. Then there is the subjective approval process that involves a degree of risk, and in the end, you get a slightly inferior visa.
Green cards are almost useless for hiring, as the processing times are too long. "We would like to offer you this position, but conditionally. We still need a year or two to handle the bureaucracy, and we can't say for sure if we are actually allowed to hire you. Please don't accept another position meanwhile."
+1 This will also reduce demand for these programs from international students - make tuition more expensive for locals. Asking to consider 2nd/3rd order effect seems like a bit too much for a median hn poster though
Good, but this still doesn't fix the flood of OPT workers (baby h1b's) that are crowding out Americans from getting jobs. I know, my company put out reqs for full stack devs, got hundreds of OPT candidates and are hiring them instead of domestic workers. You can't even discriminate against them as that'd be illegal. Good job America. They all have advanced US degrees, paying little for undergrad in India, while Americans are bankrupt from their undergrad. Unable to compete. The fact that they'll accept lower wages so they can upgrade to h1b's later is icing on the cake.
This will only drive jobs offshore and reduce the H1B population. It doesn’t solve any problems.
This is literally the dumbest administration this country has ever seen. Between tariffs and immigration and now this, it’s like they don’t even know what the consequences of their actions are.
Put another way, if all the H-1B jobs really can be offshored quickly and easily the way so many Indians and anti-Trump people here and elsewhere confidently predict, *that would have happened already*.
Are trumpers/those who like trumps policies really this stupid, even those on tech forums? You seem to have immense difficulty understanding that previously it didn't have this artificial cost of 100k. Previously they had a smoother path with h1bs, now that it has been made artificially difficult onshoring is much more attractive.
There’s a fundamental difference in talent. H1b talent is often upper class scions from India or China. Offshore talent has always been leveraged for support or staff aug.
It’s entirely possible some H1b’s would happily pay the $100k if they had a guaranteed visa for 5-10+ years, but the vast majority will simply go home and work remotely.
But I believe the effect of this extortion will be a brain drain on U.S. fortune 1000 companies and that will push those same companies to build off shore offices, completely avoiding the administration’s goofiness.
There's a ton of abuse, feigned work and loopholes, and rules that undermine the law and also make foreign workers a 2nd class.
Amongst other elements that should be fixed:
* Taxation without representation (i'm suggesting adding the latter, not removing the former)
* The H1B worker must be paid at or above the higher of the median rate at the company for the role or at the employee's request by an independent valuation for the role, this ensures workers are not being paid less
* The fee should be prorated, monthly, over the 6 year span of the H1B, allowing the company to spread it over time and manage cashflow
* The H1B worker should only be contractually required to stay for the average tenure of the role in the industry (which afaik is 18mo right now)
* The H1B worker should be able to easily port their H1B over to another employer. The new employer must pay the fee, prorated, on the H1B, the prior employer will be reimbursed prorated unused fees
That's the L1 though. With an H1B you can get another employer, but the problem is that it has to be done in a narrow period of time, and the other employer has to be willing to sponsor the H1B.
It is incredible to me that there are hundreds of US-centric comments and yours is the only one I saw who recognized the benefit for basically every other country people want to live and work in.
And I've talked to a few Canadians, despite the Liberal party winning, there is real push for Canada to severely restrict immigration and that is currently happening.
As far as I can tell, the push against immigration in Canada is mainly around unskilled workers (which a lot of TFW are) and asylum seekers, but we will see how this pans out.
They're just turning the knob down a little bit because it was pretty high last few years and caused some supply side issues in housing and healthcare.
I'm sure Canada will gladly accept highly skilled engineers.
Without foreign workers, there may not even be big US tech companies as we know them. I really wish we could have these talents in Europe to boost our economy. This would create more jobs and more wealth ultimately.
We have the talent in Europe, they are just paid peanuts. If moving to the US was not an option, the balance on the labour market would be even worse (for the said talent).
Seems to me the salient part of this is not being discussed:
“The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.”
I think one important distinction that I haven’t seen mentioned here much is that there is a big difference between handing out h1bs to cognizant employees vs students who did masters programs in the US and are working as direct hires in faang companies. In the latter case, these workers have already invested tens if not hundreds of thousands into the US as well as many years before even making a dime. This cohort is much more incentivized to stay in the US and contribute over the long term. They are also not ‘abusing’ the h1b program at all, because they are getting paid the exact wages as their US counterparts, unlike those at BigTechConsulting.
Smarter policy would be to looking into targeting the actual exploitation, where it actually exists (if it’s deemed that the externalities are truly negative), like the outsourcing to cognizant. Of course, we are living under the rule of probably the most inept president in any of our lifetimes; so he doesn’t act methodically, only reflexively to once again reduce US competitiveness over the long term.
And not to belabor this point, but he’s doing such one-dimensional math here by thinking of the immigration scenario as zero sum. Trump has clearly lost the plot. What he is failing to consider is that the US is in a long term ideological war with our biggest enemy China, and our best hand in this game is stealing their best and brightest to live in the west and have them to learn and love western values; which they will use to influence their friends, families, and social media circles back at home.
I’ve seen this happen with just about every friend of mine who has immigrated from China to the US and the effect that it has on their immediate network carries significant weight at shifting their perspective. Xi is not popular at home, and the west should be doing what it can to increase domestic Chinese instability in the same way they’re doing to us (very successfully). Rather, he is hell bent on unifying them to hate America.
There’s an ideological war happening and our president is not only too stupid to play ball but he’s also interested in giving up the hand of cards we already have. He is a true and utter moron and it’s hard to understate my level of disgust.
The actual proclamation [1] is very narrow: a $100k surcharge on new H-1B petitions for workers outside the US. It’s a one-time hit tied to the petition. It does not say “annual.” It does not drag in renewals or transfers for people already in status.
Boundless is technically right that a $100k fee exists, but the piece glosses over the narrow scope and leans into speculation. It frames the fee like an ongoing tax on every H-1B, which just isn’t what the proclamation says. The difference matters: a one-time petition fee is brutal enough, but calling it annual misstates the policy and inflates the impact.
> Section 1. Restriction on Entry. (a) Pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000 — subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (c) of this section. This restriction shall expire, absent extension, 12 months after the effective date of this proclamation, which shall be 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2025.
I don't see your point, the section describes a restriction on "entry into the United States". Most H1b visa holders are already in the US so this doesn't apply to them.
Except lots of people travel outside of the US for tourism, business, to see family, due to family emergencies, or - critically for H1Bs - to renew their visa.
It's not just for new petitions, it's a requirement for _entry_ into the US. So, someone on an _existing_ H1, just traveling out of the country means you need to pay $100K to re-enter the US.
With how inconsistent and on and off this administration has been I expect this will probably never happen, or there will be exemptions to this for every company that this was most abused for and just sucks up to the president.
Until anything actually happens there's no reason to take this president at his word.
AFAICT, the people that promoted him that way often had mutually incompatible interpretations of what he was saying that happened to fit their own biases coming in, which they felt like Trump was agreeing with.
And as the rubber of vague, contradictory, and incoherent statements hit the road of substantive action, that impression became a lot less common.
This might be one of the smarter things this administration has done/is doing. It will cut down on fraud, and ensure the position they're hiring for isn't just some mid-level engineer. H1B applications should be a source of tax revenue, beyond standard taxes.
I sort of wish it had been done 15 years ago but better late then never.
I keep hearing how reduction of the H-1(b) cap will keep singular talent from coming to the US. If you're genuinely hiring the best in the world for a critical role in a billion dollar project, $100k is a rounding error.
Judging from the reaction, it's almost like what the program really gets used for is to replace domestic workers with desperate, barely-qualified foreigners.
A 100k fee is well within the territory of killing job prospects for skilled foreign students graduating from US universities.
What percentage of the AI labs are staffed by either foreign workers or second/third generation immigrants? Look at the composition of high achieving high school students- almost certainly of Asian or Indian descent, certainly many belonging to families of recent immigrants. The pipeline this EO disrupts is immense.
$25K annual fee per H1B worker as opposed to $100K one-time would have made more sense. It would have made even more sense to have employers compete (within their own sector, such as tech, aerospace, etc.) such that whoever offers the highest salary will get the H1B worker.
This isn't about what makes sense. This is about finding a punchy number that sounds big and makes Trump's base happy. "$100k fee (that covers 3/6 years)" sounds more impressive than "$33k per year" or "$17k per year", so that's what they went with.
Ultimately this isn't going to do anything to reform the H-1B program; this is just trump "doing something", which he'll claim as a success (and his base will eat up), even if it does nothing or makes things worse.
I think it's actually per visa. I know the linked article says per year, but other sources I'm glancing at seem to indicate it's an application/renewal fee. Actually, it's not even clear that you have to pay again to renew after 3 years; it might just be the initial fee.
"the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000"
It sounds like it applies every time you leave and enter, provided you are a nonimmigrant alien on H1B (which they all are).
Why within a sector? make everyone compete, and we'll find if any local workers want the high paying jobs. The H1B count can be increased to cover jobs that locals don't want even at high salaries.
Because there are some H1B workers that come over as translators or other non-tech professions. Like if you need a translator that speaks Swahili for some NGO it's way easier to hire a native Swahili speaker than possibly finding a qualified American that also speaks Swahili.
I do find it interesting that these trillion dollar companies can't find domestic workers, at their level of wealth they should simply be forced to pay for the education of Americans to create a funnel of workers rather than exporting this societal need to other nations.
There are a bunch of H1Bs working as teachers in my medium sized midwestern city, making around $50k. Then there are a bunch in the healthcare sectors making from $50k to $500k. I actually feel like they are legitimate reasons they are there, very difficult to get good healthcare workers in the midwest since no one good wants to go there.
There are lots of places that are hours to days drive away from those two. Midwest is a big place, so what are you talking about? I guess you could say the talent is concentrated in a few places, but lots of places in the midwest with terrible hospitals.
There is a big problem with ethnic nepotism and ghost jobs. I have been struggling to get younger people in my network hired anywhere despite solid resumes. Continuing to issue H1Bs in the current job market was bananas.
It's a severely under-reported aspect of this issue that a troubling amount of times, the issue isn't that Americans want too much money or just don't want to work, the issue is there are no Americans qualified to do the work you need to do who are looking for a job.
The Hyundai factory exposed this. The VISA'd employees (or non-VISA'd? I don't remember the details offhand) were only there in the first place overseeing the project because they literally could not find anyone qualified to do the fucking job in Georgia.
If there literally are no Americans (instead of just, no Americans at the price point you are willing to pay), then $100k is a small price to pay to enable your business.
Last I checked, Software Developers did not have a 0% unemployment statistic, so clearly there are American software developers that could be employed in those jobs, but FAANG still hires an H1B. Gee, I wonder why.
Maybe it's because H1Bs are cheaper than an American. Maybe it's because H1Bs cannot say no without risking being deported.
This claim that "No no no, every H1B was fine and totally could not even possibly be replaced by American labor" flies in the face of the actual reality of the tech industry. Microsoft can't find an American to write code? Bullshit, they just fired tons of them.
The fact that it is less abused in other industries should not be used to paper over the games the tech industry play. FAANG have been found multiple times to be collaborating to suppress tech industry wages. This is just another way they do that.
>could not find anyone qualified to do the fucking job in Georgia.
There was not a single American anywhere in the entire united states that could do things to build a car factory? Really? They couldn't fly someone out from Texas, or Michigan? Am I supposed to believe we don't have any human beings in the entire united states that know how to build part of a factory?
Wow. Tech companies must b pissed. After donating millions (even 24k gold apple totems!) the orange man turns around and punches them in the pocket book! At least he didnt put a tax on options vesting
Just learned that there are about 15k doctors on h1b and if a good chunk of them leave it’s going to be disastrous for the fly over states. Hospitals are already shutting down and much will only increase once the Medicaid cuts take effect. And on top of that the visa issue will absolutely dent healthcare
Legal human trafficking was good for capitalism (not for the trafficked or for US workers). Good for the capitalists' economy.
This just made it a little bit harder for american capitalists. No doubt there are nationalist concerns but also national security concerns behind this decision.
H1B's are a invaluable part of our communities and America's immense capital and soft power. However there is also a ~7% unemployment rate of new CS/CE grads. (Not including underemployment). This is after tech firms begging schools to reallocate vast amounts of public money into teeing up young tech employees. With the vast availability of a global workforce, there is little incentive to train junior workers.
Of course much of this could be solved by narrowing the gap between the lowest earnings and highest earnings workers so that the tech career path wasn't so high of stakes. Anybody working should have the opportunity to launch into a dignified adult life. There must be a conversation ultimately about where the vast profits of tech firms should sit within our economy.
Throw away the H1B, introduce streamlined high skill immigration to the US. Top 1% of talent from all over the world should be able to move in under 2 weeks.
The first country that cracks this will have streets paved with gold.
The keyword to search for is prevailing wage. https://flag.dol.gov/programs/prevailingwages is apparently under maintenance Also it's mot just a number, it depends on the jobs location, type and level.
Defund universities, kick out high skilled foreigners... This guy's doing everything in his power to turn the US into a bigoted impoverished backwater wasteland
This debate is always discussed from an immigration angle, but if companies truly have an issue with "finding skilled workers", another organic solution should be to try to "skill the workers", i.e. making education more affordable. Maybe that's something these 100k fees could be put towards?
As a european I welcome this change and hope european countries are able to respond by lowering the barriers for talented people to come here.
Come to europe! The taxes are higher, and you have to pick your country wisely depending on what your goals are, but the politics are nicer and you often get healthcare
The issue is race, not immigration, as it was with the Jews pre-WW2. Europe would probably be even worse than the US in the long run, given that nativism would run even stronger.
The issues are philosophical ultimately, and the theorists of Liberalism simply haven't stepped up to the challenge.
I ran into a guy making double six figures for like the last 7 years at a known public tech company. He was literally doing the most basic DevOps (Terraform). Nothing fancy. Zero ability to program. No willingness or desire to learn programming. He was an H1B. That blew me away. How is it possible that you have a guy in the US for 10 years who never bothered learning to code doing a 200K / year job. The abuse of H1B is crazy. He told me he had "tried to find a job" but "they all require programming." I am not even a tech background and I have learned to program. Completely insane imo. This was stuff you could teach a highschool student, no degree required.
as a long-time programmer, sysadmin/sre/devops is a whole different mindset and skillset. i would be neither willing nor able to do that guy's job; i don't fault him for not wanting to do mine. clearly since he keeps being paid his $200k/year he is delivering a lot more than $200k worth of stability and uptime to the company, no coding required.
That doesn't explain why it's abuse, though. How does the company benefit by paying this foreigner $200k + benefits + immigration fees/legal bills compared to hiring a US citizen? Abuse is e.g. bringing in cheap foreign labor at below US market rate. This is not that.
fwiw, which is nothing. If I saw one of my employees write lazy slacker nonsense like this, I'd fire them. I read some of your other posts in this thread, perhaps the issues with the world are closer to you than you realize?
That seems needlessly antagonistic on your part. I'm not advocating for his way of doing things, but the person described has clearly decided it's more in his economic interest to maintain a comfortable fiefdom than to engineer himself out of it. Having automated myself out of a few jobs in the past without much of a reward, I can't say his actions are irrational.
This should increase political donations, cryptocurrency bribe purchases, and social compliance among tech companies dependent on H1B, whether it becomes policy or not. For that reason, you can expect no resolution before the mid-term elections, and a corresponding race to secure H1B’s before any policy change.
It’s too bad policy won’t actually track economic needs or fairness; it’s mainly to drive the expansion of the political franchise.
Check out this Q&A session hosted by Manifest’s principal immigration attorney happening on Monday! Incredible resource to help prepare https://luma.com/xc2wbio7?from=embed
So, essentially, startups will never be able to hire fresh graduate students again (masters/phd). This means that the best and brightest individuals who have made it to the top US institutions after winning numerous rounds of global talent filtering will be deported.
In 1996 I was at a top US university getting a master's and was the only white dude in most of the classes. There was a probability class that could have been taught in Mandarin if it hadn't been for me.
Not none, but very few in the stem fields (less than 40% from my estimates).
Why would you pursue a PhD with a 25k/year stipend when you can just start a near 6-figure job and start paying off your student debt?
Only the ones with financial freedom or commitment to research take the PhD pill. Or when you go through a recession and you want to delay the entry to the job searching market.
This is exactly the problem with the system. If there are tons of foreigners willing to get grad degrees and work for a small salary increase over a bachelor’s, US students are not sufficiently incentivized to do graduate studies.
I'd be curious to know the stats. My personal experience: I interviewed tons of candidates in the past few years for a big tech company, a small fraction are US citizens (at least from what I can tell from their resume).
Some research (okay, okay, I used Claude) indicates that "In summary, while Congress provides the statutory authority and mandates certain specific fees, the specific amounts for most H1B fees are set through the regulatory process by DHS/USCIS based on cost recovery principles and activity-based costing analysis."
Further, "The core authority comes from the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) section 286(m), 8 U.S.C. 1356(m), which authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security to set fees for adjudication services "at a level that will ensure recovery of the full costs of providing all such services".
That fees for providing
adjudication and naturalization services may be
set at a level that will ensure recovery of the
full costs of providing all such services, includ-
ing the costs of similar services provided with-
out charge to asylum applicants or other immi-
grants. Such fees may also be set at a level that
will recover any additional costs associated with
the administration of the fees collected.
Ya gotta admit, $100,000 per person will definitely ensure recovery of the full costs of providing all such services.
I imagine there's a very good argument that the fee is intentionally excessive, and I also imagine that the Supreme Court will decide after a lengthy court battle that the President is due extensive deference in this.
Congress has largely written itself out of immigration policy. It's paid for by fees set by the executive, which means Congress does not have the power of the purse.
yes it's legal. New admin is doing more background, investigations and immigration enforcement, which costs more. Taxes and fees are the price you pay for civilization!
This is going to exacerbate the already kicked off reverse brain drain. University applications have fallen off the cliff this year and now with this there is no incentive for folks to come to the US. All this talent going back will cause enormous opportunity for wealth creation in India and other countries.
To be fair, these generally are used to skirt hiring Americans at market price. I've personally written a few explanations on how "no American could ever fill this role" for a very standard product engineering role.
I think most people could agree that H1Bs allocated to Wipro, Infosys, and TATA are wasted. This reform doesn't seem like the right way to address that and retain positive aspects of the program, like the foreign student pipeline.
$100k filing fee cannot be legally viable. But I support the direction in general. There is virtually no gate control, causing the visa category to be flooded by fraudulent applications (including unqualified hires, duplicate lottery shots). H1B visas are initially designed for economic efficiency, so using monetary means to control it is justifiable.
There’s no gatekeeping on any tech job, and it’s on purpose so big corps can abuse the system and lower the wages, while they make billions. It should be regulated to prevent abuse, that’s hurting everyone except corps.
It depends how this is implemented but I think that only “rich” people including criminals will use this as a way to bring undesirable people in. Again it spends on implementation but when you’re “paying” for someone to enter , is there extra leeway on the approval ? How strict will the entry requirements be ?
“I believe the shortage of U.S. talent, and the U.S.’s unwillingness to let companies bring in more global talent, has been a huge factor in why U.S. technology companies are increasing their Canadian footprint.”
I've always felt that h1b grants should use second price auctions paid for by the company in question, instead of through lottery. This has all of the benefits of high skill immigration with virtually none of the downsides of hurting the middle class or depressing wages
The way I see it is that US companies cannot simultaneously compete with foreign workers who are as good or better than US workers but are willing to work harder for less money, and also retain a high QoL for US workers. If US companies want to compete on actual merit and cost, they have to let US QoL take a hit. If they want to retain US QoL, they can't compete.
Something's gotta give, and the endless dancing with partial offshoring and H1Bs is band-aiding over two options: a bloodbath for American workers where competing for their jobs is actually opened up to the globe, or a massive, nationalist set of labor protections to stop other countries from bidding on work asked for by the US markets. Making H1Bs more costly is a little stronger than a Band-Aids, but not by much.
"Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters on a call Friday evening that the administration came to the fee of $100,000 per year, plus vetting costs, after talking with companies.
He noted that the payment structure is still under discussion with the Department of Homeland Security, in terms of “whether we’re going to charge the $300,000 up front or $100,000 a year for the three years.”
It is an annual cost. This will dramatically shake up the US tech industry. I expect to see engineering budgets increase, and less Americans struggling to get interviews and ultimately jobs at companies HQ'ed here.
The originally stated purpose of the H1-B program was to import top-tier elite talent but anyone who watched it evolve saw that it became terribly exploitative. I've watched as companies that I've worked for have given 1/4 market rate or worse to H1-B hires. They got addicted to cheap talent. It stopped being about talent on the hiring side and more about increasing head-count at a major discount.
Bring in top talent, but pay them what they're worth if you do. A top-talent elite hire should easily be worth double what a native-born top-talent elite hire would be worth if this program can just do what it was designed to do.
Because they would have done it already. Why go through the hassle of bringing over an h1b if you could just hire them overseas now? The use case for h1b is different from outsourcing. If the requirements need to have someone in their US branch then you use h1b.
My hope is that this unleashes American tech workers and the US market again. There is almost no reason to apply for H1B anymore except for the original purpose of hiring workers with very unique skill sets that cannot be found in the US. This could be the most monumental thing this Admin does for tech workers as long as there is not some monkey paw aspect to this
There's obviously a monkey's paw aspect! Big US tech companies are going to immediately freeze their hiring budgets until they get clarity on whether this fee is permitted and how they should pay it for existing employees. Hope you're not an American tech worker looking for a job right now!
annual cost and they raised the minimum pay to 150k so now its a minimum of 250k to hire an h1B. Or they can hire a new american grad, pay them 80k and train them
How are startups supposed to afford this? How are talented H-1B workers supposed to start companies? And no, the answer is not always an O-1. I know plenty of foreign founders contributing meaningfully to the US economy, now slapped with a 100k fee.
Ever live somewhere that isn't a city, but has access to talent from a local university? No one is sticking around to be hired for $70k a year when they can make $120k a year in a city. Yet, there are plenty of hires due to a local migrant population, which commonly has generational support. This disrupts that. It hurts more than migrants. It hurts communities.
Great news as Indian living outside US. More FAANG hiring in EU and India. More pay. Thanks Trump. Even plus don't have to relocate to US and can avoid this lunies.
The pendulum swung really hard back to in-person office work a couple years ago. I wonder if this will swing it back and make more positions remote-friendly.
I initially loved remote work and was doing 2/5ths of my week remove before 2020. Once I became fully remote for years, the horror sunk in--it's career suicide.
This only incentivizes opening a GCC in Eastern Europe or India. I can't justify hiring a remote worker in the US and paying them $150k-200k when I can hire 2-3 people in Warsaw, Prague, Tel Aviv, or Hyderabad for $60k-90k.
Seems like a reasonable policy. Given that the most talented tech workers, the ones the H1-B visas are designed to make it easier bring to the U.S., are getting $100M+ signing bonuses right now, a $100k/yr fee seems pretty trivial in comparison.
That’s true in AI field. Even if you are an elite researcher in some other field like biosciences, physics you can’t demand those salaries. So people in those other fields are essentially screwed.
I work for a big tech company that was already hiring a ton in Canada, I have to imagine this is going to add massive amounts of fuel to the flames. Are they just going to accept that offshoring is the next best alternative? And by offshoring, I mean, immigrants moving to Canada and working for American companies because their work visas are better
- move (the company) out of the US (i.e. to less imposing jurisdictions).
If companies choose the latter, the irony is the resulting reduction in US tax revenue from companies moving out could outweigh the gains in revenue from the $100k H-1B tax, thus resulting in lower US government tax revenues due to the change.
At that price point, it's cheaper for companies to risk investing in foreign branches and building up work centers outside of the US. You want to keep the price high enough to stop the bodyshops from gaming the system but you want it low enough so that all of the work doesn't get set out of the US.
Curious what this will do for faculty. Common to use H1B as a bridge for a few months before green card. New CS faculty salaries cap out at 180K at the high end.
Here's a thought. Why not pin the H1B tech acceptance rate, forget high fees, to some measures around tech unemployment rates? A recent reading I read showed a higher unemployment in tech than non-tech jobs. I wish I could find the article that mentioned it (most likely Bloomberg or WSJ in the last two weeks). Doesn't that put the stats where the mouth is?
Logistics and vetting mostly. The Indian body shops have a business model that already does this, actually: you hire the body shop, they send over one or two more senior engineers who then act as liaisons that farm out work back in India where most of the body shop is still located. My guess is that you'll just see more of that going on, although the R&D tax rules are getting weird with respect to amortization and out sourced labor.
My experience with those kinds of places is that they send their "dream team" for the first couple of months but then bait and switch the client with less experienced staff who subsequently f*ck everything up.
There is also something geopolitically playing here. Trump administration recently threatened India with tariffs and when it didn’t budge, many of its key MAGA voices (Bannon and as such) tweeted asking for the exact same thing he just did.
Recently Trump also met with Indias arch enemy Pakistan’s de facto leader (military chief) in Washington and shortly following that you had Saudi-Pakistan NATO like alliance announced (of course US is major allies for both of those countries).
It is interesting because pre-election Trump touted many Indians and even had Modi joining him in one of the largest Indian gatherings. But I guess Trump admin being the wild card it has always been policy wise had a shift. What that leads to is still to be seen.
Recent SCO summit where India and China had some shared alliance pledges can give some hints what’s to come but it’s interesting he didn’t so far do so with Chinese students and had in fact a U turn on allowing 600000 students with their visas as part of the trade negotiations.
Unless Trump bullies companies to close their foreign offices. I'm pretty concerned with that as that would impact me. That being said, I don't see how FAANG could operate only with US citizens.
A great idea I didn’t see on that page is replacing the lottery. Instead, H1Bs would be given in order from highest salaries to lowest. (Actually until the quota is exhausted)
Tech companies will just pay the $100k. Over the length of the visa it's still a savings in reduced wages. Never mind that you "lock in" your H1B employees while a US hire will job hop to get a promotion or wage increase since that is the only realistic way to do so these days.
> Section 1. Restriction on Entry. (a) Pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000 — subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (c) of this section. This restriction shall expire, absent extension, 12 months after the effective date of this proclamation, which shall be 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2025.
Could be interpreted to mean that anyone who leaves the country on a _current_ H1B and attempts to return might be blocked if they don't have proof of the payment having been made, despite the fact that no process currently exists to remit said payment.
I'd love to say it's doubtful this administration would do something so callous, asinine, and cruel, but...
Regardless of whether you think imposing a $100k fee on H1Bs is a good idea or not, there is no way that a 2 day deadline makes sense from an implementation perspective. On a weekend too. This is just going to cause panic and confusion at the border.
No, the language clearly limits the restriction to those “aliens … currently outside the United States.” “Entry” in this context means seeking admission (or re-entry) to the U.S. from abroad, under a new petition or visa that starts outside. It is tied to new petitions, and specifically those where the beneficiary is abroad.
“(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall restrict decisions on petitions not accompanied by a $100,000 payment for H-1B specialty occupation workers … who are currently outside the United States …”
FYI Manifest (startup focused on immigration law) is hosting a free webinar by an experienced immigration attorney on Monday to answer questions related to this:
This is a net positive action for the following reasons: The chuds have been clamoring for this for a long time. You can see every past thread on HN all the way back to the December blowup on twitter with Elon. At the same time, the economy is lagging and the admin's more direct measures to drum up support from the base such as chaining and deporting Koreans at the Hyundai factory are tanking future prospects for the economy and are causing diplomatic headaches. This current announcement gives the admin a way out by throwing some meat at the base before the midterms while knowing that this won't pass muster as they don't have the authority.
75% or more h1b went to one country for 20+ years even though another large country had way more students here in the past, who had less than 8% h1b. h1b is totally abused illegally for too long, they should be charged.
the phrase "shutting the barn door after all the horses have run off" comes immediately to mind. It's way too late to save tech in the USA, imho. It's too late for my nephew, who couldn't get a job after graduating with a CS degree in 2022 and who is not currently working in the tech field at all. And it's too late for all the lost wages for all the guys and gals my age whose incomes were artificially held down using the foreign competition, both on and offshore.
Before you downvote and curse me out, please understand that I have trained dozens of H1Bs throughout my career and helped them be better developers while knowing full well what the overall game looked like. I did it wholly without prejudice.
Deep down, I always knew we would hit that inflection point and we did. I don't think it is fixable at this point. Thus, it makes sense for politicians to finally consider addressing the abuse. I currently counsel young people to not become software engineers/developers. Aside from the lack of jobs, there is the awful ageism that strikes right when family is the most expensive (college aged kids). I'm very fortunate in that I saved like a madman and we inherited some wealth, which we INVESTED and didn't just blow on cars, houses, and vacations the way most dipshit Americans do these days. So when the inevitable career abbreviation took place, I was at least prepared. But I'm no less bitter, and that's the truth.
IIRC technically there's no such thing as a "renewal". It's just a new application that bypasses the lottery. So given the low level of thought that goes into these EOs, the answer is almost certainly "yes"...
> H-1Ba are supposed to be for difficult-to-find specialists
In my understanding H-1B is supposed to be for generic workers, rather than O1 which is for people with extraordinary ability in their field. That's why there is limit, lottery and high application fees.
The conditions look like the only requirement is being a professional with college degree.
I am an immigrant (not to US though), so looking from this standpoint. If I wanted to move to the US, H1B would be a pretty straightforward way for me to do so - as it is for many professionals now. With this path cut off - what is left to people who are just good professionals in their field, but maybe not exactly Nobel laureates? There is Green card lottery, but being a lottery, it's not ideal for life planning, and it doesn't account for one's professional achievements.
Do you mean reversed by future executive order answer that question is most likely, however, courts have shown a propensity to limit which executive orders can be undone by future presidents. For example, we saw this during Trump won with DACA.
Friendly reminder the US government is using it's legal authority to compel people to show their social media posts. At some point, hacker news is bound to get on their "to check" list.
Post nothing here you would not mind showing to a border guard.
Like seriously, I get this is very impactful, but don't risk your livelihood to argue with internet strangers.
What a shame. We face a mounting demographic crisis from low birth rates already, mostly from economic pressures and lack of personal decisions in healthcare for women. So many wrong directions.
I think this is extremely tangential to the article, but is there any evidence that any mounting American demographic crisis has anything to do with abortion being overturned?
Personal decisions in healthcare are about more than just abortion.
For example, if miscarriages are criminalized, and access to birth control is restricted - both real things that have been attempted or have actually happened in the US as a part of anti-choice policies - the only safe choice is to not have sex, ever. Which means you're probably never going to have kids, instead of before where there was a chance you'd get pregnant and then decide whether to have the child or not. Now it's too risky to even have a chance of getting pregnant if you have no autonomy. I certainly would never risk it in a state with anti-choice policies.
The intent of these policies might be to raise the birth rate, but I'm not sure they're going to do that. We'll see, I guess.
IMO the demographic crisis is more likely to be influenced by other factors, like the rising costs of raising children, the increasing constraints and pressures on parents, etc. But those policies don't help.
Statistics show that kids brought up with both parents have much better prospects in life.
The decision to have kids should be a deliberate commitment between the parents, not some kind of lottery where one falls pregnant then decides what to do next.
> low birth rates [...] from economic pressures and lack of personal decisions in Healthcare for women
This is an outlandish and ridiculous hypothesis with zero substance to it. All research points to it being the other way around. They higher the economic pressures and the less freedom people have in reproductive healthcare, the higher the birth rates. The moment Germany introduced the birth control drugs, the birth rate dropped.
If a country develops from the level of Somali to something like Germany and the birth rate tanks to somewhere slightly above 1, increasing the birth rate by maybe 0.1 by enabling more personal decisions has literally zero impact.
Of course I'm still a proponent of decreasing economic pressure on parents and enabling reproductive freedoms like pre-implementation diagnostics. The consequences on birth rate is just something we have to deal with one way or another.
This does not really goes with the employment at will clause. Companies would just stop hiring H1Bs. Even the signon bonus comes with some sort of payback requirements if some one leaves before certain duration.
CS new grads from Top10 are finding it tough to get jobs. There is lot of supply of smart CS grads within US. No need to hire H1Bs in the current economic situation which is different from late 90s when H1B program started.
The title on HN conflicts with the truth and the title of the article. It is 100k per application (which gives the visa for 3 years) not 100k per year.
All the comments are missing the bigger picture with this new policy - Trump is sending a message the tech companies will need to pay up (to him) to get this policy to go away.
Companies like Disney, too, have committed abuses with the H1B. It's not just big tech, it's widespread across the United States. I think Americans privileged with different Visa or residency status will benefit.
Flatly illegal. Congress has not authorized imposing such a fee and the current statute would sets the fee based on cost recovery for administrative processing of the application.
The rest of the headline is "in likely blow to tech", but I disagree. $100k when you're pimping some poor soul out for $40k/yr is too much. But when you're already paying them $500k+? Cost of doing business.
I've been through this immigration system. It's capricious, arbitrary and Kafkaesque.
It is absolutely clear that there is H1B abuse and I'm looking directly at the bodyshops like Infosys and Tata. Here's how it goes:
1. Apply for as many visas as possible. This is done primarily for Indian nationals for reasons which will become clear;
2. As the employer you really don't care which ones are approved or how many because what you're going to do is farm out those employees, whether there's 1000 of them or 10,000 of them;
3. Because there is an annual quota and applications have expanded so much, the chance of success is about 1 in 3 currently in the annual lottery. And a Principal Engineer in AI at Google or Meta has the same chance of success as a junior developer at Tata. There may be other options for the first person such as EB1 or NIW or L1 but that's really beyond the scope;
4. As part of this process you have to "prove" you cannot fill a position with a US resident or citizen. There is a whole process for this to minimize the number of applicants and to reject any who happen to find your newspaper ad and apply. This also applies to the Green card Labor Certification too, to a higher degree. Part of this is to make sure the employee is getting paid enough for their job and area. This is called a prevailing wage determination ("PWD"). This process doens't really work, which I'll get into later;
5. So you, as an Indian national won the H1B lottery and your visa is approved. You come to the US and hope Tata finds you a job where they farm you out at $200-500 per hours while paying you $50 or thereabouts;
6. Now the employer starts doing things they're technically not allowed to do, like if they can't find you a job they stop paying you. You may fall below the PWD because of this;
7. A H1B is valid for 3 years, extendable by another 3 for a total of 6 years, after which you're technically meant to leave the country. But what happens is the employer will file for an employment-based green card for you. If they do this in the first 5 years you can remain while that case is pending;
8. There are annual quotas for how many green cards are issued for each employment category. Additionally no more than 7% each year can be issued to any single country, based entirely on your country of birth, not your actual citizenship. And if you're married and have children under age, they will also count against these quotas.
9. So because H1B applicants are disproportionately Indian natioanals, there is a MASSIVE bottleneck for employment based green cards. As such, there is a HUGE backlog. Currently, USCIS is processing green cards for EB3 applicants from India who have a priority date of August 2013. That means their PERM was approved on or before August 2013;
10. So this is how these bodyshops can abuse Indian nationals. Those nationals really can't leave their job. Not easily anywway. There are laws that if they change jobs they get to keep their priority date but the new employer has to file an entirely new green card applications, including doing the entire PERM process again. Oh and if the employer moves area or their jobs changes significantly, it may invalidate their PERM too.
So these bodyshops can keep essentially indentured servants for 15-20+ years and at any time can fire that person. The power imbalance is so massive. This suppresses wages for everyone.
And these people are in the same cateogry as highly paid engineers in tech companies who have substantially better conditions.
Also, at any point along the way the USCIS can simply decide to take a whole bunch of extra time for literally no reason. They have a policy to randomly audit ~30% of applications. Why? They will never tell you. Their arguemnt is to avoid people "gaming" the system by working out the audit criteria so there's a bunch of random "noise" in there. Literally.
Well that doesn't sound bad right? Extra scrutiny? Except now you've added 1-2 years to the processing for literally no reason. You may get a request for evidence ("RFE") out of it too, which might add another year too. This can go multiple rounds too. I know people who spent 5 years going through audits and RFEs. One in particular is an engineering director at Google now.
While tech companies like Google, Meta, etc are better than the bodyshops they absolutely use this system to suppress wages, again because of the power imbalance.
It doesn't have to be this way. Take Switzerland as an example. I'm rusty on the details but IIRC if you're on a B permit (work permit like an H1B, tied to an employer) for 5 or 10 years (EU citizen is 5, otherwise 10, generally), you automatically get a C permit, which is basically a green card.
All this to say is that I have mixed feelings on this $100k fee. It will absolutely cut demand for H1Bs. It will decimate new graduate H1Bs but there's an argument that US residents and citizens should get priority for entry-level positions anyway, right?
If all this comes with much less paperwork, like skipping the whole LC process, then maybe large employers will pay it because they absolutely do spend a fortune on immigration lawyers.
If anything, the entire immigration system needs an overhaul but there's no political will for that. There are no votes in it. Quite the opposite: any serious attempt can be dismissed as "they're stealing our jobs".
I also think layoffs at large companies should absolutely preclude you from sponsoring H1Bs entirely for 2+ years.
If you're concerned about 'brain drain' remember O-1 visas are for the truly exceptional immigrants which remain in effect.
H1B visas are for rank and file employees with just a skill.
This allows employers to indenture servitude employees, depresses American wages, increases unemployment, increases rent prices in areas with high levels of immigration, and hurts American culture.
Most jobs are not that hard and a company should invest in Americans instead of immigrants if it want's to continue to do business here and enjoy the fruits of America.
It sounds like F1 and TN visa holders will be able to acquire H1B visas without triggering the fee (but no international travel afterwards or the fee would be triggered).
I suspect that the o1 and l1 visas will get more use if this actually gets enforced.
I also suspect that the large tech companies don't overly mind since they all have very active offshoring programs.
Except that I (and I believe it will apply to many folks similar to myself) working for US company branches located in the EU for a decade, on the staff/EM positions, with education to qualify also for O1 - will not put my life and my family’s life to be the subject of sudden immigration changes.
What’s stopping them from doing the same for L1/O1 folks and locking them in with days’ notice?
Few of my US colleagues that I know are now abroad, and I cannot fathom how they took the news.
None of us are talking about the important part of this - this new fee can be waived at will by the Secretary of homeland security entirely at their discretion. This isn't about H1b at all, it's about punishing political enemies and rewarding allies. It's one more little toehold of the mafia state.
As authorized by federal law, the department will conduct investigations of employers through Project Firewall to maximize H-1B program compliance. To achieve this goal, the Secretary of Labor will personally certify the initiation of investigations for the first time in the department’s history. This historic action leverages existing authority granted to the Secretary if reasonable cause exists that an H-1B employer not in compliance.
Secretary-certified investigations, as well as other H-1B-related investigations, are important tools the department will use in Project Firewall to hold employers accountable and protect the rights of American workers. Violations may result in the collection of back wages owed to affected workers, the assessment of civil money penalties, and/or debarment from future use of the H-1B program for a prescribed period of time.
approved by who? The people of the US already elected the president. He pretty much ran on reforming the visa system for the benefit of the US worker. This is a first step in the process. For those who don't understand how he works, this is the opening offer which is of course extreme. It will light a fire under Congress to actually pass some real reform. He did this with all the tariffs and trade deals. Despite what you read in the globalist media, it didn't cause havoc to the economy. He forces people to come to the table, negotiate, and get stuff done.
A lot of the discussion is about foreign workers competing with native ones and dragging salaries and employment down. This is a simplistic view, because it overlooks the fact that an insufficient labor supply keeps companies from growing faster, which in turn keeps them from hiring even more people.
So there is a tension between competition and increased opportunities and wage growth through increased company growth.
But how does this work out in practice? Luckily, there have been a lot of studies about the impact of the H1B program, which you can find on Google Scholar or SSRN. An extremely quick scan shows mixed findings that are hard to summarize, which is understandable because the dynamics are complex. (Contemplating getting Gemini to do a Deep Research report on this.)
So to narrow things down, I looked for empirical studies that focus on the specific counter-factual, "how would native workers fare if there were no H1B?" Interestingly, while I actually found some, even the recent studies (from 2022-2025) rely on empirical data from 2006 - 2008. That was when the H1B moved to a lottery system, creating a natural experiment allowing for comparison between firms that won and lost the lottery. (One study does find that limited data from 2022 corroborates its findings.) Not perfect, but better than hypotheticals.
Here's a government page with a very brief overview of two relevant studies: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12966 (The page doesn't scroll, but the PDF can be downloaded.)
To summarize, the studies find that there was no negative impact on native-born workers in terms of employment, and in terms of wages, some saw increases and others saw decreases in the range of 3-5%, depending on age, tenure and level of education.
But interestingly, the 2025 study also found that winning a lottery also increased the chance by 2.5% that the firm survived. Causation and correlation etc. aside the implications for employment are clear: if a firm does not survive, all employees, native or foreign, lose their jobs. This is an example of the dynamic I mentioned above.
Beyond these studies, I follow a labor economist and it's fascinating to see how these dynamics have been playing out over the last few years in the broader economy. As a relevant example, there is a credible theory that increased immigration was what helped the US manage its inflation crisis:
But this doesn't match reality. The surplus of labor has allowed big tech to be exceedingly picky during the interview process. You will now fail interviews if you're unable to solve two Leetcode Hards in 45 minutes.
If there was insufficient labor pool as you suggest, interviews would become less selective and wages would rise.
Tech interviewing has been dysfunctional for a long time, but yes it is much worse now because the tech job market is terrible. However I have previously commented (along with citations where possible) about how this job market is deliberately depressed. BigTech has achieved this through a few mechanisms, namely a) increasingly offshoring jobs while simultaneously b) freezing headcount in the US, and c) performing significant layoffs triggered by Elon's shenanigans at Twitter. And a highly under-reported aspect of all this is that these layoffs are causing much higher pressure on the remaining employees, which is leading to record levels of burnouts.
I'm letting my cynicism show here, but I think this is a power move by the capital class to show labor their place after an exceptionally strong labor market during ZIRP. This is much more recent and not related to the H1B program.
It's not a bad proposal, though raising the salary requirements would be better. This essentially does that though since a company has to account for it in their hiring costs. IOW it costs the company $100K/year to hire a foreigner vs a local, which offsets the low salary that you might be offering that foreigner in order to "save costs" vs hiring local.
However, the unsolved problem is that this could just lead to more offshoring by these same tech companies who are abusing the program now. Not sure if there's any way to stop that.
People are debating the merits here, and losing the big picture.
Congress makes laws. The executive implements them.
It could be a fantastic idea. But then make it a law. Give the president the power to do something like this.
Debating the merits without focusing on that first legitimizes this crazy psuedo law making Trump engages in and will enable him to be more arbitrary in other areas.
I wish the US would just return to "racial" quotas like pre-WW2 instead of all this huffing and heaving.
MAGA (and most Americans) don't seem to have any issue with immigration -what they have a issue with is the culture/skin-color/ethnicity of who immigrates. Indeed this is where the country quotas come from - Europe with 20 odd countries has 20x the priority than India or China.
If the US had an ounce of honestly they'd just make this explicit instead of beating around the bush. Since people have better opinion of the Chinese and other "white" East-Asians (admittedly the fairer gender only), just restrict it explicitly to "race" of Caucasians and there "Yellow" races.
It'll save Indians and other "suburbans" a lot of trouble not dealing with this farce of "liberalism" going forward. I genuinely mean this - given how things are going, Indians will find themselves in the place of Jews in Nazi Germany quite soon. And much like the useless British-colonial state that governed Israel then, the vestigial British state in India which is as internet upon Anglo-American triumph today, can't and will do jack shit for them.
How little do you know about the experience of Jews in Nazi Germany?
> And much like the useless British-colonial state that governed Israel then, the vestigial British state in India which is as internet upon Anglo-American triumph today, can't and will do jack shit for them.
Are you saying that Indian people wouldn't be allowed to immigrate to India?
Minutes of research say current Indian law allows people of Indian descent but not citizens to get Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) — a special immigration status for foreign nationals of Indian origin.
You're eligible if you are:
1. A former Indian citizen (who gave up Indian citizenship, e.g., to get U.S. or UK citizenship), or
2. A descendant (up to great-grandparent level) of an Indian citizen, or
3. The spouse of an Indian citizen or an OCI cardholder (subject to conditions)
With OCI, you can have:
1. Unlimited stay in India
2. Right to work, own property, and open bank accounts.
India could change it's laws, keep all the non-citizens out (or even citizens, what can't we imagine in this fantasy story). India could deny OCI to most every person that applies for its green card like status. But under current laws in your unlikely story, they seem like they'll do something.
I'd expect they'd fly as many Indian people as they could out of the US like many countries do in times of war. Not that this scenario will ever come to pass.
They saw the writing on the wall. I don't think they _like him_ but they need to manage the inevitable. When you have an autocrat, you bend the knee or get destroyed.
More like you bend the knee and get destroyed. The better option is to not bend the knee, but weak people will do what gets them further today without thinking about the future.
> I think sometimes bending the knee is the smart thing to do.
Sure, if you have no spine, morals, or will to do what is right.
> You need to read the room, if you don't like your odds, leave the fight for another day.
Spoken like someone who enjoys position of privilege.
> I say this not because of cowardice, but because I aknow the cemeteries are full of brave dead people.
Ah yes, I bet those dead people wish they'd just "followed orders" instead.
Keep making excuses for billionaires if you want; I'll resist if I'm given the chance. A cemetery full of people who actually tried is better than the world of non-cowardly room-readers you describe.
I vehemently disagree with whatever xenophobic nonsense he and Miller will vomit up to defend this move, provided he doesn't TACO out on it. Fuck bigotry, period.
However, H1Bs have been a thorny issue for a while, and this might be the rebalancing sorely needed. If Capital can freely import cheaper labor ad infinitum from abroad (or outsource it), then that deteriorates domestic stability while amplifying a form of Capitalist Imperialism abroad. Thus far, China's been the only country to really take full advantage of this long-term strategy error, and a lot of tech folks have been warning that failing to address known flaws in the visa process will ultimately leave us at a disadvantage in the long run, much like we did with manufacturing.
A high application fee is a start, but the better solution is dispensing with H1Bs entirely in favor of green card sponsorship with associated work contract. If these talented workers are that badly needed, companies would have no compunction sponsoring their permanent residency and, eventually, naturalization. Long-term data suggests none of the tech industry is really doing this, which means these "uniquely talented workers" are just replacing existing American workers at lower wages and higher precarity.
I love my international colleagues, and I want them to be treated with the same dignity and respect I receive. H1Bs do not, and cannot, accomplish this outcome.
Lets Go!!!
Raised the minimum salary to $150k.
The 100k application fee is per person per year.
Meaning now companies can either hire an American new grad for 100k a year or pay 250k a year to import someone. It also still allows companies to bring over highly skilled foreign workers for which there are no American equivalents.
Really happy with the approach and I think it will be a massive boon for US tech and knowledge workers
Nothing in the proclamation [1] says it is "per year". What it says is that every existing petition must be supplemented by $100k check, otherwise the employee won't be able to (re-)enter the US.
So, if you already got your visa issued for 3 years, and you didn't have any plans to travel abroad you are good until the end of your current visa term (which might be 2-3 years in future).
Also, apparently Department of State has started a pilot program that allows one to extend their H-1B visa without going abroad to have their passport stamped, so in that case you can get 3 more years in the US without the fee. The biggest limitation of course being that you're stuck in the US for the whole time, unable to leave.
I bet we see a TACO - he might not give a shit personal liberties but he listens to the billionaire tech bros.
My preferred policy would just be to auction them off by salary offered to the candidate with a reserve set to the 90%tile domestic salary. Also if you layoff any employees your company is banned from the program for three years.
OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44469124 - July 2025 (370 comments) [15 year amortization required for international R&D]
No, Chinese will stay home instead of immigrating to the US.
China draws mainly on the talents of the best of its billion+ population. But America has had its pick of the best of the world's 8 billion people. If people stop immigrating to the US, then we will surely fall behind technologically, economically and militarily, and soon we will be making t-shirts for Chinese for $5 an hour.
If an H1B worker "leaves after a month" they get deported. Meanwhile, nothing in the world can prevent the Bus Factor so I don't see how that's even relevant.
Wasn’t that already effectively put in place with the changes to the exemptions on how R&D is treated for tax purposes? (I’m not in the US so this may have evolved now, I’m not sure.)
Trump's plan might help with my dream of being able to be paid well in tech without going to the US. This action is another reason to divest from the one tech hub to around temperature works.
The reason silicon valley works is because it has a giant market that can support products and services before they can go global. Same reason why China has its own tech hubs.
Visas are used principally by tech sector
Over 70% of beneficiaries of H-1B visas enter US from India
Latest move in Trump's broader immigration crackdown
SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON, Sept 19 (Reuters) - The Trump administration said on Friday it would ask companies to pay $100,000 per year for H-1B worker visas, potentially dealing a big blow to the technology sector that relies heavily on skilled workers from India and China.
Since taking office in January, Trump has kicked off a wide-ranging immigration crackdown, including moves to limit some forms of legal immigration. The step to reshape the H-1B visa program represents his administration's most high-profile effort yet to rework temporary employment visas.
Read about innovative ideas and the people working on solutions to global crises with the Reuters Beacon newsletter. Sign up here.
"If you're going to train somebody, you're going to train one of the recent graduates from one of the great universities across our land. Train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs," U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said."
Absolutely. I've seen so many H1-B's doing run of the mill IT work. In the past, some job adds said "H1-B preferred." That's on top of all the Indian outsourcing.
It looks like Trump is one again making it expensive to use a foreign asset to encourage use or development of local assets. If they're truly talented and rare, then the $100,000 will be worth paying. I could see the A.I. field doing that since they're already doing it. Many will consider hiring or training Americans.
> The Proclamation restricts entry for aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in specialty occupations in the H-1B program unless their petition is accompanied by a $100,000 payment.
Nowhere in there does it say that it's annual. Note that the H1B visa is valid for 3 to 6 years, potentially longer, which dilutes the fee to $16K per year which is small money for an employer. Also, a fixed number does not keep up with inflation either.
Because he's exerting autocratic control over the entire executive branch. How many times does he have to tell you he's doing so before you can recognize it? He talks about it in interviews and on his social media, and not in vague or nuanced terms, but with clear declarative statements like "I have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the President." (this example from about 3 weeks ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOxw6Pc_KXw)
Yes. He’s embraced a radical expansion of the “unitary executive” theory which focuses all of the power in the president, even in positions which by law or custom were independent. Think about last year: Biden didn’t call Garland into his office and demand that he lock Trump up or drop charges against his son immediately because the DOJ was never intended to be the President’s personnel fiefdom nor the AG his attorney. The federal reserve was structured to be independent as a deliberate statement by Congress that it was run for the nation, not one man’s political expedience. Past administrations used to honor the wall keeping political appointees out of tax or loan data, now Trump has Pulte rummaging through everything looking for mistakes he can use to prosecute people on his enemies list. Over and over we see the pattern of pretending that executive orders can overrule the law, to the point that SCOTUS is making unprecedented moves to temporarily allow things because even the Roberts Court is hesitant to rule in his favor.
It’s bad enough that he’s doing it, we should at least be honest about what’s going on.
Please don't be obtuse. I'm sure an intelligent person such as yourself is aware of things like the normal federal rulemaking process, the requirements to conform with employment law, and that the job of the executive branch is to faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress even when the President finds some of them disagreeable, not to rule by fiat.
It was a White House announcement of a White House policy relying (apparently) on nothing but executive authority. The attribution is correct.
Obviously there are very serious civic questions here (like under what law the authority to levy that fee was granted! Congress controls taxation, not the president). But so far congress and the courts are uninvolved.
The attribution is colloquial, but correct. It's routine to refer to the executive branch by the president's name.
According to many economists, the presence of immigrant workers in the United States creates new job opportunities for native-born workers. This occurs
in five ways. First, immigrant workers and native-born workers often have different skill sets, meaning that they fill different types of jobs. As a result, they complement each other in the labor market rather than competing for the exact same jobs. Second, immigrant workers spend and invest their wages in the U.S. economy, which increases consumer demand and creates new jobs. Third, businesses respond to the presence of immigrant workers and consumers by expanding their operations in the United States rather than searching for new opportunities overseas. Fourth, immigrants themselves frequently create new businesses, thereby expanding the U.S. labor market. Fifth, the new ideas and innovations developed by immigrants fuel economic growth.
Similarly, a recent study found that, between 2005 and 2018, an increase in the share of workers within a particular occupation who were H-1B visa holders was
associated with a decrease in the unemployment rate within that occupation. Another recent study found that restrictions on H-1B visas (such as rising denial rates) motivate U.S.-based multinational corporations to decrease the number of jobs they offer in this country. Instead, the corporations increase employment at their existing foreign affiliates or open new foreign affiliates—particularly in India, China, and Canada. A study conducted in 2019 revealed that higher rates of successful H-1B applications were positively correlated
with an increased number of patents filed and patent citations. Moreover, such startups were more inclined to secure venture capital funding and achieve successful IPOs or acquisitions.
The available data also indicate that H-1B workers do not earn low wages or drag down the wages of other workers. In 2021, the median wage of an H-1B worker
was $108,000, compared to $45,760 for U.S. workers in general. Moreover, between 2003 and 2021, the median wage of H-1B workers grew by 52 percent. During
the same period, the median wage of all U.S. workers increased by 39 percent. In FY 2019, 78 percent of all employers who hired H-1B workers offered wages to H-1B visa holders that were higher than what the Department of Labor had determined to be the “prevailing wage” for a particular kind of job.
> “That’s right outta ‘Goodfellas,’ that’s right out of a mafioso going into a bar saying, ‘Nice bar you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it,’” Cruz said, using the iconic New York accent associated with the Mafia.
It does go to the government and not to Trump's personal wallet (like the memecoins and lavish gift), it's just a tax that's just not being called a tax, and frankly it's a good idea. The current abuse of H1B doesn't work out positively for anyone but the companies making a boatload of money on exploiting people.
I think there’s plenty of interesting debates to be had about immigration policy and its effects on the labor market, but one thing worth noting here is that the primary problem that damn near every other country on earth has isn’t immigration, it’s brain drain.
A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them do so. You can argue how well that’s worked out for us - having worked with a great many extremely talented H1bs in an industry largely built by immigrants, I’d consider it pretty positive - but it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.
The top end of H1B has been great for America. In the last few decades, there has been growth of abuse of the program to get mid level talent at below market rates which really hurts the middle class in America. People need to understand that most reformists don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration to the US. We need to limit the volume, especially the immigrants that are directly competing with a hollowed out middle class in the US. Let me know if you want further reading on this topic.
Agree with the abuse part. Question is - is this the right way to fix the problem? A half baked executive order that raises more questions than answers for the existing H1B visa holders.
Are we saying software engineers making $125-150k are middle class? If so, then yes this I absolutely believe this is true. These will still be high level people for the most part that will up our game in my opinion. Thats in the opinion column, hard to prove. But this fee may have a net negative impact on jobs for Americans as it will push more companies to simply outsource to these countries rather than pay more in the US. So you need to tax that too. And then they will find some way around that and we will need to tax that new thing. I don’t like this game, it is trying to stop progress in my opinion. But I guess it is a balancing act and who knows where you set the line. Adding friction to it will definitely make it so only higher quality talent migrates here, that much seems clear.
The hollowing out of the middle class in the US isn't because of immigrants, it's because of a sustained campaign by capital to reduce the power of labor over the last 50-odd years and to concentrate wealth as best they can. Immigrant labor contributes to that because we've got inadequate labor protections and because we bought into the idea that lower consumer prices was a fine reason to ignore both labor and antitrust.
"The hollowing out of the middle class in the US isn't because of immigrants, it's because of a sustained campaign by capital to reduce the power of labor over the last 50-odd years and to concentrate wealth as best they can."
Creating low cost alternatives and taking advance of lax laws is part of that. If you can import 100k skilled workers per year under a scheme that gives you more power over them. Then you also offshore 300k jobs per year to countries with weaker protections.
It's always baffled me how the same candidates that claim to be pro labor and pro environment are also pro globalization. The way it plays out is that the jobs are just offshore to jurisdictions that lack the same labor and environmental protections.
Wholeheartedly agreed. I used to work very closely with economists in asset management. What looks like efficiency on a spreadsheet can look very different on the ground.
I like your focus on middle class. That is if we're viewing h1b as an input we ought to eval based on what's good for the middle class.
I don't quite agree that much with causes: high housing, Healthcare & med bankruptcy, and high education costs (correlating with high housing) are bigger factors. However non tech/lawyer/doctors have been adversely effected by the fact they've seen no real income gains in 25 years overall.
Now, the top 5% and corps need to be made to pay more taxes... thats another subject.
A couple elderly people i know are quite concerned Trump will take their snap benefits, or decrease medicaid/care etc while the tax reductions were given on the bb bill. Thats not acceptable.
> However non tech/lawyer/doctors have been adversely effected by the fact they've seen no real income gains in 25 years overall.
We may be reaching the breaking point where Americans view any solution to this problem as worth trying. We’re near 2 generations of flat real income for the vast majority of Americans. When your grandparents are the last generation to remember rising living standards, it’s hard to buy that the system is working for you at all.
> We’re near 2 generations of flat real income for the vast majority of Americans.
No, we aren't! We have statistics on this (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N). Median real income is up substantially since 40-50 years ago, depending on what you count as a generation. And we have stories and records of what life was like in the 1970s, when 80% of households had to hand wash dishes and 50% had to line-dry clothes. The reason people believe living standards haven't risen since their grandparents' day is that they get false nostalgia bait depictions of how a typical person lived in their grandparents' day.
(What is true, and what I'm sure contributes to the power of the nostalgia bait, is that real income stagnated with the dot-com bubble and didn't hit a sustained rise again until the mid-late 2010s.)
Real people don't care about "real income". They care about if they can get and retain a decent home, job and life. How much debt they are in, that their education is enough, how their social life is, if they can have kids and how they think about their future.
"Real income" is measured against the consumer price index (CPI). CPI is used to gauge inflation, "are people paying more for groceries this year than last?", not living standard. Most of the important questions like "how many years of education do you need for a good job?" or "how many average salaries do you need for a good home?" are all massively worse. So are many metrics of despair.
What real income really shows is that more money now gives you less. That what buys you a loaf of bread doesn't buy you a good life anymore. Because median income might be keeping up with inflation, but not with anything else.
It is reasonable to be skeptical about their definition of inflation, and henceforth what "real" means.
While this chart shows "real" income increases we apparently also see "real" increases on housing, rents, education, etc.
If your inflation metric is only on rolled oats, then it is not really worth much, is it?
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
While you are correct that real wages are up around 25%, productivity has nearly doubled. While various consumer goods, and technology have seen large improvements - ignoring the measurable and qualitative ways that affording basic aspects of life have become more difficult is not wise.
Thank you for chart. I will reassess real income gains. I'd be lovely to have a chart on housing/rent, healthcare, and higher education to see if people had both higher income and expenses.
Global trade as made consumer prices competitive in many things, but those are a big three.
Nostalgia was not at root of my original comment.
Global trade has made shippable commodities cheaper, so purely local expenses such as housing, healthcare, and education are relatively more expensive. Especially as inflation measurements include items from both categories.
This is why many places in the world no longer produce enough food to feed their populations - refrigeration and cheap oil enable food to no longer be a local commodity. Education is sometimes headed in the same direction. But housing cannot be sourced anywhere but locally.
'Hand washing dishes' was replaced with 'get a low paying job to be a second household earner'. Considering this, has the standard of living really increased?
I think many women were happy that they could get an education and job to make their life more interesting besides being the house slave of their husband.
Comparing raising your children, cooking food for your family, and maintaining the home to slavery is… quite the position..
It’s certainly hyperbolic but lack of autonomy and complete financial dependence were pretty par for the course for women back in the day.
My grandma slowly squirreled away money in a shoe box over decades as she had no personal bank account and lived on what my grandpa provided while she took care of seven kids. She saw it as her lifeline. Meanwhile he got drunk every night at the yacht club.
When the last of the kids were nearing college she spent that money on classes for clerical work and got a job.
I could not possibly imagine being in her shoes and I can imagine why a woman would be loathe to enter into such dependence on another person, regardless of how fulfilling child rearing and house keeping may be.
And the further you go back from there the worse it looks for women.
And what about women who love their family and kids and would like to support the family by staying at home? Come on dude, calling it slavery is fucked up.
Is a cultural perception that raising children and a family is being a slave. I personally find it a disgusting perception. I love my family.
> and 50% had to line-dry clothes.
Sorry for hijacking, but this is quite possibly one of the funniest American poverty markers around.
Seriously!
Clothes dryers are a sign of shrinking real estate, not a sign of luxury.
When one lives in a tiny apartment with no balcony, you better have a dryer. When living with plenty of land, it's not a problem to hang clothes to dry in the sun.
> Clothes dryers are a sign of shrinking real estate, not a sign of luxury.
My euro family disagrees, even in places that don’t have a balcony. Get the rack out and dry indoors and it’s pretty dry overnight (in the not so humid places).
I have a dryer but avoid it for most clothes because I think it wears them out.
A lot of rent agreements in then UK explicitly forbid tenants from drying clothes indoors on a rack because it is claimed that it raises humidity and the risk of mould (being an already quite damp, cold country)
Plenty of old photos of people running drying lines between them and the opposite tenement building. Not saying people should do that today, just that it's what people did when they had neither space nor means to buy a dryer (or before dryers were invented)
Many Americans would love to do this today, but every apartment I've rented in the last 15 years has strict rules against drying clothes outside along with other restrictions on what you're allowed to place or store on patios and balconies there. Most of the rules seem to be in place purely so that the complex/tower doesn't look "poor" or "trashy"
Where is this sun in November?
You have indoor heating, right? Clothes dry just fine on a rack indoors (albeit you may need some way to remove the resulting humidity if your heating system isn't doing that job already)
Australia
We don’t have time to hang our clothes out on the line and bring them in again and iron them. We’re too busy working. sobs
Washing dishes and hanging clothes out aren’t actually torture.
I don't like using a dryer even when I had one. Its way too taxing on the fabrics.
Its nice to have as a last resort or during winter tho.
We bought a dishwasher about 5 years ago. Still haven't used it. True story.
Very true statement; but, it’s certainly neither convenient nor the least bit enjoyable, either.
I've been handwashing my dishes for a long time and now have a dishwasher. One of the main benefits is having a place to store the dirty dishes until there are enough to make it worth washing. I used to do 3 washes a day, with 2 tiny ones.
I quite like hanging out the clothes to dry - bit of sunshine and birdsong, something to do with my hands while my brain plots and schemes.
Couldn't afford to throw enormous amounts of heat out the window during winter time! And all the time.
Nooo. Wages only jumped in the Tech biz just before the dot-com crash and again before the AI crash that hasn't happened yet (unless you count laying off workers to pay for capX on NVIDIA hahaha). Bottom line: McDonalds is paying $20/hr now in California to flip burgers --YUUUGE, but a whole lot of people lost their jobs when major automobile manufacturers laid them off because they "didn't want to compete with McDonalds for workers"...where is that in your "Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics" (I'mma change that to "and LLMs" rofl).
Hey it's iPhone Day, "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish"* ---
*-nevermind the $10000 workstation named after a gf or more recently $2000 orange phones (I bought a DEEP Blue because Apple is always threatening to "Care-Deeply" me), $1000 watches and $300 earpieces for errbody. So Hungry. Also, we'll make sure you never work anywhere in Tech again if you even so much as interview for a new job outside of our company and Non-Competes Are No Longer Blocked! But What the Helly..Turtleneck also didn't invent the hungry mantra which is embraced by many other similar brilliant people, from Einstein to Elon'n-on and of course, my dad's gang one of whom brought Turtleneck back to Apple.) Get it? Got it? Good.
Keeping the middle class distracted with racism is what the elite does very well.
> It's always baffled me how the same candidates that claim to be pro labor and pro environment are also pro globalization. The way it plays out is that the jobs are just offshore to jurisdictions that lack the same labor and environmental protections.
Why's that? The jobs and lives of individuals in those countries are better than the alternatives present otherwise to them. Globalization may hurt certain America jobs but certainly countries like India is grateful for all of the engineering roles.
High consumerism is harmful to the environment but I don't think the link between offshoring jobs is direct to environmental harms and certainly it's helpful to giving more job opportunites.
I could see that being the case in a scenario where all countries had strong labor protections. However, in practice globalism tends to result in jobs being exported from countries with strong protections to countries with weak protections. In that sense it is anti-labor.
In the case of bringing in workers; those workers are less likely to join unions or demand good working conditions since they are effectively indentured servants. That also is bad for labor.
Insofar as a "pro-labour" position exists in practice it has to be anti-globalist. If pro-labour is going to mean something it has to mean trying to get labour a better deal than a free market would offer, otherwise it isn't really taking a position on labour at all. A key part of globalism is it makes it impossible for labour in any given country to avoid being paid the market price for their labour.
Environmentalism is similar. Globalism fixes the amount of pollution globally to the market optimum where presumably an environmentalist wants to control pollution using some other system than markets.
You seem to be arguing that globalism makes the world better off. I agree, but that is because pro-labour and pro-environmentalist ideologies are pretty explicit that they aren't trying to maximise the general welfare. A situation where one soul works very hard and happily for little pay making things for everyone else could be a good outcome for everyone (see also: economic comparative advantage). The pro-labour position would resist that outcome on the basis that the labourer is not making very much money. And the environmentalist would probably be unhappy with the amount of pollution that the hard work generates. The globalist would call it a win.
Globalism as an ideology is distinct from globalization of trade. Globalists would argue for expansive supranational regulatory controls. Migration and alleged environmental concerns are typical rationalizations for their expanding powers. The distinction is better understood as between a set of liberal, laissez-faire trade policies and an emerging illiberal supranational regulatory state.
Specifically when you say:
>Globalism fixes the amount of pollution globally to the market optimum where presumably an environmentalist wants to control pollution using some other system than markets.
We can observe that the Globalist organizations regard not just pollution, but carbon consumption to be something which markets cannot be trusted to manage. Instead they propose top-down regulatory management on a supranational level.
https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/pressbriefings/pages/imo-...
Hmm, yes. I am forced to agree. Sorry, please interpret my comment as talking about globalisation (the effect), not globalism (the ideology).
I'm very much free trade and pro-globalization, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me that a candidate for political office in country X should be most concerned about the overall welfare of the citizens of country X, then next for the non-citizen residents of country X, then non-citizen/non-residents last. We can argue how steep the dropoff should be, but I think most people would believe that the ordering is that one, with some possible ties.
Overall welfare is about more than just income though. It’s about national security, the cost of living, and the benefits of things like innovation, technology, culture.
Let’s look at US imports from China. Last year that was $462bn worth of goods. Suppose the development of China never happened and all those goods were manufactured in the USA instead. That’s impossible, the US doesn’t have tens of millions of industrial workers lying around spare to do those mostly low end, low value jobs and if it did they would cost more and the goods would all be much more expensive. So the cost of living would go up, the economy would less efficient because many workers would be doing lower value add jobs than they are now. The country would be much worse off overall. It would basically amount to enormous government subsidies and protections for vast swathes of lower value assembly work than what many people are doing now.
I support global trade because I think it’s best for the west. Not hyper-liberal ultra free market trade. Negotiated, rules based, moderately regulated trade and investment that is balanced to meet domestic and international needs.
Good news! Native USian developers will no longer be made unemployed by cheap immigrants.
Instead they'll be made unemployed by AI and a crashing tech economy.
But that isn't the point of this. It's leverage - much like the tariffs.
Big companies making significant donations to the Donald Trump Presidential Aggrandisement Fund will receive carve-outs and exclusions.
It's a grift, like everything else done by this benighted administration.
its a common tactic for companies to force high paying employees to relocate to other offices, or leave...
This could be a tactic to force lower end to go home and accept a lower salary at the same company for their same role.
up or out. or in this cause, over or out...
I hope you are right. If this is just grift...well...I guess the bar is still low but at least it isn't at the bottom.
Its arbitrage. You think the low rung indians are happy suresh is making top dollar programming a web app?
It’s important to clarify that H-1B is a non-immigrant visa — you don’t get to stay if you lose your job. That matters because the debate isn’t about immigration itself but about how the program functions. H-1B was meant to supplement shortages in highly skilled roles. Over time, though, it’s reshaped whole categories of employment. Anecdotally, I see very few young U.S. devs compared to many late-career ones finishing out their working lives. If we dare to use the term “national interest,” the real issue is whether a temporary labor program has morphed into something that permanently alters the market.
I've heard about the shrinking middle class in the US since around 1990. It somehow doesn't actually seem to be smaller now than it was 35 years ago. More and more ordinary from the bottom third of the population can afford things that used to be reserved for the upper third.
Are you sure it's really been/being hollowed out or are you just repeating something you've heard or read other people state so often that you think it's true?
That's not been my experience. Technology has advanced such that there are things that used to be expensive that are not any more. However, I don't see more people who are able to live middle class lifestyles. Things like owning their own homes, not having roommates, being able to leave demeaning jobs, only having to work one job, raising a family on a single income, etc.
This doesn't map exactly to "middle class" but it also seems like there's now a lot less ability for people to afford to work in "artist" type careers. It used to be that you could wait tables, get a low cost studio in the city, and work as an artist in the evenings/weekends. Now you have to work multiple jobs and probably still can't afford to live in the city and make art.
Labor share of US GDP is usually around 60%, which is comparable to Europe.
If you divide the GDP by the number of employed people (including self-employed and entrepreneurs), you get a bit over $180k/person. The median full-time income is a bit over $60k. In other words, as a gross simplification, the mean worker earns 80% more than the median worker.
The comparable numbers for Germany are a ~€100k, ~€45k, and 35%. If something is hollowing out the American middle class, it might be the high earners rather than the capital.
Your numbers don't sound that bad, and it's actually why people still come to America for opportunity. It's because the mean > median that makes America more desirable than Germany.
Exactly this. And the main "equalizing" factor in Germany is taxes, round about 50% of Germany's labor share of GDP for average earners consists of taxes and social security contributions. Which is exactly what the Republican campaign has been all about - minimize taxes and cut spending wherever possible. Yes, you get a vastly more unequal and in many cases just flat out inhumane society. But if you can manage to be part of the "upper" class for a few years it pays so well that it becomes very appealing to a lot of people all over the world.
> But if you can manage to be part of the "upper" class for a few years it pays so well that it becomes very appealing to a lot of people all over the world.
Unfortunately last several millions came for exactly the opposite. Free full government support, aka communism.
The largest contributor to the shrinking middle class has been more and more people are moving into the upper class.
You can look at Pew's survey here: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/12/09/1-the-h....
The upper-income tier grew from 14% -> 21% as the middle-income tier shrank from 61% to 50%. To be perfectly fair, the lower-income tier class did also increase from 25% to 29%. The story is complicated.
Notably, the report was published in 2015.
As you said, the story is complicated. Even in 2015, a decade ago:
> There is one other stark difference: only upper-income families realized notable gains in wealth from 1983 to 2013.
During the period of analysis then, either consumption among the lower two tiers eliminated their available savings ability, or the real purchasing power over this period declined, leading to the same effect.
If by hollowing you mean the reduction of the size of the middle class, it is because it has become richer, not poorer over time, so I don't think your take is right.
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/05/31/th...
The hollowing out of the American middle class is because the huge, wealthy middle class was a post-war anomaly, from a time when the US had the only intact industrial plant in the world, and lack of communication technology and logistical sophistication meant production had to be localized and centralized. So, if you happened to be living in the right places in the US, you could have a house and a car and put a couple kids through college on an (artificially-inflated) factory worker's wage. At the same time, 80% of the population of the world was on the edge of starvation.
Now, thanks to better logistics and communications, companies can move jobs to where labor is cheaper. This has pulled billions of people out of poverty, dramatically reduced the price of goods, and generally improved global well-being--but that was at the cost of the 1% of the 1950s, which is to say the American working class. Now, if you work in a factory in the US, you only make a single-digit multiple of what a factory worker in Korea, Mexico, Germany or Italy makes (though you still have a double-digit advantage on much of the world).
It wasn't sustainable to have a tremendously wealthy middle class in a world that was mostly starving. No amount of trade barriers could maintain that: you're relying on a world market with very little competition, and the other 7 billion people aren't going to be content to sit on their hands.
What you want to do instead is to develop new, cutting-edge, high-paying industries, and thereby keep a competitive advantage on the rest of the world. Maybe you could, I dunno, develop top-notch schools to lure all the best and brightest people from around the world to your country, invite them in, encourage them to stay, and get them to innovate and create here rather than elsewhere. That might just result in whole new, massive, high-paying industries that pick up the slack left by your diminished industrial dominance.
Seems like a good idea to me! But hey, instead, you could always try slamming the door shut, chase out all the dirty foreigners, and just rely on your inherent and intrinsic American superiority to carry you forward. I'm sure that'll work just as well.
One of the big changes in the post war era was that immigration was massively opened up in 1965. From 1924 to 1965 the US had very restrictive immigration laws, which led to labor shortages, which allowed unions to become strong, rising wages and the expansion of the middle class. Since 1965 we've had declining union participation.
This is simple supply and demand. If you restrict the labor supply, the value of labor increases.
The same thing was observed after the Black Death, which killed off 30 to 50% of Europe's population. There were labor shortages, which increased the bargaining power of labor, and increased wages.
It's really funny US companies suddenly start pretending they don't believe in supply and demand when it comes to labor.
Britain tried to impose wage controls after the black death. Results were mixed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Labourers_1351
You really going to mention all that, which had some impact on the US middle class, but you're not going to mention anything about the US "wealth distribution" dynamics which has had its regulations and protections removed to the demise of the middle class?? Income tax roof being more than double before, corps being taxed more than double, the top earner vs bottom earner of any corporation much closer.. Less workarounds, no-one using the stupid "buy-borrow-die" strategy that is all too common now..
It'll work well for the rest of the world.
Though in this position, maybe China gets greedy.
So, if I understand correctly, your view we should continue pretend the H1-B is something called a "genius visa" and the best bet for prosperity is not for current citizens to have well-paying jobs but to increasingly import people from other nations and pay them less?
The US population is 4 per cent of the entire world's, which means that the vast majority of talented humans is born abroad.
If you can snatch them, they will build SpaceX or Google for you. If not, well, they will do so either elsewhere, or not at all. (South Africa does not seem to be a good place to start business, and neither is Russia.)
Can you gain prosperity by employing three mediocre people instead of one talented one? Maybe, but you won't get a new vibrant sector like Silicon Valley this way.
Europe, where I live, is a lot more gung-ho on mediocrity and forced equality, and we seem to be the ones with clearly stagnating living standards, not you.
Thank you for illustrating a point that's hard to make, which is ... on this website everyone understands the math for supply and demand. Except when it comes to immigration. When it's about immigration, it's the evil capitalists. Again, thanks. We should all know by now that when the supply of labor increases, there is Zero affect on wages.
It is more complicated to model because the increased supply also increases demand for labor.
Immigrants need houses built, food on the table and many work very hard to pay for that.
That work, that sweat equity makes us all more wealth, a higher GDP.
Natives of the country that are well established in the country are in a better position to capture that wealth than the immigrants.
No one cares about GDP anymore. It's a fake number.
Oh? Convince me? Outside of speculation around the fact that BLS heads were replaced?
If there's a different metric go ahead and suggest one. I know you're trying to bait a comment with the BLS reference. It used to be commonplace to observe that GDP is actually a very bad way to measure a country's performance, because it skips over things like income inequality or upward mobility. USSR had great GDP numbers, actually, despite the propaganda in the west at the time. Unfortunately everyone was miserable and, well, the rest is history.
> I know you're trying to bait a comment with the BLS reference
I am not. I am generally confused at what you would suggest is wrong with the GDP measurement.
We have multiple layers of agencies reporting on GDP and other economic measures the US. There are certainly some troublesome siloed measures (CPI), but I wasn't aware that GDP was one of them.
Your take doesn't seem relevant with regard to my knowledge on the subject.
My point is that measuring things via GDP alone is bad and/or dumb. I think that was pretty clear in my comment. "Number go up" is not a sane way to measure progress.
I also do not care about your "knowledge" on the subject.
>The hollowing out of the middle class in the US isn't because of immigrants, it's because of a sustained campaign by capital to reduce the power of labor
Importing cheap foreign labor to undercut unions and lower wages is one of the spokes of the wheel used by capital to reduce the power of labor (and always has been).
It absolutely is, and for some goddamn reason everyone always gets mad at the immigrants instead of the bosses.
Much the same as in a strike when workers get mad at scabs. The person right there in front of you is looking out for their own best interests and in those circumstances that is to your detriment. Capital uses immigrant labor partly for simple price reasons and partly because those workers interests really are different from the locals and their lack of local connection makes them a viable slow motion scab workforce.
Don't you see how immigrants "reduce the power of labor" though? Cesar Chavez opposed immigration.
this is why people cant afford anything
Zuckerberg's compound didn't make the Bay Area housing crisis and Barron Trump isn't why NYU is expensive or hard to get into. Giving everyone involved $1 million from Larry Ellison's pocket wouldn't particularly change either.
That's not to say you shouldn't do it! But the problem is elsewhere.
But it makes people feel good giving away other peoples money. And that feel good wins votes.
Or you could stop tying H-1Bs to employers, meaning that there's less incentive to do the work to bring "mid level talent" in at below market rates, because those people would immediately find a job at market rates.
There's a straightforward solution here. Right now H-1Bs are a way for companies to lock in employees by leveraging the visa status.
Idk what visa program was is under, but home depot used to bring in immigrants to run their stores (stockers , cashiers, etc ) under a program that meant that some contractor was putting 12 people in a 3 bedroom apartment and charging them big fees to come work for minimum wage. This was a while ago, but I was in the rental business and got to see it first hand and talk to the workers. It was extremely exploitative. 5 years ago they were still doing it my hometown, I haven’t checked since. It was mostly Eastern Europeans.
The H-1B requires that the position requires a specialization.
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/h-1b-spec...
The positions that you're describing do not meet the criteria for the H-1B. If it was under the H-1B, then it should have been reported for fraud.Chances are this was done as a seasonal H-2B non-agricultural worker (likely under a seasonal need)
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
When you see fraud, report it. https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud/uscis-tip-form> When you see fraud, report it. https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud/uscis-tip-form
And tell your manager explicitly and put it on the record that you reported it. Get fired in retaliation? Lawyer up.
“Seasonal need” to work from June to December, then another “season” from January to June lol. They would be on a 6on,6 off rotation, staggered with their replacements. I do recall though that there was a huge local hiring spree a few years back, so maybe they got audited.
The problem (for them) is that pay scales (and cost of living) in that area are above average. A friend of my son got a job there about 8 years ago and it paid about 63k plus benefits, whereas the average home depot employee makes about 32k. No idea what it’s like post COVID.
If someone sees visa fraud, it should be reported. There are programs to try to combat it, though this is a "UCIS doesn't have the resources to audit every company."
So... if you see it, report it. https://www.uscis.gov/scams-fraud-and-misconduct/report-frau...
And there are actions on it when it is caught.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/two-executives-plead...
Ignoring visa fraud is one of the ways that it becomes established and in turn makes it harder for the companies that are following the rules to be successful.
I have worked with software people on H1B visas who's #1 goal was to hire more [specific nationality] and thin out the rest. Their work ethic was a top-down rule by fear, and their code was VERY bad. Made my life straight up worse. One example of abusing the H1B visa system.
I have also worked with amazing H1B visa people.
Just make sure they're actually talented.
Funny you're in so much fear of repercussions that you don't even dare to say which nationality and yet most people in tech know which one you meant
This is exactly correct. The H1B visa has not lived up to its original premise in quite some time. A very significant percentage of people who are now working on these visas are not offering anything beyond what is already available within the American workforce, except for lower compensation.
From the reuters table it seems that the biggest H1B beneficiaries are FAANG.
Do you suggest that they check the immigration status and offer to some people lower compensation because of their status?
Are you suggesting that those companies don't know they're hiring H-1B workers? It just sort of happens to them?
If they offer below-market (for American workers) salaries and get no sufficiently-qualified domestic candidates, as they're required to promise they do, it's no surprise to anyone that they're hiring a ton of H-1Bs. They want that because they want to pay less.
I don't blame them for doing what's fiscally advantageous for the shareholders up till now -- but I think I'll be glad to see this change implemented, if it is, because I know companies write on those forms "domestic talent not found" when they know the truth is "domestic talent not available at the wages we'd like to pay".
They also make hidden job postings and then say "look, no one applied except for H1B applicants!"
Hence https://jobs.now/
Get applying, every application sends a H1-B fraudster home (not, but we can wish).
FAANG offers sub market salaries? American citizens turn their nose at FAANG jobs because of the low pay?
What?
FAANG relative to FAANG, not FAANG relative to a barista at Starbucks. You get how this works right?
FAANG offers the exact same salaries to US citizens and those who need sponsorship. And speaking from personal experience, the majority of the Chinese and Indian immigrants at Meta are extremely talented and tremendously hard working. The best Americans are obsessed with startups and entrepreneurship and aren’t satisfied with being cogs in the machine the way H1B seekers are.
I’m not saying the system is perfect, we definitely need to work on clearing out these fraudulent consultancies and such. But FAANG H1Bs are good engineers and we would definitely be worse off without them. I much preferred the proposal to only allow H1B after a certain salary threshold of ~200-250k which seems like it would solve the issue.
The issue that needs fixing with the H1 program isn’t FAANG, it’s Infosys etc.
If you already have an immigration status that allows you to work in the US then you're free to advocate for your worth by engaging with the job market. If a company has to sponsor you for an H1B though you'll be locked to one employer, and that lack of options is what means they don't need to give you market rates.
But yes, as far as I know companies would usually offer an H1B applicant lower salary. They know the candidate will need visa sponsorship because the candidate has to say up front (usually in the first conversation) if they are authorized to work in the US. If the companies know they will have to undertake costly sponsorship, and as far as I know employment law leaves them quite free to offer a lower salary: foreign nationals are not a protected class so salary discrimination on the basis of who will need visa sponsorship is just to be expected in the current system...
> If a company has to sponsor you for an H1B though you'll be locked to one employer, and that lack of options is what means they don't need to give you market rates.
You're not locked into one employer on an H1B. Once you are here it is possible to switch jobs relatively easily since you do not need to go through the lottery again.
> as far as I know employment law leaves them quite free to offer a lower salary
"The H-1B employer must pay its H-1B worker(s) at least the “required” wage which is the higher of the prevailing wage or the employer’s actual wage (in-house wage) for similarly employed workers."
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62g-h1b-require...
The basic mechanics you're assuming are wrong - H1B is not locked to an employer, it can be easily transferred between employers. H1B is tied to having AN employer, but employees are free to switch between employers to get market rates and they do.
My understanding was that by changing jobs you could "lose your place in line" potentially costing you years of waiting in your overall immigration process.
That is true if you have something like an ongoing green card petition. However, if it's just an H1B, by the time it's approved and can transfer it, there's not really a "line" anymore.
Though there's pretty hard limitations on what you can transfer with - it has to be the same sector, similar limitations on minimum salary, and requires work on the new employer's part to move the H1B to them (so you can't keep it quiet, and it's another barrier as it's non-zero cost for lawyers etc. to actually do that).
You are allowed to change jobs after the green card petition has been pending 180 days. Add another 6-9 months for the PERM process.
https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-7-part-e-chapter-...
Does your new company need to file paperwork? Have/consult an immigration lawyer? I know our jobs openings we always specified we weren't willing to sponsor because we didn't have the ability to do the overhead. Do you mean we could have hired H1Bs and my management teams were all mistaken?
most of us here have been hiring managers in the bay area so we have been exposed to this. My exposure was you are fairly locked into one company. I had friends who had to go home abruptly when fired. We would have to buy their cars so we could sell them slower at non-fire sale prices for them. But this was late 90s through early 2000s. Maybe it's different.
What do you mean "suggest"? Every single job application I've ever seen has a question about citizenship/status. And of course they'd know whether they need to file legal papers to employ you as H1B or not - it's not like it somehow happens in secret. They know who's visa worker and who's not.
I can’t quite follow the logic of your question, it seems maybe you either don’t understand my comment or you don’t understand how this visa works.
No need to check immigration status. If they're non-white and have an accent it's already a tell you can lowball them. You'd probably skip over some white europeans with solid English, but lets be real, those people can fake being a US citizen easy enough with some trivially obtained paperwork.
The casual racism against white people that we normalize is sick. I understand the current situation and the past, but it doesn't make it right.
lol
That would be highly illegal: it'd be discrimination on the basis of race (which is protected under the law) rather than on the basis of immigration status (which is not protected).
For it to be illegal you have to prove intent.
The incentives ensure that it will happen with zero intent, and probably without the people doing it even realize they're doing it. It's not illegal to see someone, think of them as a 'sucker' but not even realize why, then lowball them, which is far more likely than for a person to actually consciously confront themselves they may be a racist.
In any case, even if they know it's illegal, it's not so easy to enforce, the fact that people get successfully sued or jailed a small fraction of the time isn't going to be some solace.
The only way to actually solve it is to remove the incentive in place, namely either the market pressure to get the best developer at the cheapest price or the vulnerability of being an immigrant.
We've all seen hiring managers that coincidentally hired only or nearly only their fellow countrymen, and nothing happens to them, even though it is highly illegal.
It appears that you have a strong case of discrimination. You should consider filing a lawsuit.
This is precisely what HR and hiring managers at FAANG companies are instructed and trained to avoid.
I'm speaking in a hypothetical, not something I've witnessed. I doubt anyone ever witnesses it willfully happen. All that is necessary is the incentives be in place for
1) Hiring manager to have incentive to hire quality talent at the most economical price
2) Foreign talent be more desperate than domestic talent
The effect is practically guaranteed even if there is exactly zero intent by the hiring manager or any conscious 'discrimination.' Incentives beget results and people may not ponder how they got there, and they often don't.
Unless you change (1) or (2) all the discrimination legislation, lawsuits, and 'training' in the world isn't worth the paper it is written on.
People need to understand that most reformists don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration to the US.
What do the most influential reformists want? The ones who set the extreme agenda that everyone else follows? As I understand it, right now the US is routinely enacting policies that the majority of citizens do not want; from this, could we surmise that the majority of people, and presumably thus the majority of reformists, will receive the extreme H1B policies that they don't want?
I am skeptical that _that_ is what's hollowing the middle class in America, it's equally easy to point to income inequality for this. But you have your story you believe, I'm resigned that the die are already cast.
It's kind of sad to see the accelerated downfall of your country.
> it's equally easy to point to income inequality for this
Have you ever considered what causes income inequality? Maybe policy that favors globalist, ownership class over salaried workers? H1B in it's current form favors owners/managers over workers! We are saying the same thing. We have to analyze the causes of income inequality in order to solve it.
I will leave you with one last thought: the states with the lowest gini co-efficient are the ones that have been more conservative over time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
policy matters!
I am writing you from one of the two red Southern ones that is a glaring counterexample.
"the states with the lowest gini co-efficient are the ones that are the least diverse" seems a better fit.
Diversity is just a statistic, it's neither good or bad in either direction.
It's not the only reason, but it's one of the likely causes. Like most complex issues, it's multi-casual. You can't import 100k+ workers per year into a country and have no effect on wages! I understand the net economic impact is potentially positive, but I am speaking to the direct economic impact of the workers being displaced.
Just to add, we are also offshoring 300k jobs every year. This makes the impact even larger.
"it's equally easy to point to income inequality for this."
Of course - they're connected. Taking advantage of labor is a big part of income inequality, including the way H1B is used/abused.
> But you have your story you believe, I'm resigned that the die are already cast.
But that is your story you believe, consider that the parent commenter has the exact same (mirrored) mindset.
A useful segue to avoid you or them "being resigned": given that you say you're "skeptical", what would be the minimal proof you'd consider valid for you to change your mind?
The discussion is already dead, there's no point trying to convince anyone because the discussion is politicized and the current admin doesn't care about petty things like reality. Whoever is right won't matter in this stage, it matters who's saying it.
I might be wrong, fully willing to cede the point, but this whole thing going on is more than _just this point_.
Looking at it solely from a perspective of competition between labor glosses over the fact that insufficient labor is also bad for the economy because it keeps companies from growing and hiring more people.
So sure, while the fewer jobs that they can fill could have higher wages (not a given, because lack of labor can stunt or kill companies) there could be much fewer people employed overall, which is clearly bad overall.
Of course, that assumes there is enough room for companies to grow. There are strong indications (e.g. the various labor and unemployment surveys) that this is the case in the US. In fact, there is a credible theory that the reason the US managed the inflation crisis so well was due to the immigration crisis.
I elaborated more (along with a couple of relevant studies) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45308311
The median pay of an H1B visa holder is $118k. The 25th percentile is $90k. This is from the government's official data: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/O...
Any suggestion that the program is dragging wages down instead of dragging wages up is not just misleading but factually wrong.
You seem to be suggesting that the H1B pulls wages up because the median pay is higher than the median overall pay in the country? That’s not a valid comparison, you’d have to compare the H1B’s salary to the median pay in their specialty.
Not only that, but you'd have to do a study to show that the talent couldn't have been trained in the US, and that an increased supply of workers didn't drag down salaries, either short or long-term. Immigration helps the countries top-line metrics, but it rarely helps the citizens inside the country.
There used to be a much stronger push for education in the US. Perhaps if companies could not "just hire from overseas" or "just outsource" there would be a longer term growth strategy that would focus more on the education of the US population (not just training for this or that job).
It did seem in the past that there was much more of an all-hands-on-deck attitude towards education throughout US corporate activities, more broadly focused on the general fields the various companies valued the most. I suspect this fall off is very real, but don't actually know if that is just my impression or if there is a concrete effect from modern economic structures.
It's an important enough question it should definitely be studied and taken into account in policy.
However I can't agree with your conclusion that "Immigration helps the countries [sic] top-line metrics, but it rarely helps the citizens inside the country". That requires meta studies that I have never seen to prove it is so. I could cautiously accept that "some types of immigration rarely help corresponding sections of the local population" much more than such a blanket judgement. Overall, it is just not true that economics is zero sum. It doesn't have to be. An entire people can in fact flourish.
It's so hard to study; one of the key things you loose in an environment where you bring in bulk migrants is a cultural expectation to interact with juniors that are part of your community.
It's not just a supply and demand equation; it's a fundamentally different environment that changes the social payoff for mentoring, networking, and building a reputation.
Ultimately despite all the propaganda trying to convince us that diversity is inherently beneficial, we are trading economic benefits for social costs. So we need to carefully restrict migration to make sure the economic benefits are actually there.
The economic benefits are clear - what social costs are you taking about?
The economic benefits are really not clear; at least not without caveats and clear conditions for the advanced skills that make a migrant beneficial.
This is if you believe that lower wages for high skill work is not an issue.
However high migration rates lower social trust, this is well studied.
If you take a smaller example, hiring internationally vs domestically. If you have to go domestic then you might have to settle for a less ideal qualification, requiring more training.
This is repeated everywhere, so companies that train better are more likely to succeed. Leading to conditions that encourage upskilling for locals overall.
Importing people short circuits that idea.
>Perhaps if companies could not "just hire from overseas" or "just outsource" there would be a longer term growth strategy that would focus more on the education of the US population (not just training for this or that job).
Except the Heritage Foundation, er, I mean, Trump Administration controls all 3 branches of government and has all the freedom in the world to power a resuscitation of public education in America, except they're not interested in that at all; quite the opposite, they want to further fragment education baselines and make secondary education less desirable.
I don't think you have to show that the talent couldn't have been trained in the USA (or rather, it couldn't have been trained into USA workers), but that the talent wasn't trained in the USA so bringing in an outside worker is the only way to hire for the position.
You can't really expect a company hiring PhD's in a niche field to show that they couldn't have spent 7 years training an American for the work.
> You can't really expect a company hiring PhD's in a niche field to show that they couldn't have spent 7 years training an American for the work
I don't believe for even an instant that there is a significant amount of immigration happening to bring in people who are that specialized
Some, maybe. But not the vast majority of it
That's so funny. You realize there is already an O-1 visa, right? I hate to be a bearer of bad news but the vast, vast majority of H-1Bs are not PhD holders for which no suitable American PhD exists. If you go out into to the working world for awhile, you'll see that.
> show that the talent couldn't have been trained in the US
The admin has been cutting billions in funding to universities which makes this argument easier.
Need an expert in arithmetic combinatorics? Well Terry Tao lost his grants so now you've got to look elsewhere.
> Immigration helps the countries top-line metrics, but it rarely helps the citizens inside the country.
What study does one "have to do" to support _this_ claim?
There's plenty to deny this claim.
Immigrants make up 14% of the population but make up over 20% of entrepreneurs. 44% of fortune 500 company founders were either born outside US or to immigrant parents in the US.
Those are stats published by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Immigration_Lawyers_A...
They seem roughly correct
You can! If you look at the report it breaks down H1b pay range by occupation and education level.
An H1b software engineer median is ~$120k.
Using other official sources, the median pay for US software engineers overall is... ~$120k.
Interesting. I think this gets at guywithhat’s sibling comment:
> you'd have to do a study to show that the talent couldn't have been trained in the US, and that an increased supply of workers didn't drag down salaries, either short or long-term.
If the median H1B for software is exactly the same as the overall median, it makes you wonder if the median would be different if the H1B was not an option available to employers.
It would definitely be higher.
Lower supply tends to drive the price up.
I saw this in my specialized science field too, in California a couple of decades ago. Real wages for that work have dropped 5 fold at least, partly due to automation, but I saw labs that were 100% immigrants, many H1Bs. Not complaining, just observing. were H1Bs necessary though? No. Many US born in that field found themselves jobless upon graduation. It was all about cheap labor
yup, anecdotally the majority of postdocs these days are internationals who are willing to work 60+ hour weeks on $50k a year, for the infinitesimal chance to land a R1 tenure-track faculty position. americans have no interest in getting a phd and then subjecting themselves to this kind of indentured servitude.
Whoa whoa whoa, that's (1) not correct[1], but (2) shameless goalpost motion in any case.
The whole premise of your original contention was that we should measure like-profession salaries to see whether or not there is an effect. Then when no effect was shown, you switched it up in favor of an argument that (again, incorrectly) predicts that such an effect can't be shown at all. That's not good faith discussion.
[1] Immigrant labor is arriving, by definition, in a pre-existing market. If immigrants can't be hired more cheaply than existing labor, by definition they can't be pulling wages down.
> An H1b software engineer median is ~$120k.
> Using other official sources, the median pay for US software engineers overall is... ~$120k.
So, it seems that if we remove H1b workers and assume that the demand would have stayed the same, then domestic salaries should have been higher. Assuming, of course, that companies won’t simply offshore.
The assumption that companies won't offshore is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Companies already do a lot of offshoring - you think any rational actor in this space that was hiring H1Bs isn't going to simply relocate them to more friendly jurisdictions for immigration?
On top of this, these are workers who would have otherwise paid tax in the US!
It feels as if you're insinuating that we shouldn't be taking measures to prevent offshoring and there's nothing to do but allow our labor markets to be subverted.
>you think any rational actor in this space that was hiring H1Bs isn't going to simply relocate them to more friendly jurisdictions for immigration?
This was true before and after today.
Put another way, if all the H-1B jobs really can be offshored quickly and easily the way so many Indians and anti-Trump people here and elsewhere confidently predict, *that would have happened already*.
I'd argue that it doesn't happen more because it's (relatively) easy to bring labor onshore.
But yes, if that path doesn't exist, I don't think that global companies are going to start hiring American, they're going to continue hiring globally but take the path of least resistance towards bringing this talent onboard.
Overall the US economy employs about 800,000 software engineers, with 200,000 or so of them being H1B holders.
Now you can argue you would prefer that those 200,000 jobs go to Americans, but on the scale of the overall economy, it really doesn’t matter. What’s far more important is the massive impact those 800,000 software engineers have on the rest of the economy. Four million IT jobs, the entire finance and healthcare and retail industries that are propped up on technology built by those people; whole technology companies like Uber or doordash that create entirely new labor markets.
Risk 25% of that capacity on the idea that we would rather have those industries built solely on domestically-grown engineering talent? Why would that be a good tradeoff?
It's ludicrous. US companies will not be able to dig up 200,000 qualified software engineers in the domestic population while every other skilled profession is experiencing a similar brain drain.
The prospect of a $100k/year/employee visa tax makes opening an office in Europe so much more compelling.
I guess the people who can't be offshored will see their salaries go up so that's cool?
"Computer science ranked seventh amongst undergraduate majors with the highest unemployment at 6.1 percent, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York."
https://www.newsweek.com/computer-science-popular-college-ma...
Obviously there is not going to be a drop of 200k overnight, but I think the graduates of CS will be thankful there are more opportunities for them. These opportunities will drive more students to take CS classes in the US.
You also get the baumol effect increasing wages even for unrelated sectors (sounds helpful at first).
The flipside is that every american industry becomes less competitive globally without the H1b guys.
you'd really need to look at the median pay for specifically companies that hire a lot of H1b SWEs. I'd suspect that would be higher.
Maybe? But what about training and talent pool? Imagine how many companies would not take off because there’s no one to implement the founder’s idea. Imagine you’re a startup and you have hiring difficulties because all the good ones are over at Oracle or Microsoft (doubting the existence of FAANG).
Maybe, maybe not. Too many factors to consider, and it’s extremely hard to get a definitive answer.
We can arrest all of them and send them back like in hyundai !
If they don’t have valid visas for the kind of work they were doing, like was the case for Hyundai, then the indeed were breaking the law
Median salary for a software engineer according to BLS is over that - around $133k.
If h1bs are statistically a lot more centered in higher income urban areas, while overall populations of a given profession are more evenly distributed across the country...
Then that $120,000 salary median can still represent a 50% undercut of similar Urban salaries for a profession.
I'm going to contend that that is the case. But I don't have time to chase down the statistics
Underpaid or overpaid doesn't really matter.
Sure it's sound to argue that wages would be higher with more constraint supply.
BUT: The network effect of all SWE talent from across the globe moving to the US is also huge.
Probably, you'd have a smaller overall tax base without H1B. Make no mistake most countries would like to keep their H1B expats :)
If you really wanted to grow US supply of engineers, you'd have to start by fixing the education system, making it cheaper, and then wait 5 years.
> An H1b software engineer median is ~$120k.
Base salary, not total comp, the first year
The problem you will have selling this to this crowd is we have been in the meetings. We know that 'we're going to use a consulting team on this' means lower wages. We know that 'we going to outsource this' to a company full of H1Bs is being done... to lower costs.
Maybe at FAANGs what you say is true. But at every place I've been when H1Bs ended up added (normally via consultancy or outsourcing) it was always to cut costs. And the only costs we were cutting was staff.
The math of bringing an employee onsite on an H1B just to depress wages does not work unless it is below the 25th percentile of wages (which is $90k).
Once you are breaking the $100k mark and want to only save costs, you are better off opening a GCC in Eastern Europe, Israel, or India, which is what most companies started doing once remote work became normalized in the early 2020s.
All this did is make a free "Thousand Talents" program for India, especially in chemical, petroleum, biopharma, and biochemical engineering - industries where the delta between US and India salaries aren't significant but the talent gap in the US is real.
There are much smarter ways to crack down on H1B abuse by consultancies - this ain't it.
Edit: can't reply, but here's why this is dumb
Assuming I am in Dallas (a fairly prominent domestic IT services hub) and hiring an H1B employee.
In Dallas, a wage around $95k base is fairly standard based on JPMC, DXC, and C1's salaries in the area.
That $95k an employee is has an additional 18% in employer required taxes and withholdings. Add to that an additional 5-10% for retirement account and insurance plans. That $95k employee became around $115k-125k.
Once salaries start breaking into the 6 figure mark, that 23-35% in overhead starts adding up very fast. On top of that visa processing before this rule costed around $15-20k in additional legal fees on the employer's side.
If I'm at the point where I'm paying a low six figure salary, I'm better off opening an office in Warsaw or Praha or Hyderabad where I can safely pay $50k-60k in base to get top 10% talent while getting a $10k-20k per head tax credit over a 3-5 year period depending on the amount I invest building a GCC because my after tax cost at that point becomes $50-60k per employee. These credits tend to require a $1M investment, and with the proposed H1B fee, this made that kind of FDI much easier to justify than it was before.
At least with the current status quo, if I was hiring an ML Engineer at MS or an SRE at Google (a large number of whom are H1Bs as well), I could justify hiring within the US, but adding an additional $100K filing fee just gives me no incentive at all to expand headcount domestically.
You don't use the stick if you also don't have the carrot.
> You are not taking into account section 174, It takes you 15 years to depreciate foreign salary vs first year
That's a rounding error now that it costs $100K to renew or apply for an H1B visa. And for larger organizations breaking the mid-8 figures in revenue mark, section 174 changes never had an impact one way or the other - it was mostly local dev shops and MSPs that faced the brunt of the section 174 onslaught.
> Honestly, even Germany is probably better bang-for-the-buck than Hyderabad
Germany needs to severely reduce employer contributions and taxes to become cost competitive against Warsaw, Praha, or Hyd for software and chip design jobs.
That said, this is a net positive for Germany's biotech, mechanical, biopharma, and other engineering industries that aren't software or chip design related.
> Praha
This is a pet peeve of mine, but there is an english name for that city and it's Prague.
There is no point in using the local spelling because it adds no clarity, is less obvious to pronounce for any reader and the locals are not really gonna thank you for doing this either. Just seems like a form of light cultural white-knighting to me.
You are not even consistent because Warsaw is not how locals spell that.
Exonyms are colonialism.
Eh, no?
The most prominent exonyms are of cities like Paris, London, Moscow or Beijing.
I.e., places culturally and historically significant enough that older historical pronunciations have become ossified in foreign languages.
English having a "Prague" spelling means the name of the city was important enough to have entered the English language back in the day when English was still borrowing heavily from French.
It's a peeve of mine as well moreso when they don't carry it out for English placenames that get transliterated into a local language but some of these folks will carry the localized version -like they won't insist on "New York" instead of Nova Iorque in PR or BR. But even above, they are inconsistent with Warsaw carrying the English spelling.
If the local market for American DBAs is $180k, then hiring H1B DBAs at $110k does depress wages.
Sure, but if the local market is that high you probably have sever supply constraints.
If you don't fix the supply constraints, you'll depress growth.
You could fix the education system - good luck - and then wait 5 years before you cut H1B.
But yes, obviously it depressed wages, which at a certain point is probably a good thing.
I don't know much about the other cities you mentioned, but there's no way you could get top developers from Warsaw for $50-60k in 2025. You may be hard pressed to find them even if you 2x that. As a point of reference, a nice family apartment costs around $1M here now. Times they are a-changin.
Then what would the salary be? If I am hard-pressed to hire at 120k?
Offering a perspective from Berlin - a decent-to-good senior engineer goes for $120k-$130k so I'm guessing for Warsaw, you could get someone similar for $90k-100k
Of course it all depends on who are we actually talking about. I think talented seniors with 5-10yoe and proper communication skills expect North of $150k.
Interesting, there are plenty of localities in the US that hire 5-10yoe developers at south of $100k.
You can see this in BLS data.
Is there a good resource for data on wages in Poland? I mean, I am going to look, but I thought I'd ask.
> Interesting, there are plenty of localities in the US that hire 5-10yoe developers at south of $100k.
I don't doubt there may be people who would be fine with that, but I guess no one who values their own skills would go for it if there are plenty of East/West Coast companies hiring remotely.
> Is there a good resource for data on wages in Poland? I mean, I am going to look, but I thought I'd ask.
I think you can start from looking at the local job offers, e.g. https://justjoin.it. Just remember there are a couple of nuances:
- most developers in Poland don't want to be FTEs, because the tax burden on that type of employment is at least 2 times higher than on B2B contracts; effectively, we ended up having a market where everyone is hired B2B, but with all the usual FT benefits (paid vacations and sick days, equipment, private insurance, gym memberships, free food and whatnot) - it's sort of a gray area, but the related law is not really enforced; thus as a foreign company you compete with the local B2B rates + benefits
- people are aware that US is a different market generating more revenue
- the work-life balance may be quite different, so they expect to be paid accordingly
- Warsaw is generally more expensive than other cities in Poland, so you don't need to limit yourself to one city in your search, the same way as you wouldn't hire remote developers from the Bay Area only
- there's a reason these offers are hanging in there :)
Edit: formatting.
You are not taking into account section 174, It takes you 15 years to depreciate foreign salary vs first year (post the BBB).
Hyderabad is not that cheap for the top 10%, probably closer 90-100k base.
Honestly, even Germany is probably better bang-for-the-buck than Hyderabad, but Hyderabad has the volume and the offices.
Care to provide a google sheets outlining why it doesn’t work?
I’m sorry but I don’t follow. What bearing does the 25th percentile H1B wage have on suppressing wages in a particular role or specialty?
I guess all those management meetings where we brought on teams staffed by H1Bs in order to cut costs, when our only costs were wages, didn't make sense.
Funny things is the agencies/consultancies/outsource companies all solds us on it would cut costs when the only thing changed was labor. But apparently they could cut costs without cutting labor costs? How does that work?
It definitely suppresses TECH worker pay and decreases mobility. For the H1B they become indentured servants often working 60+ hrs a week.
H1B holders are paid less for the same job, keeping wages down.
While the permanent residence process is clearly broken for people from India and China, I don't think it's accurate to characterise H1B workers as indentured servants. The paperwork for changing jobs on an H1B is fairly easy and is not subject to the H1B lottery.
Cap-exempt H1B holders working for universities are restricted to switching only to other cap-exempt employers, but even then I never felt I had to work 60+ hours a week.
I am specifically talking about tech, I personally knew many H1B folks that worked insane hours literally so that they were seen as ultra productive and wouldn't get cut.
You would need to get another job, unlike a citizen. It need not be said how that's a significant barrier to resisting your employer, no?
Another job willing to do the paperwork, willing to sponsor, that has access to an immigration lawyer. It's not just 'finding a job' it's finding a job at a company willing/able to do all that. It's definitely a much higher bar.
The paperwork is far less onerous than for sponsoring a new immigrant.
In my experience recruiters saw H1B transfers as routine but would ghost me once I explained that I required a new visa sponsorship since I worked or a cap-exempt employer and could not simply transfer.
The point is that it is a non-zero amount of effort and cost, creating a second class of employees.
No.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45306919
> In 2021, the median wage of an H-1B worker was $108,000, compared to $45,760 for U.S. workers in general.
This compares medians across to huge populations. I have seen many H1Bs making less and working more.
Both can be true. H-1B's earn less than their domestic peers, but far more than the domestic underclass they are brought in to keep down.
It is the distribution that matters at a wage level cluster defined by DOL. There are four (i.e. entry, qualified, experienced, and fully competent) and those are higher than the medians.
See also Understanding H-1B Minimum Salary Requirements for Eligibility - https://day1cpt.org/news/understanding-h-1b-minimum-salary-r...
Your second paragraph doesn't follow the first. 90-118K might feel like a lot to you, or to many, but it doesn't mean that those wages aren't dragged DOWN. If you live in SF, NYC, Seattle or other HCOL areas, 90-118K is definitely not HIGH. And software jobs pay WAY more than that. H1's definitely are paid BELOW the prevailing wage for the same job, in the same area. So compare apples to apples.
That tells us nothing without knowing the median pay of the jobs they're replacing.
You aren’t accounting for hours worked. Your H1B are probably putting in 30-50% more hours and with put up with any bullshit you dish out.
What's the median pay of big tech workers? I started at 150k 8 years ago as a new grad, for comparison.
OP's comment still makes no sense then. H1bs are not hollowing out "middle class" wage earners then - the most you could say is that they are slightly reducing income of high-income earners.
But also, the H1b median salary for a software engineer is ~$120k, which is almost identical to that of the US median overall - so all of this hullabaloo seems pretty groundless.
<< the most you could say is that they are slightly reducing income of high-income earners
First, I would like you to reconsider 'high income' and putting $120k in that category. It was a good chunk of change. In this year of our lord 2025, it is not. It is, for my region anyway, barely acceptable middle class income.
The median income in San Francisco is $69k. In New York City, it's $41k. Median household incomes are ~2x those numbers.
A $120k job in any region of the country is 'high income'. You are feeling a different effect, which is that we have designed our country such that even high income people often do not feel economically secure.
Stop. Just because that is the median income does not automatically make it high. The value of the income comes from what it is able to purchase. That value has been steadily eroded over the year. If anything, it is indictment of the existing system. If anything, the proper way of looking at it is that the actual value you are able to get for your work has been greatly reduced. The number is meaningless to anyone, who is able to look at basic reality ( or does not depend on status quo for one reason or another ).
The sheer balls on people to suggest that high absolute value automatically means it is high. And that is before we get to how those jobs are are not even in the same category...
I am going to stop here, because I don't want to get mean.
If you barely consider yourself middle-class with an income 50% over the median then you are probably at least living in a "high income" region :P
And your self-classification is questionable, but that is very common. Maybe a good trigger to experience gratefulness and satisfaction for the economical situation you are in?
I think you misunderstand me greatly and, more importantly, greatly misunderstand the zeitgeist. I am unbelievably thankful for being paid for what I am doing the amount I am paid.
But, and this is the most important part, just because I am in better situation than most, does not make the overall state of the population that much less shitty.
Am I getting through to you?
> does not make the overall state of the population that much less shitty.
Has it ever been better?
Not saying it shouldn't, just that we might have unrealistic expectations.
Housing affordability was better from 2009-2021 than now. https://www.atlantafed.org/research/data-and-tools/home-owne...
Total national health expenditures have grown much faster than population growth: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe...
And yet, over the same time period, life expectancy hasn't gone up that much: https://datacommons.org/tools/visualization#visType%3Dtimeli...
The median is actually $133k per the BLS.
The upperbound for middle class pay is over $100k in all states, approaching $200k in a couple.
How many H1B workers do the WITCH companies employ? They are definitely competing with the “middle class”.
Pretty much. All this did is now create a thousand talents program for India.
H1B visa abuse by consultancies and mass recruiters is a real issue, but this now incentivized companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Pfizer, Cheveron etc to expand their Indian offices.
Edit: can't reply
> Was there any reason for them not to? It's cheaper than H1B anyways.
Spending an additional $10-15k in visa filing fees isn't that big of a deal for an employer who's already paying around 25-35% in withholding and benefits, but at $100K that makes it enough that if you needed to sponsor 10 people on an H1B, you now hit the monetary amount to avail GCC tax rebates and subsidies in most of Eastern Europe and India, where they will give you an additional $10-20k in tax credits and subsidies per head.
Basically, opening a new office abroad just to save on $10-15k of filing fees per employees wasn't worth it, but now that it'll be $100k per employee, the math just shifted.
> Why is this parasitic organization allowed to incorporate?
VC now, not a director anymore. But help me find a new grad with 3-4 years of exploit development and OS internals experience in the US. I can't.
On the other hand, I can in Tel Aviv. There's a reason the entire cybersecurity industry has shifted outside the US.
Large sectors of the US tech scene just lack ANY domestic know-how.
"...to expand their Indian offices."
Was there any reason for them not to? It's cheaper than H1B anyways.
Because being in roughly the same timezone as the people you’re managing is underrated.
Does it matter for a company at the size of Google?
Yes, as platform teams are generally colocated somewhere else.
This is mostly just a benefit for mixed teams. If you have entire departments offshore, then you have less cross-zone interaction.
So you’re going to hire foreigners in the US or you’re going to ship the whole operation overseas. Why is this parasitic organization allowed to incorporate?
OK. But I'm not fighting against them for jobs here. I'm not fighting against H1Bs who are willing to put up with different shared housing situations than I am for housing here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45306919
Guest workers have no long term stake in living in the US unless they win a green card. Six years and they're out. Given this state of affairs, they will be compliant and not demand increasing compensation when they don't have to plan for a future in the US. Get too uppity and you get the boot. The suppression is hidden within this dynamic and sinks the prevailing wage for all workers.
Citations of broad H-1B visa abuse:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305623
A better perspective is that the median H1B holder created $100k+ worth of value for some US company. Salaries are lower than the value you create, or else your employer would stop paying you.
There could be some rare edge case where you are undercut by a direct competitor, but overall America is much richer with H1Bs that without them.
Value for who? Certainly not the majority of Americans. Depressed wages increase profits, which go to shareholders. Most Americans do not benefit from the H-1B grift. I’ll even argue it hurts US citizens by importing immigrants who aren’t necessary from a labor supply perspective (for those on the visa who are not exceptional talent), who compete for housing with citizens when there is a shortage of millions of housing units.
A few select tech and financial services companies, and their shareholders, benefit the most from the program.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/04/what-we-k...
https://www.pewresearch.org/?attachment_id=201754
I hire a programmer to code my app, SuperConnect++. I charge $0.99 to download the app. People buy the app if it's worth more than $0.99 to them.
If 150,000 people buy the app, then I have ~$150,000 of revenue. I can pay a programmer $100,000 a year and have $50,000 left over. 150,000 people benefited from the app.
Now say I have to pay an additional $100,000 visa fee for my programmer. My cost of $200,000 is less than my revenue of $150,000. I don't build the app. I don't get $50,000. 150,000 people who would have bought the app don't benefit from it. The biggest loss is to the Americans who don't get to buy the app.
There are other possibilities, maybe I increase the price to $1.99 or I hire an American. We can see that those are both bad. The former extracts $150,000 extra dollars from American consumers. Since unemployment is low for Americans and an American programmer can't have two jobs at once, the later just means that some other project that the American programmer would have worked on is not completed.
Unemployment for tech workers is not currently low, and it is taking months, or even years to find a new role, therefore this argument doesn’t hold water. Wages > consumer excess and profits. The world will go on if you don’t build the app, and perhaps someone else will. The evidence is clear this visa is abused at scale, and this action has been overdue.
https://www.epi.org/blog/tech-and-outsourcing-companies-cont...
https://www.epi.org/publication/new-evidence-widespread-wage...
The unemployment rate in the information-technology job market is 4.5%?
Over 650k tech layoffs have occurred in the last 4 years. Companies have tried as hard as they can to offshore and use visa labor to avoid hiring US citizen workers. This doesn’t account for new job creation needed for workers entering the workforce. Corporations are also hiding jobs from US citizens (citations which you can find in my other recent comments).
https://layoffs.fyi/
Ask HN: Has anyone else been unemployed for over two years? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45306539 - September 2025
Ask HN: Recent unemployed CS grad what do I do? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43211153 - March 2025
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/state-of-the-tech...
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/it_job_market_july/
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/job-market-report-c...
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/06/unemployment-job-market-edu...
https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1kcc40j/what_happ...
https://apnews.com/article/college-graduates-job-market-unem...
Given all of that, the unemployment rate is still only 4.5%.
Sounds like the metric is unreliable and cannot be trusted as input for policy, based on the evidence and ground truth.
U-6 (the most inclusive unemployment rate) is 8.1 as of this comment, the highest it’s been in the last five years: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE
So, start cutting labor visas until the unemployment rate improves. The domestic labor clearly exists.
To make this concrete, suppose that Elon Musk never immigrated to the US. SpaceX and Tesla are never founded, or are founded in some other country.
The American electric car market is never kickstarted, none of the American employees of SpaceX or Tesla are hired, there is no space renaissance.
Keeping out Elon Musk is somewhat good for United Launch Alliance and for Ford, but it's worse for all the Americans who have to buy worse cars and pay more for satellite internet.
To make this concrete, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla Motors. Musk later invested and, most certainly, made it vastly more successful than the two founders were on track to do, but Tesla Motors was already founded without requiring Musk's immigration to the US.
That's a very fair point. :)
> suppose that Elon Musk never immigrated to the US
That’s certainly one version of how events may have been different - a sort of “It’s a Wonderful Life” scenario. (Though comparing Elon Musk to the kind and ethical George Bailey would be quite a stretch!) But it’s not inconceivable that other possibilities would have emerged.
> who compete for housing with citizens when there is a shortage of millions of housing units.
Are they underpaid, or are they swimming in cash to buy up all the expensive housing? Make up your mind.
It can be both. Median price of a home is $400k. Homebuyers need household income of ~$117k to afford typical home in U.S. Their income from ther visa enables their buying power to compete against citizens. About 300k H-1B visa holders own homes in the US per FWD.US. Other comments in this thread speak to the wage suppression and lower wages.
https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/home-affordability-in-c...
There is shortage of everything now. Maybe immigrants needing gas is raising gas prices too. (OK, i know you didn't say that, but its a joke :P) We could go back and forth posting links that contradict each other, or recognize that scapegoating immigrants isn't productive.
https://www.uschamber.com/economy/the-state-of-housing-in-am...
"The shortage of housing can be attributed to a range of regulatory and policy failures. These include burdensome permitting processes, outdated zoning regulations that dictate everything from lot sizes to parking requirements, complex legal frameworks, price controls, and restrictive financial regulations."
We would have to look at that by industry. For example, if median developer pay is $130k, then both of your numbers are below that and would bring the median down. $118k for highly skilled workers (purpose of H1B) seems low to me. Additionally, the upper bound for the middle class in all 50 states is above $100k.
The H-1B also includes professions like teacher and medical technician where the average wage is closer to $60k / year. Doing a broad "all professions" for H-1B misses out on the various areas where they work and appears to assume that they are all professions that regularly pay in the 90th percentile of American overall wages.
Can you explain how those statistics support your conclusion? I don't see the link you're drawing between them.
I also am not convinced that those statistics alone can be used to draw such a conclusion; there's more to it than that.
> Any suggestion that the program is dragging wages down instead of dragging wages up is not just misleading but factually wrong.
The stats you provide here don't support your claim.
H1B visa holders can be paid more on average while still having a downward effect on wages...
Imagine that some car model costs $200,000 to buy in the US. However, an entrepreneur realises they can can import the same car from a poorer country for just $100,000 then sell it in the US for less than the manufacturer themselves. The manufacturer finds out about this and says, "hey! you're selling my car for less", but the importer says, "no, actually, you'll find the median car in the US is $50,000 so I'm technically increasing car prices".
So what you're saying could be wrong in two ways... One you could be wrong in the sense that even if it does increase median wages, that doesn't mean it necessary increases the median wage of US citizens if now a significant percentage the best employment opportunities are going to H1B visa holders instead of citizens.
But secondly, and the point I was trying to make with the car analogy, is that you could be wrong about the average wages going up too if H1B visa holders are taking jobs which would pay even more were it not for HB1 visas. So if the average wage of a SWE in the US is say $150k, but the average H1B visa holder is being paid $120k, H1Bs are clearly not "dragging wages up".
And realistically it's far more likely H1B visa holders suppress wages given how relatively high US wages are.
I'll end this comment by saying that personally I think this idea that giving the best opportunities to immigrants is probably directly wrong for many reasons. Of course, allowing in businesses and individuals who will create jobs makes a lot of sense, but what you really want is the best opportunities going to your own citizens, then to bring in cheap labour to fill the crappy jobs citizens don't really want to do, but are now increasingly doing when they leave university like working in a bar or becoming a barista. If there's a great job a company can't fill with the domestic workforce perhaps they should train someone for that role or take a risk on a recent graduate like in the old days?
I've seen other analysis showing the 80% of the wages are below the prevailing wage of the equivalent role. It's definitely about wage suppression and having an indentured servant.
That's WAY lower than typical tech salaries.
In tech hubs maybe, in the rest of the country its high.
your link says that those numbers are after some time spent in US, and initial payment is 75k for 25p and 94k for 50p.
Also, those numbers are bumped up by bigtech who doesn't discriminate by visa, so pays in bodyshops are even lower and tech salaries are way higher than that in US.
Are you really not familiar with management and corporations? Firstly, stating those numbers does not prove your point but it is all belied by exactly the reason all of us that are aware of the realities know, which is that for the most part part H-1Bs are sought after because of them being cheaper. The implications from those like Gates, that the average person in the U.S. on an H-1B is a Turing or Wozniak or whatever is laughable, This is not to denigrate them but the so-called "genius visa" is a farce and the notion that there are not Americans that can do the jobs is also quite ridiculous. These things are heavily gamed and people from the countries that produce the majority of such applicants know that. I think you if you analyze it further, you may find it is all a lot more cynical than you might suspect. Why do you think H-1B visa holders in tech primarily come from a small set of countries that are not centers of tech innovation? Is it really that Europeans can't figure out bubble-sort?
Haven't you heard how cheating that works? This is what was filled in on the H1B applications. The government doesn't check that, and so companies don't pay.
Second, Indians have to pay their bosses to get a job. Their real pay is at least $20k lower. And there's far worse as well.
Do you have any articles or anything on the latter? I had not heard of that.
Easy to find:
https://www.epi.org/publication/new-evidence-widespread-wage...
https://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-infosys-tata-abuse-h-1b-pr...
https://www.aila.org/ice-it-company-pleads-guilty-h-1b-visa-...
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-to-recognize-and...
> People need to understand that most reformists don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration to the US.
And how are “they” planning on determining who is “truly exceptional”? And what makes you think the “truly exceptional” ones are still going to have any interest in coming here when they see what happens to the people who the current regime deems “not exceptional”?
I sure as hell wouldn’t come to the US knowing I may be deported to a third world prison if I post the wrong thing online.
I don't think you need to define 'truly exceptional.' You just need to put in a limit and the scarcity will force the slots to go to the best and rarest talent. I'm all for bringing the truly best and brightest to the US. I'm not for replacing large swaths of the domestic labor force with an imported lower price equivalent.
I don't think there's an H1B category for online political edgelords anyway -- we have enough of those already on both sides of the political spectrum, so I don't think anyone cares if that type of person is afraid to come here. If anything, maybe it's better to have less of that kind of thing so we can focus on getting things done instead of political partisanship?
> And how are “they” planning on determining who is “truly exceptional”?
For example by implementing a $100 000 fee for their H-1B visas, which ensures that companies will only use those visas to contract truly exceptional talent. That's a very small price to pay for a company to be able to hire a person who is among the greatest in the world in her field.
The hollowed out middle class is surely because of the class of jobs that have been growing the fastest, seeing the highest salaries and salary growths, and have been the best jobs in America for 2 decades.
It’s not because of the other jobs which the H1Bs aren’t even allowed to do abd have seen falling salaries and degrowth.
Agree with mid level talent part, not the middle class part. H1B holders by large don't hold typical "middle class" jobs like accountants, office admins, marketing, sales, teachers, etc: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/11/jobs-with-the-largest-shares...
Can you please share your reading material that links H1B software engineers with decline in middle class jobs from this list?
Exceptional migrants can still qualify under O-1, which hasn’t really changed at all. Most tech startup founders can qualify for O-1, unless your startup is really pointless.
Sure, show us the numbers you got from your "further readings".
Plenty of peeps are being much more factual below, compared to the gvt linguo that you are just rehashing rn
I suspect that in the case of tech companies, the end result of this won't be more jobs going to Americans, it will be either remote workers in low wage countries or outsourcing to low wage countries. Which, in the long term, might lead to fewer tech jobs in the US overall.
Still, I can't help but feel a little bit of glee at all the tech companies who did their best to suck up to Trump, and now he stabs them in the back.
How valid is this premise in an increasingly global world?
Most of the companies that are paying salaries could (and already do!) have offices in other jurisdictions where they could hire the same talent.
Better to bring this talent onshore, where the wages are taxed, than force these companies to hire from satellite offices?
It doesn't make much financial sense for companies to stop sourcing talent globally just because they can't be brought onshore, especially given enough time.
Purely anecdotal, but for me personally this wouldn't change who or how I hire, just the location.
Same basic question -- at the price of $100k/ea, it does seem cheaper to build-out more satellite offices.
But there's a parallel push around taxing American firms using foreign labor (https://www.moreno.senate.gov/press-releases/new-moreno-bill...).
If multiple new policies are put in place at the same time, then... I dunno... it seems harder to predict...
This seems virtually impossible to enforce. It's trivial to restructure hiring a developer to write software, as licensing software from a foreign development firm, or any number of other workarounds.
This is not just a hypothetical, this is something that already happens when companies are looking to optimize their tax burden. Corporate structuring and income shifting are big businesses in their own right and serve to find the minimum amount of changes required to be able to legally reclassify income.
In the case of this bill specifically, in the unlikely even it passes, a simple corporate inversion will solve this problem. Instead of the US company owning foreign subsidiaries, the structure is inverted: the parent company becomes foreign, which will own a domestic US corporation. When the multinational wants to hire or retain offshore talent, it simply pays out from the parent company. Again these aren't hypotheticals, these are real tax avoidance strategies that are already in place and are well-trodden paths.
You can come up with an infinite amount of regulation to try to halt this (this problem is also called tax base erosion) but it ends up doing more harm than good - eventually you end up with a tax code and regulatory environment so complex that that alone disincentivizes new investment.
The goal is not just to retain existing capital and talent by forcing them to be locked in - it's to compete for the next dollar, the next startup, the next factory - new investment will follow the path of least resistance, while older companies eventually close up shop due to one reason or another.
If your worldview is one of "We already have the best capital and talent, so we don't need to bother to compete to acquire new capital and talent", the world you live in will stagnate and wither with respect to societies that will bend over backwards for this.
corporate charters should be treated as the tools they are. such businesses do not exist without being tied to a particular set of laws in a particular jurisdiction.
Is there any data that supports these statements? Specifically that the program is abused and that it "hurts" the middle class.
With that in mind, would you say the administration is going about this the right way? Because this is going to hurt all H1B candidates, not just the "middle".
> mid level talent at below market rates which really hurts the middle class in America
What is "mid level talent" though? you're not getting that data from H1B wage filings, they're factually under-reporting compensation.
We should just set a number of H1Bs and auction them off.
I would like further reading on this topic.
I think one unintended outcome of this would be that the jobs would be completely outsourced to outside of US. The ones remaining would be government contracts that have provisions against it. The government could add tariffs on services, but we need to see if that just moves the companies outside of US or not. Capitalism in a democracy is hard to control.
Agreed, however the top end usually comes to US to do masters and then tries to get job using H1B. If this is where to be instated in this form, it almost precludes any fresh college graduates from getting a shot at this.
$100k signing bonus and $150k salary was normal for fresh grads back in 2014, pretty sure big tech can afford this no problem for actual talent.
The big tech companies have the financial means to invest in anything. They are essentially printing money.
However, which startup can afford an additional cost of 100,000 dollars for a fresh PhD graduate who is essential for their niche?
The true economic benefit of the H1B visa program for the US economy lies in the long tail of smaller firms that require a limited number of specialized personnel, which, by definition, is scarce.
A PhD holder should be coming in under O-1.
A PhD comes as a student with F1 student visa that expires the day of their graduation.
O1 is unlikely to be granted to a student who has not graduated yet. What are they going to show for evidence? Manuscripts in preparation? Or class grades?
How many businesses have ever found a fresh graduate to be provably essential?
Name one person who is provably essential to a company.
Jensen Huang
Nvidia will continue to exist even if JH disappears today.
All companies of that size have succession plans. See Apple and Alibaba.
That’s my point. The problem you’ve raised doesn’t really exist.
:facepalm:
> What are they going to show for evidence?
I guess they wouldn't have much to show for evidence. Which is exactly why they would be correctly classified as not being a specialist, and therefore undeserving on an O-1 visa.
These visas are not meant to allow company to hire underpaid employees that quite literally just graduated.
A company conducts a technical interview to assess a candidate. Their public record is not their only criterion of hiring. USCIS relies exclusively on public record (and maybe recommendation letters)
> $100k signing bonus and $150k salary was normal for fresh grads back in 2014
No it was not
Please share the articles you have about the matter.
this comment is at best wrong, and at worst, purposely misleading
> In the last few decades, there has been growth of abuse of the program to get mid level talent at below market rates which really hurts the middle class in America.
That's a weird definition for "middle class", there are only 65k H1b visas issued every year. If you really are talking about the middle 60% or whatever of all workers, immigrants on H1b's are irrelevant noise. At most, these visas might be seen to impact specific professions (tech in particular, lots of doctors too) that most people don't consider representative of the "middle class".
Honestly: a lie. One you chose because it appealed to you, and then constructed a narrative to support it. We could easily afford to have a middle class in this country if we distributed wealth differently, and more immigrants would help us do it.
I don't think it follows that preventing that brain drain would have lead to appreciably better outcomes for those countries. The real sucking factor for the united states is the second to none availability of capital to spend on R & D. If you keep the brains where they were raised, there is no mechanism for them to actually turn their ideas into fruition because there is little funding to support this either in private or public sector. The reason why you hear about research talent going back to China is because they are offered PI positions and generous startup grants or something analogous in most cases, with the government there committed to invest billions in research. You can't really expect that in the global south. You can't even really expect that in Europe in a lot of cases.
> If you keep the brains where they were raised, there is no mechanism for them to actually turn their ideas into fruition because there is little funding to support this either in private or public sector.
In such a world, why wouldn't you see 1. foreign R&D companies, 2. indexed into a thriving foreign equities market, 3. gathering the interest of domestic investors who want to diversify beyond domestic investments, by 4. moving their money and/or investing in domestic proxy investments?
I say this as a Canadian whose managed mutual-fund holdings are apparently largely composed of foreign (mostly American) proxy equities — and who has met many Canadian-based VCs who don't do much investment into Canadian companies. If not for talent immigration, the American investment landscape would probably look similar!
The U.S. is where the money is. In canada between public and private sector about 30 billion dollars are spent on research and development. Across the entire EU, this figure is more like 440 billion dollars. In the U.S., the figure is 885 billion dollars.
https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/publicrandd-aspx/
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20246
My point was that in this alternate hypothetical world, there likely wouldn't be the large number of US domestic R&D companies to serve as valid targets for such investment, as many of the clever people who start them or staff them wouldn't live in the US. Those people would instead be starting and staffing those companies wherever they did live — or in whatever country they could immigrate to instead of the US, with that country then supplanting the US's role as a global R&D center. Which would put American investors in the same position that other countries' investors are in: having money, but few domestic R&D companies that aren't already plump with cash, while most opportunities are foreign.
(Or, if we really lean into the "alternate history" bit, then the US might not have so many rich investors to begin with, as those investors would have been the ones living in that other global R&D center country, who became ludicrously wealthy when their investments into the domestic R&D companies in that other country bore fruit.)
Well, sure, anything could happen hypothetically. The financial environment is ultimately why investment happens in the U.S. and that starts at the top with the way the Fed is set up. Everything else follows.
If you're a US investor, investing in US R&D is easy, you have a good idea of how things work and how to get justice if you're defrauded.
If you want to invest in another country, that's a big change. There's certainly opportunity there, but without knowledge and contacts, it can be very hard to get things done.
One track to investing in foreign R&D is foreign nationals come and work in the US to earn skills, knowledge, and capital, and then they take those earnings and invest them in their country of origin, maybe living here or there.
Yes, I know; but we're talking about what would happen in a hypothetical world where US R&D innovation mostly stops happening, not for lack of money, but for lack of talent; so US investors no longer have any interesting domestic options that are likely to bear any fruit at any multiplier they'd be interested in.
Sure, investors could just park their money in what few dumb domestic options there are. That's the "patriotic" approach, and in less-aggressive markets, you'll see some investors [esp. big institutional investors] building the hedge parts of their portfolios out of these kinds of investments. But when the only domestic options are dumb/boring, any "smart money" investor will either take their money and leave the country for greener pastures, or they'll pick up the skills required to play in foreign markets.
So in this hypothetical, there is zero native US talent?
> I don't think it follows that preventing that brain drain would have lead to appreciably better outcomes for those countries.
Well sure, it depends what the counterfactual is. If those countries just physically prevented the people from leaving, and nothing more, I wouldn't expect that countries' outcomes to improve. But what the countries suffering from brain drain presumably want is for there to be attractive opportunities for those skilled workers in their own country.
Gifted architects and builders are presumably born every year in Silicon Valley, but we are far too rich, developed, and democratic to want new buildings.
Other countries are free not to want the things that Silicon Valley talents generate. More for us!
But a country with the capital would do, who knows maybe China tries to import those "brains" into their country to compete with the US
As always, so much zero-sum thinking in all these discussions.
Often, the person may not have been as productive, happy, or well compensated in their own country.
Also, over time, some of those people make money in the US and take that, their knowledge and skills and go back home to share there. Everyone is better off.
I was discussing this elsewhere, and dug up something I wrote 11 years ago, and I think I'm still pretty happy with it:
https://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-job...
> Also, over time, some of those people make money in the US and take that, their knowledge and skills and go back home to share there. Everyone is better off.
How are Americans better off in this scenario?
A few ways:
1. An American company benefited from their labor
2. American consumers benefited from the goods / services they contributed to providing
3. American citizens benefited from the services provided by the taxes they pay
4. Other American businesses benefited from their patronage
That doesn't seem to be specific to H1B visa issuance does it? This seems to me to be more of a general argument in favor of immigration in general to spur economic activity, which as far as I'm aware is "correct", provided you have to also show your math with things like a potential rise in housing costs/rent, strains on services, perhaps some folks don't actually pay taxes, etc. Some of those items might be short term or temporary, some may not. I don't know.
But if we were to take your argument at face value and I generally do because that's what the economists say and makes sense to me, why don't other countries encourage this specific type of immigration? China, for example, or perhaps Japan or Korea? What about New Zealand or Switzerland?
> What about New Zealand or Switzerland?
This is already the case. About 30% of Switzerlands population are immigrants (one of the highest percentages in the developed world) and it has a freedom of movement treaty with the EU.
I’m sure you have better data but here is what Wikipedia says:
That’s a bit different than what you seem to be implying - according to Wikipedia the immigrant population of Switzerland is just Europeans, mostly Western Europeans at that.With respect to Switzerland, what are the immigration rules and polices if you are Indian, or Chinese, or Brazilian, or Indonesian, or Nigerian? I’m just picking on those countries due to a mix of population levels and relevance to immigration in America. It’s rather surprising to me that Switzerland seems to have little meaningful numbers of immigrants from these higher population countries. Why is that? Is there maybe a specific policy we could point to? Do people from Italy really like the Alps and the Chinese don’t?
And going back I think to what is implied by the person I responded to, if what they’re saying is true about the economic value of immigration, and I think it is, why doesn’t Switzerland have, for example, unrestricted immigration from all over the world? Why are half of its immigrants from Italy alone? (Again just going off the Wikipedia article and I am happy to look at any other figures)
Are they immigrants or just Italians living and working in Switzerland because of the EU?
All the countries you mention offer temporary work visas for skilled workers, of varying similarity to an H1B.
Sure, I agree, I guess what I’m trying to understand is why don’t they have even higher rates of skilled worker immigration?
Think back to what the person I replied to said about the economic benefits of immigration in general (again which I believe are true based on what I understand).
For that matter we can just say the United States offers temporary work visas for skilled workers through the H1B program. Case closed! In the case of maybe New Zealand or Switzerland they represent less than 1% of the global population, most of the talent lives outside of those two countries. Are they importing enough high skilled foreign workers? I’m not sure. Switzerland for examples seems very expensive to immigrate to and get citizenship. But I’m not an expert there, just what I’ve skimmed through online.
Or is there more to it?
You are missing alternative costs of the fact that more people compete for the same resources, Americans get much lower ROI for their education, it hollows domestic expertise. Companies become dependent on foreign workers. Local jobs pay less, people have less money to pay for products and services.
Short term - shareholders win, long term - everyone loses except the country of origin, where they can bring the knowledge back and develop their economy.
It's like outsourcing, just the foreign workers are onshore.
Seems like you forgot the American worker in the equation?
People who are purely consumers (usually living of real estate gains or entitlements) are of course a huge part of the population, and benefit from everything brining consumer prices down - including cheap labour.
And many people are both consumers and workers, so they are benefitted from lower prices at the same time as they're disadvantaged by lower salaries. If they've already got real estate and the biggest expenses in life paid, they are more interested in lower consumer prices.
Then you have the people who have a much bigger interest in higher salaries than in cheaper consumer goods. Primarily young workers who need to get a foothold in life. For them it is of utmost importance that salaries increase, even though consumer goods get more expensive, because without a foothold in life they have nothing to live for.
This is such an important distinction that gets lost so often...
They generated economic activity while they were in the US, no? That seems to be a net positive. You'd otherwise have to be able to argue that, if you replaced them with a US citizen during the time they were here, the greater economic activity would have been generated.
Please keep in mind I am specifically asking about what the OP wrote, not about immigration in general.
American companies are overwhelmingly owned and operated by Americans who can extract value from the H1B employees well in excess of their salaries (even with the new cap and fees)
Sure, in theory. Where are the financial figures to demonstrate?
The more smart people we have working on the world's hardest problems, the more likely it is that we'll have breakthroughs that make the world better
Are the folks utilizing the H1B visa program working on the world's hardest problems? Or are they working on lucrative problems? Some kind of mix? Does anyone know what the breakdown is of H1B visa holders working on the world's hardest problems either today or historically?
I'm 62, I've been a mid-tier engineer all my life, working with tons of H1Bs starting in the '90s. My current employer is 90% Indian contractors now. None of us are working on "The world's hardest problems", we are building bog standard micro services.
Also: whatever you think of this issue, it's very much r/LeopardsAteMyFace in terms of some of the big tech companies cozying up to the administration.
Is it? When you consider that Trump can exempt the corpos that cozied up to him.
I greatly enjoyed your article and it saddens me the rise of this "us vs them" mentality. But people that think like you still give me hope.
Why thank you! That's kind of you to write.
I'm from the US, but lived in Europe for quite a while, and my kids have dual citizenship. I think that people moving to places where they are better off is a good thing.
The weirdest thing about the zero-sum rhetoric to me is: when one person is demanding to benefit at the expense of someone else, if I'm neither of them, why am I supposed to care?
Suppose I'm not an American--like plenty of HN commenters--or alternatively that (as in reality) I am an American but I have good reasons to think that the personal benefit I derive from the presence of immigrants is greater than the cost to me as an individual, even were I to concede more generic economic arguments about wage competition. Then... why am I supposed to prioritize the interests of American tech workers over foreign immigrants?
I don't in general endorse an "I got mine, screw you" approach, nor one that says "hey GDP is going up so screw the losers", but if someone else is taking exactly that attitude just with a nationalistic inflection, it's hard to extend them a lot of empathy.
One man's rising gas prices are another man's oil industry boom.
The H1B process is unfair to engineers because it drives down their compensation in a way that doesn't affect nurses or welders. If immigration were completely irrespective of profession and based solely around whether the imported laborers get paid enough to contribute more than they receive in taxes/public services, nobody would have any standing to complain about their wages being driven down because every single person benefits in the long run from the economic growth.
As things stand, tech workers and unskilled laborers get screwed by the current status quo because they don't reap the benefit of cheaper goods and services in all the other industries, but everyone else benefits from cheaper electronics/software and landscaping/housekeeping/food service while their wages grow.
You're not wrong on paper, the current immigration practices are just screwy.
EDIT - The hard statistical proof that most of the H-1Bs are tech workers:
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/o...
Software developer salaries are still extremely high in the US. So I would doubt that this has had a huge effect.
The median is like 140k. Is that extremely high? I know some cops who make more.
Yes, 140k for a software job is extremely high. Comparable roles in Europe done by people who are equally skilled pay half as much.
I'm writing this reply not to the lazy commenter, but to anyone reading this thread...
Yet again, we have classic HN speculation masquerading as authority.
Should software developer salaries be comparable to accountants or to surgeons? That's an arbitrary value judgment.
Software engineers have less purchasing power than they would without the H-1B visa program, and that's indisputable. 64% of the visas go to IT workers and 52% go specifically to programmers, which implies beyond all shadow of a doubt that their salaries decrease further than the cost of the goods and services they pay for.
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/o...
It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal. You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir!
This also impacts non-software tech: see recent layoffs statistics at Intel, what percentage are H1B and why aren't companies required to re-prove H1B necessity? Can we just over-hire and claim we need H1Bs because we can't find enough talent to fill the rolls, then submit that we over-hired and lay off all the US talent? This seems to be a bit of what happens even if not intentionally.
Precisely, I have been saying this for a while: engineers are smart enough to invent things but too stupid to gatekeep their profession. You have bootcampers, H1B workers, self-taught whatever, anyone can call themselves an engineer overnight. In 5 years you are now a "principal engineer!" I would even go further and distinguish between software and other disciplines of engineering. A web developer who is called a senior engineer is on paper equal to embedded engineers who spent at least 5 years in education plus god knows how long in experience to get the same title. This is wrong. I don't see a CPR trainee suddenly being able to call themselves a registered nurse!
If you look at the background of founders in tech you’ll soon realize that without immigration this entire industry would be a shadow of what it currently is; it’s not about the amount of compensation, it’s about whether there’s a job at all.
I'm writing this reply not to the lazy commenter, but to anyone reading this thread...
You're just passing off your own speculation as authoritative, and you didn't even read my comment to comprehension.
I didn't say we need less immigration in the tech sector. I said it hurts tech workers when there's a deflationary effect on their earnings but not the goods and services they pay for, and hence the same immigration practices should apply to every industry.
On paper, you would think this is the case, but in practice 64% of H1-B workers are in IT and 52% are programmers:
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/o...
Again, it stands to reason that if the deflationary effect on tech workers' salaries is disproportionate to the deflationary effect on all the other goods and services they pay for, then tech workers are worse off from the H1-B program. I've seen claims less ironclad than this accepted as fact in peer-reviewed life sciences-related research.
Your comment is just another classic HN case of speculation masquerading as authority.
This is so absolutely fundamental to US strategic advantage.
A huge reason we have so many unicorns is because doing business and scaling in the US is easier than EU or other places.
A huge part of why the Manhattan Project was successful was also because of substantial brain drain from Europe. I think Scott Galloway wrote about this or may have popularized it.
A significant number of them were fleeing persecution. General rule: don't be inhospitable to your smart people or they will find greener pastures.
I've read brain drain in this thread multiple times. I might agree this happened back then, but I don't know what people mean by it right now. Where is the term coming from suddenly and why is it used to uncritical?
"Where is the term coming from suddenly"
I don't think it's new, I've been hearing it my whole life
"and why is it used to uncritical?"
I ... can't figure out what this means.
In this thread it's thrown around as if everyone is referring to something specific related to immigration.
Edit:// checked US news. I can see what you all refer to now. To explain media seems to assume the US is having a "brain drain" because of fleeing scientists, some other countries make fun of it and call it their "brain gain"
In New Zealand the brain drain discussion has been going on for decades. We are remote, have a limited economy, wages are low. As a result, many smart kids graduate from university, go travel overseas (particularly Australia and the UK), find jobs with better wages, and never come home. It's referred to in the media as the brain drain.
If you're only talking about the exceptional sure. But when Microsoft fires x and applies for ~x H1Bs the same day... That doesn't seem like what you're talking about at all.
If an employee is exceptional and a skilled unicorn wrangler... 100K is nothing.
Part of the problem is you don't know ahead of time (certainly not with 100% certainty) who's going to be an exceptional unicorn wrangler, and who's just going to be a pretty good engineer, unless they already have an incredible track record elsewhere. This will filter out a lot of possible future unicorn wranglers.
Not sure if it applies to H-1B but if a company does mass layoffs, it automatically makes it so that the PERM applications (required for green card, which you need to keep the employee past the visa validity period + extensions; up to 7 years iirc) will be automatically rejected for some time. So it screws over your existing H-1B holders, making your company way less attractive.
Source: I came to the US on H-1B in 2012. I may be misremembering which stage of the process the mass layoffs affect.
I hardly think world famous physicists are comparable to mediocre crud app programmers on a h1b.
> A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them do so.
That's largely a myth, though. The vast majority of smart, driven people have no path to lawfully immigrate to the US.
By a wide margin, the main immigration pathway are family visas (i.e., marriages and citizens bringing in relatives). H-1B visas are a comparatively small slice that's available via a lottery only to some professions and some backgrounds - and the process is basically gamed by low-wage consultancies, with a large proportion of the rest gobbled up by a handful of Big Tech employers. And that's before we even get to the fact that H-1B doesn't necessarily give you a path to permanent residency, depending on where you're from.
For most people who aren't techies, the options are really very limited, basically "be exceptionally wealthy", "be a celebrity", or "be one of the world's foremost experts on X".
I mean there's somewhere between 10-20k o1 visas issued a year. o1 is literally the visa for smart and talented people.
There is also EB with National Interest Waiver - including for profession like Doctors and such.
Not to mention a lot of employment based visa, if you work for a US employer - L1, EB1/2 directly etc...
There isn't a permanent resident visa for Driven people - but you can get entrepreneur visas if you run a profitable business.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. Yes, if you're truly exceptional, you can get in the US. You can also get into any other country in the world. And the Trump administration doesn't seem to be interested in changing that.
But only a tiny sliver of what you would consider successful, skilled people can qualify for O-1. To my original point: if you're "merely" hard-working and good at something, you - as a general rule - have no lawful pathway to immigrate to the US.
Here's another way to look at it: let's say that in any country, roughly 10% of people fall into the category of "talented and hard-working" - not superstars, but the kind of people who would conceptually enrich the economy. Worldwide, that's probably what, 400 million adults? Further, let's say that about 10% would be interested in living in the US. And before all the EU folks sneer at that: that's probably a big underestimate, because a good chunk of the world is living in places with a much lower standard of living. So that's 40 million who probably want to come. And the total number of employment visas is ~100k/year. We aim for the global top <0.1%.
A country can only take so much people a year. There must be adequate employment, housing, education, health services and other infrastructure to support more people.
This is especially true for immigration that is not tied to employment. If you can choose to only take the top, which America mostly could as it is the most desired immigration country in the world, you would prioritize the top.
If there's a limited amount of spots, why won't you prioritize the superstars over just talented and hard working?
So the top 0.1% of the total population, that's likely a good deal (on top of the employment oriented visa which have less of a strain on the economy).
> There must be adequate employment, housing, education, health services and other infrastructure to support more people.
The same logic applies in reverse: there must be sufficient people to create adequate employment, housing, education, health services, and other infrastructure.
Have you considered that a lot of the people wanting to immigrate are able to provide a lot of those things? (P.S. I wonder why ICE keeps targeting construction crews lately -- and is it possible allowing more immigration might actually help us get more housing? Food for thought.)
Most people in the world are hard working and good at something.
Sure, but if I said that, I'd have a response saying that actually, it's not true. So let's start with a conservative number. It still doesn't add up.
Taking the well-being of abstract concepts like a country over the well-being of concrete individuals is a slippery road towards a particularly unappealing version of collectivism. Me emigrating from Eastern to Western Europe was among the best decisions I have made in my entire life, and I couldn't care less if the outcome of this is my country doing "worse". My country by itself doesn't feel nor think anything, but I certainly do. One of these thoughts is me not believing that I have a civic duty to be less well-off materially and mentally just so my taxes get re-routed to a country I accidentally happened to be born in. I vote with my feet.
Don't worry. The actual text declares that DHS has the discretion to give exceptions to companies. [1] I'm sure this does not at all imply that what this policy really means is that companies who bend the knee won't see this extra charge.
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/josephpolitano.bsky.social/post/3lz...
> A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them do so.
This is a double edged sword given that it means there’s less incentive to invest in US public education and fostering our own talent. Instead of brain drain we’re dealing with brain rot.
A hugely overlooked point. If FAANG etc want talented people, and couldn't hire H1Bs, they might have more of an incentive to try to influence education and to train people with aptitude but lacking learnable skills.
As of now, both the K12 system and college education seem in freefall in terms of quality and applicability to careers. No doubt those companies will devote their money to lobbying to keep hiring H1Bs instead of training the talent they need here, since they're just profit-optimizing functions, rather than humans with morals.
> You can argue how well that’s worked out for us
And its an easy argument:
The Manhattan Project engaged thousands of scientists, but over 16 notable principal scientists (with major published credits) were foreign-born and either retained their citizenship or became naturalized U.S. citizens only after escaping persecution or war in Europe.
As of 2025, about 10-12 CEOs of the top 50 Fortune 500 (F50) companies were born outside the United States, representing roughly 20-25% of F50 CEOs. This number has grown over the past two decades, reflecting increasing diversity among leadership at America's largest corporations.
Nearly half of all Fortune 500 companies in 2025—specifically 44%—were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants, meaning the original founders were not born in the United States or were the first generation after immigration.
These are just three major examples.
I don't know if that's easy. If this was flipped around, 100% of the top Fortune 500 would be born inside the United States if no immigrants were allowed in.
A better test may be comparing company performance worldwide instead of only in the F500. That's a different list, the Global 500.
Did anyone see the writing on the wall? This is an obvious ban on foreign high skill labor: what employer will pay 100k upfront cost?
The cost is not even close to cover the wage difference (20-30%): https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wa...
Admittedly my frame of reference here is now a decade ago when I was living in California. But we would routinely hire people on H1B, and it most definitely wasn't because we thought it was a cost saving. Between the >=$20K in legal fees, similar budget for relocation expenses to bring someone into the country, and having to pay them as a foreign contractor for anything up to 10 months while we wait for the applications to re-open for the year. And then pay them the same as any local talent we hand on the team.
Hiring local people was preferable in every way. But the market was hot and it was seemingly almost impossible to actually do that.
"extremely talented H1bs"
We would have to filter for these more. In reality the majority of H1B visa are issued to companies like Infosys or Tata who often have below average people.
They really should just outlaw H-1Bs for body shops. There is no rational justification for it given the blatant abuse of the visa program they have long demonstrated. If a company needs work done, they should be forced to sponsor a guest worker directly.
Who else is going to pretend to rewrite my ancient CRUD apps?
Claude Code?
> but one thing worth noting here is that the primary problem that damn near every other country on earth has isn’t immigration, it’s brain drain.
It's great if you only root for the US, but taking more global perspective, let's have other countries improve their situation as well. There are almost 200 or so countries, I am ok with them improving their economy using their equivalent of H1-B programs.
This is a golden opportunity for others to step in an eat Americans' lunch so to speak, let's see if they capitalize on it.
> but it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.
No, it has not. And not because the people were not capable. It is because most of those projects depend on having the right kind of ecosystem. Massive venture capital, stable institutions, cutting-edge infrastructure, tolerant regulation, network effects, and huge government spend especially in space, defense, and R&D.
Those elements are overwhelmingly concentrated in the U.S. and particularly in Silicon Valley.
Jan Koum didn’t build WhatsApp in Kyiv he built it in California. Ukraine in the 1990s barely had reliable phone lines, let alone the mobile networks, cloud infrastructure, and capital required to scale a global messaging service. Sergey Brin didn’t found Google in Moscow. Russia had brilliant mathematicians, but no open internet culture, no ad driven funding model, and no free flowing capital markets. No chance of a SpaceX out of South Africa or Canada. Those countries entire annual space budget wouldn’t even cover a single Falcon 9 launch.
These are not just anecdotes, but the proof that without the combination of American capital, infrastructure, and government spending, projects on this scale simply would not have been possible. The brain power was there, but the ecosystem that turns raw talent into global impact was not.
Maybe talent in third world countries. I think it's mostly mid-tier people from first world countries.
People with actually talent and intelligence realise how messed up the USA is (and has been for some time) and prefer things like healthcare and gun control.
And if they really want the lack of work life balance and/or high paid roles, they can consult from US company like I do. Now I get the money, but I live in a decent country.
I don't think there is any amount of money you could offer me to move to the USA. Well ok, maybe when it gets to $10 million / year I would have to start considering it.
Meanwhile the vast majority of people in real world don’t consume a steady diet of r/politics et al, has actually spent an appreciable amount of time in the U.S., and has come to a different (nearly opposite) conclusion. I wonder which is more correct.
No, I spent multiple months working in the US and concluded I didn't want to live there long term. Not so much guns and healthcare as how screwed up the culture is and how little community there is. You guys are lonely and you really don't seem to get why.
>> hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from
Not so straight forward. Ambitious people leave underdeveloped countries because there are little opportunities. It's not like they are going to build same great product there as in California.
> You can argue how well that’s worked out for us
The elephant in the room is that many of these highly successful people who have brought great economic advantage to the US over the years happen to have brown skin.
As for why this policy is being adopted: sometimes an elephant is just an elephant. The huge price increase hurts brown people (mostly), and possibly curbs immigration. It will play well with a certain segment of Americans.
There are many subtleties to the H1-B visa debate, but I don’t think they are at play in this policy change.
I think it could be most likely to apply pressure on the US-India FTA under discussion.
Context: 50% tariff has been applied to India. Chabahar port sanctions are reintroduced. And more to come in next few weeks.
What other country do you know of that can, with a wave of a hand, import a million highest-quality, ambitious people from across the globe? These folks aren't clamoring to go to other countries; this is the US position, and it was built with lots of hard work. With these changes, let's see how much this hurts in the foot.
Isn't this what the O-1 visa is for?
Being an immigrant, I think it’s net positive for everyone. I brought skills that, at the moment I immigrated, my home country could not leverage, even though it paid for my free education. I built on these skills and if my home country ever needs these skills, I would be excited to contribute.
Absolutely.
I think some people underestimate the power of those willing to migrate to the US.
I’m in my early 40s and moved from Western Europe to the US 11 years ago, and I feel I was the last generation eager to come, the perception of US is changing fast. This is not an H-1B problem but still a parallel one on how to attract people.
>it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.
It damn sure hasn't worked out well for a lot of talented, perpetually underemployed (many deep in perpetual debt) US kids. And I'm pretty sure that what those talented folks learn here in the US has made its way back to those countries, considering (e.g.) the level of competition we see from Asia these days.
love it or hate it, it hasn't worked out well for/in the minds of native-born us citizens either, a sentiment which I think this policy is going to tap into hard.
That was my thought too, and then I wondered if the workers are $100k more expensive to bring here then maybe the jobs are just going to go to the same people, but in their home country.
Ok that may be true but I would also argue there is such a thing as elite overproduction[1] via immigration. That is, we are basically importing a new elite for a fixed number of roles in society. Let's presume also that the children of highly talented immigrants are also highly talented. In some sense this kind of social engineering could be harmful to both nations involved.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction
I'd wager: Not any more !
I misread this initially as the problem that damn near every other country has is also immigration. This seems to also be at least somewhat true for first world countries.
Looking at the politics in Europe and Asia today, the question of who is allowed in and why is a central point of debate that rages and threatens to tear apart much of the fabric that was built over generations.
Well, it's positive for the companies and their investors. Is that the "us" it has worked out for?
Sites like jobs.now show the H1B situation is incredibly corrupt. So many hard to find jobs where they ask applicants to physically mail in their resume, so that later on they can make it an H1B job.
I don't think being against exploitive mass migration - which by its definition is brain drain of other countries, which every bleeding hearter likes to ignore - is the same saying no one should ever immigrate ever.
It hasn't worked out for Americans either. How many months does it take to get a job? Just ask around.
A lot of the H1B's in the software industry definitely match the description you stated - talented folks coming from places which (I'll add) have superior education systems. The problem isn't immigration, it's the undercutting of wages and the fact that these H1's (who we ALL work with) are trapped, working with fear and under pressure, due to the leverage the employer has.
H1B program == leverage over the H1B workers due to the employment tie-in to residence, leverage over other non-H1B workers as well, due to the wider talent pool at LOWER wages.
I don't know whether Trump is doing is good, but the H1B program helps Owners more than it helps Workers.
Not quite. This type of visa helps folks like me live in livable countries with good enough salaries to help our family and elderly don't die in our home countries
It’s not a strategic strength of the country as a whole to displace out of the economy the top talent, with a constant stream of new workers. This is just a local gaming by industry heads chasing end of year bonuses based on short term financials. We saw the offshoring of talent in manufacturing destroy domestic capacity. We are now seeing a similar phenomenon as there is pressure from many sides to offshore tech or migrate employment from citizens and permanent residents to temporary residents.
The employment environment in Silicon Valley has been extremely strange since 2022. I haven’t been able to find a job in my field since then, despite being at the top of my game. I’m practically bankrupt and currently making ends meet in a minimum wage job.
I’ve worked with plenty of coworkers on H1B both on boring old enterprise companies and BigTech. Absolutely none of them were better (or worse) than American citizens.
On the other hand, those working for WITCH companies…
And trust me, I’m in no way “anti minority”. Not only are some of my best friends minorities - so are my parents…
If you're not anti minority why are using anecdotal evidence to generalize large population groups?
You mean generalizing population groups by saying they are no better or worse than the general population?
WITCH companies are not hiring the best or the brightest. Their entire value play is contracting out mediocre developers at mediocre wages.
O-1 visas are for people with exceptional skill.
H1B visa is just a rank and file worker with a certain skill.
Isn't Poland about to overtake Britain in per capita GDP?
No; UK has roughly double GDP per capita of Poland.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...
I won't claim to fully understand it but by PPP they're close.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PP...
Intelligence and wisdom comes from the shores of experience. This idea that you can pull einsteins from the east is stupid.
Didn't Einstein himself literally come from east of the Atlantic Ocean? ;)
In English west/east has two meanings; geographic, and cultural.
I'm in New Zealand, which is far east of Japan, but still a western country.
Unfortunately, this is a good faith argument.
In reality, this will just be used to show fealty to trump and a fastlane visa will be opened to companies willing to join the fascists.
Again, good faith argument against something that isn't bewing done with a reasonably democratic outcome.
> but it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.
The ethics of emigration is an interesting area that's under explored, especially in non-emergency scenarios. We have obligations to our own societies, for example, but how this affects emigration requires clarification.
In the UK it is mostly immigration policy. Thanks to something called Boriswave, corporations could import knowledge workers at close to minimum wage (so locals couldn't even compete for those jobs) and now it changed a little, but still it's fraction of what local worker would command for similar job. This has basically collapsed the IT market. Then you have more people competing for the same resources, meaning rents going up, you wait longer for a doctor's appointment and so on. Just don't get me wrong - I don't blame immigrants. If I was in a poor country and had talent, I'd grab any opportunity to get more experience and get foot in the door so to speak.
It's corruption of the government.
Now, by the way I understand H-1B, $100k still seams cheap for essentially getting a slave.
After adjusting for inflation, slaves from the 19th century prices would be worth somewhere from $30k-$150k in present day dollars, according to the best research.
Very chilling to think about.
Shutting down H1Bs is extremely stupid because >50% of our unicorn founders are first generation immigrants that started out on the H1B. They are the greatest creators of jobs in the entire economy. Shutting down the H1B is a dark horse for the end of American success.
That depends on if unicorn founders are really “American success”.
Do we need more Facebooks and AirBNBs?
It's absolutely insane. At some point you have to wonder if this is deliberate sabotage.
It’s just populism with no long term planning. They’ve decimated the job market, people are hurting, have given folks someone to hate, it’s an easy win for them.
A lot of Trump's support comes from people wanting to and happy to blame immigrants (of all kinds) for legitimate grievances - such as unemployment, expensive healthcare, housing, and inflation. The distinction between legal and illegal immigration is blurred not only by Democrats but also the economic populists occupying Trump's base. This is aimed at them.
I believe it is. Every one of Trump's decisions has been populist, simple and guaranteed to harm the US in the long run.
For H-1B see report here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45306919
You are arguing from the position that Trump cares about american and wants to see it prosper. This is not reality. Trump is very likely a russian asset, and as such wants to see the US broken and crushed. Brain drain would be an exceltent way to crush a nation.
The $100,000 fee isn't the real route to a visa. See the proclamation text: [1]
(c) The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.
"At the Secretary's discretion" means "get your bribes ready". Lobbyists are probably already working the phones on this.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
This is the reality, combined with the fact that this was pretty much the status quo already. O-1 visas were also a commonly targeted with lawmaker bribes. This just codifies what was already happening and screws over the smaller companies that don't have the resources, networks, guanxi, etc to play the game.
Every change this admin implements needs this examination first. Everyone is in here having earnest discussions about policy pros and cons, but it ain't that country anymore.
The companies the admin favors are being given backdoors for every policy that's presented, and the way to become favored is to present bribes, whether they come in the form of gold plaques, lawsuit settlements, crypto investments, or stock market collusion.
[delayed]
Well said! This is not a policy, for a policy you need to think about it, analyse effects and stick to it.
We know how decisions are made in this admin, and how shortlived they can be.
Why would someone pay 100k knowing tomorrow this might disappear?
> whether they come in the form of gold plaques, lawsuit settlements, crypto investments, or stock market collusion.
You forgot monopolization, power consolidation, etc
This thread is a poignant example of why I think tech folks might be one of the most gullible crowds out there - despite being perceived as smart. It's like a perfect storm of attributes and incentives. So here we are, completely preoccupied with picking apart details and effects of visa programs for a blatantly obvious kiss-the-ring initiative that couldn't care less about that.
So you are saying this is bullish for QQQ
I see, they're just redirecting the firehose.
Judging from reason events, this is just another scourge he can (and will) use against democratic cities or entities
Good maybe we can starting ending the catch 22 system where Indians are claiming they have experience back home and then taking jobs from citizens who can't get their first job because they don't have experience while competing against a >1 billion population. The graduate market is a mess.
Actually it’s much more sinister. It’s another way to force companies to kiss the ring. The government apparently can grant exceptions if they deem it’s in the good of the country.
> The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.
it applies to a whole industry though, no? It's not like Meta can get an exception and Apple couldn't, right?
> this section shall not apply to any individual alien,
> [or] all aliens working for a company,
> or all aliens working in an industry
I think it very explicitly allows that case
IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse.
I think a very high application fee is actually part of a good solution, but is useless by itself.
A flawed proposal:
* Dispense with the 'need to search for a qualified American' which just complicates the process without achieving the stated goal, and includes a ton of legal and bureaucratic expense and time.
* A large application fee paid from the company to the federal government.
* The worker's relocation expenses must also be covered by the company.
* The worker gets a 10 year work authorization on the day of their arrival.
* The worker gets to leave their sponsoring employer on the day of their arrival, if they choose to. The employment contract may not include any clawbacks of anything.
The latter bullet is the key one. That's the one that uses market forces to truly enforces this person is being paid above market wages, and is being treated well, at their sponsoring employer. (which in turn means they don't undercut existing labor in the market).
It also means that employers don't really look abroad unless there really is a shortage of existing labor. But when there is a true shortage and you're willing to spend, the door is open to act quickly.
The obvious defect is that it creates an incentive for the employee to pay the federal fee themselves (hidden) plus more for the privilege of getting sponsored, and the company basically being a front for this process. Effectively buying a work authorization for themselves. I'm not sure how to overcome that. Then again, the current system could also suffer that defect (I don't know how common it is).
No company would ever sponsor someone if the last bullet is part of the deal. You're just killing the visa program another way with that wishlist item alone.
If they are using the program as intended they would. They are supposed to be looking for skills that are impossible to find in the US. If they are offering a good deal to the employee then the employee should stay, just like someone with full work authorization would.
If they are just using the program to pay less than they otherwise would for labor that does exist in the us, well, then we have another issue.
I would modify the proposal to include a larger annual fee rather than an application fee, so that the initially sponsoring company isn’t solely bearing the cost. There should also be a floor pay rate for the visa holder, something the 75th or 80th percentile of both the company and of income in the MSA the visa holder is located in.
All you're doing is having a gold card program but where the immigrant pays the applying company rather than the government. Seems pointless.
Why is it pointless? I think thats exactly what the people advocating for H1B for specialized workers want.
I dont know if thats a good idea. It does leave a bad taste in my mouth. Im also not sure its a bad idea either, it seems useful from an economic perspective. What i know its not is "pointless", it does do something.
Stopping companies from hiring quasi-indentured servants is a good thing
As you'll see from my other comments about H1-B visas, I agree. However, it doesn't change the fact that the person's suggestion would just be another way to kill the program, not a way to fix it.
If enforcing employee rights kills the employment program, then it stands to reason that the program is built on the premise of them being exploited and therefore shouldn't exist, at least in the form it does.
A lot of those bullet points could and perhaps should be shuffled around and the terms changed, but not in a way where the employees are more or less tethered to the company.
As a counterpoint to my own argument, one could argue that those programs let people escape even worse living conditions, so I guess it could be exchanging a greater form of oppression for a lesser one, which is still better than nothing.
That's pretty common in Europe. Temporary work permits can be valid either for a specific job or a specific industry. In the latter case, as long as you can find a job that meets the requirements in a reasonable time, you can quit and stay in the country.
But those work permits mostly concern the individual and the government. The employer is not as much sponsoring them as providing evidence.
> as long as you can find a job that meets the requirements in a reasonable time
how long is that reasonable time in europe? For H1b it's only 60 days
90d for the first year or two. 180 thereafter
Really? Most if not all EU work permits, especially highly-qualified ones are tied to an employer for at least the first 2+ years. If you get fired you have up to 3 months to find another employer who is willing to take over your residence permit.
Uhh. No. That's a common misconception held by people that don't actually read their T&Cs. Your worth authorization is tied to "a" employer for the first two years. The employee is completely free to quit and enter into a contract with another employer. All you have to do is go get the name of the employer updated. It's just a formality and nothing else.
Yes, you have three months to find a new job if you're fired, but it's Europe, you most likely got at least a 3 month notice as well.
Here in Norway it's 6 months[1] for skilled workers, and if you get the same position somewhere else you don't need to reapply. If you change position you need to reapply.
[1]: https://www.udi.no/en/answer-pages/answers-skilled-worker/#l...
You are arguing about semantics of residence permit vs work authorization which is not the core of the issue. If you get fired and don’t find a new employer then you leave in 3 months.
Also, it is definitely not just a formality to change employers. For example, on a blue card the new employer must prove to the ministry that they couldn’t find anyone local or EU to fill this position aka “Labour Market Test”. The position needs to be registered in a special gov database to prove that, etc, etc.
The requirements are far from uniform, because each member state sets its own policy. For example, Finland requires the labor market test from ordinary employees but not from those with a Blue Card or those applying for a specialist permit (similar to the Blue Card).
I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted because it's correct.
People are down voting you so is there evidence that it's tied to a single employerM
Wait, so if we give the foreign workers the same at will employment rights as Americans, then they are no longer interested?
I thought they needed these foreign workers because no American could do the job?
No, what they wouldn't be interested in is paying $100,000 to help someone enter the country, with no compensation if they ditch you on day one.
The idea would be that you would pay that employee at above market rates, so they wouldn't ditch you on day one because you pay them more than any of their other alternatives.
Right now, the H1B system is used to bring over cheap labor, willing to work for compensation and conditions worse than native labor. This is not the stated goal of the program, the idea was to bring over highly skilled labor doing jobs that no-one native is able to. The system detailed above is supposed to be a way to change it from how it currently is to what it was supposed to be.
Not for an interchange cog. However you can keep someone with a golden handcuffs deal at above market rates if there’s some reason to bring that specific person.
Almost all European visa programs have the last bullet point with the stipulation that they have 90 days to find another visa sponsorship job if they leave their sponsor.
This is not true at all. Employers will still sponsor talent that they need.
If you are sponsoring an employee for a visa and "it's a great thing they can't quit, it's the main thing that's keeping them here!", then you are abusing the system and should be excluded anyways.
Locals have always been allowed to quit the new job on day 1, and it has never been a crisis for employers.
A company that is confident it is offering worthy salary and career should have no extra reason to worry a foreign worker will quit during first week, than that a local worker would do the same thing.
The only difference a fee would make under such conditions is that locals become cheaper to hire, which is the point.
Part of the proposal is that the employer pays the government a large fee to sponsor the visa. They're not doing that for local workers; it's an entirely incomparable situation.
If you just want someone and not this particular applicant, yes but if you want a particular person to work for you, you will sponsor them regardless of this bullet point.
I totally support bringing in actual specialists, or fantastically talented people from abroad… but it’s painfully obvious how infrequently that happens. I worked with an H1B doing L2 support in the mid aughts. The position required significant knowledge of networking, but nothing close to even a mid-career enterprise network administrator, and it wasn’t a rare skillset for the area. We had plenty of very local candidates when we hired people before, but suddenly, new management decided it was an incredibly specialized, difficult-to-fill, rare job that paid locals an eye-watering 70k/year to start but paid an H1Bs far less than that I assume.
That's the problem. H1B visa is for talent that is almost impossible to get domestically. It should be for bringing in actual specialist.
Perfect. More Americans get jobs.
I thought there was no-one else on the market? If you think it will kill the visa program, that means you thought hiring underpaid developers was the goal of the visa program. No-one would change companies if if get paid decently: You leave a bad boss, but you can stay with a with a 10-15% lower-than-market salary just because of the friction of changing (Cue the downvotes: “I’m changing for a cent more” - yes you do when you have energy but most employees absolutely don’t). And employees will stay because they need time to settle in the new country and the welcoming company is generally equipped to make integration easier for newcomers.
You never get someone to pay a large application fee without some kind of reasonable prospect of getting an exclusive right.
Else, if company A pays a $100k fee, company B has an incentive to give the worker $90,000 more to jump ship. And this devolves to no one paying the $100k fee.
Only if employees are actually interchangeable at the rate you’re paying. You might bring someone from oversees who knows your internal systems and is therefore worth far above market rates to your company relative to any other US company.
Then it's not H1B visa anymore - internal employee transfers use different mechanisms.
An L Vista is designed for internal employee transfers, but that may not apply.
What if we make the fee per-year? "It costs $10,000 to sponsor a new H1B immigrant's entry, and then it costs $5,000 per year per H-1B employee you have." H1-B holder is free to leave, and the cost of that happening to their employer is fairly low. Then let's say after 5 years of H1B employment, you automatically become eligible for citizenship, since you're clearly a valued worker.
That's what they're doing, it's going to be $100k per year to sponsor, up to 6 years.
* The worker gets to leave their sponsoring employer on the day of their arrival, if they choose to. The employment contract may not include any clawbacks of anything.
You almost had me there.
The alternative is tying employment to freedom of mobility.
We can do better than bonding people by immigration status. This might be controversial, but I don't think should be bonding people at all.
You're taking a all or nothing stance. There must be a middle-ground where employers don't risk getting "scammed".
Is it ever ok to legally or economically force people or effectively force people to work?
I'm open to hearing why it's ok, but it's going to take a lot of evidence to convince me that a company's well-being is part of that calculus.
> IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse.
This is not true. Transferring your H1-B to another employer is entirely possible, the new employer will have to file the application as usual, but the application is not subject to the annual H1-B quotas.
At least this was the way it was several years ago. I doubt the process has changed since.
Would they now have to also pay the $1k fee for a "transfer"? AFAIK, it's considered a new application, but as you stated, its excluded from the quota/lottery.
The fees apply to every application.
That'll certainly make transfers much harder to get.
The other thing I've heard is to sort the priority of who gets H1B by projected salary which would go a long way to eliminate anyone trying to get people to train their lower paid replacements.
Forcing citizens to train their foreign replacements is a violation of the terms of the program and illegal. Disney did that and, while not being held accountable, they were forced to reverse their criminal decision.
who in their right mind would shell out 100k + relocation and not require some level of commitment?
People who are going to pay them enough money that they stay specifically because of the money?
The whole reason most people stay at jobs? (Theoretically)
That's the whole point. It distorts market forces when companies are allowed to just trap people.
If the talent is that good and you are paying above market you would. Not much different than a signing bonus
Signing bonuses almost universally have a 1-year clawback (or are otherwise only doled out periodically and not all up front), so not a good analogy here.
They had no problem offering 7-figure salaries to PhDs with research experience in AI a few years ago. Those are the exceptional workers the program was supposed to be bringing in the first place, not dime-a-dozen JS vibe coders.
> IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse.
> I think a very high application fee is actually part of a good solution, but is useless by itself.
This is always going to be bad if you compare to what any functioning democracy should be doing in this situation which to revert the deterioration of wages and punish/reeducate abusers. I admit it's idealistic, but if you could suspend the need for political realism here a moment there is a chance you could see this is only logical.
> The worker gets to leave their sponsoring employer on the day of their arrival, if they choose to. The employment contract may not include any clawbacks of anything.
I'm not familiar with current H1B law, but what prevents this from happening today? I've hired away an H1B holder in the past; the process wasn't particularly difficult.
My understanding at the time was that the tricky thing for H1B holders is that they can only have a 60-day gap of unemployment before they need to leave the country (or find a different visa resolution, I guess).
Now, if this new fee applies to H1B transfers as well as the initial application, well, that'll actually make it harder for H1B holders to change jobs.
The last one is tricky because who is going to sponsor a worker at the price tag of 100k with no guarantee of performance. That is rife for abuse. You could get google to sponsor you and then hop to your friends startup on day one.
It is reasonable that if you get a temporary visa to perform work in another country, and you decide you don't want to do that work anymore, you leave. They aren't enslaved or anything if the work is not worth it you can attempt to transfer your status to another employer or leave.
It seems the best way is to sponsor a seat and not a particular individual. That way you can rotate persons for the same paid h1-b seat.
Thank you! I am so, so sick of not a single person in this thread (except you <3) looking out for Google’s shareholder value.
> * The worker gets to leave their sponsoring employer on the day of their arrival, if they choose to. The employment contract may not include any clawbacks of anything.
This would be workable if it also results in the person losing their visa. There must be some downside for the employee, otherwise it's an invitation for abuse.
If the worker gets to keep their visa then it's just a backdoor way to get a company to pay for their visa and relocation so they can immediately quit and then go do some other job they actually want (at no expense to the next employer).
The final scenario you describe already happens with immigrant visas. Once you have your Green Card you are free to quit the sponsoring employer and work for whoever you want.
> It also means that employers don't really look abroad unless there really is a shortage of existing labor. But when there is a true shortage and you're willing to spend, the door is open to act quickly.
You underestimate the ability of INFY/TCS etc.. to game these laws.
The last bullet is a good idea but wouldn’t work in practice. Otherwise a company could hire someone else’s H1B worker for $10k more per year and avoid the $100k fee.
Maybe a company that hires someone else's H1B worker for $10k more per year in the first year has to pay the $100k fee and the first company gets their fee back.
It seems like there are two conflicting forces here. We want to ensure that we accept mostly high-skilled immigrants, so we can't do a pure lottery. But anything less than a pure lottery and immigrants are forced to "perform" or be kicked from the country, they will end up "both paid lower and unable to escape abuse" as you say. I don't know that it's possible to solve this satisfactorily.
Index the H1B quantities issued to the unemployment rate per job specialty + geographic region?
>> IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse.
This is not true. Typically you want to stay until i140 which for me took 1 year or so back in 2020. If I want to switch there are multiple other reasons I'd end up delaying the switch anyway (wait for vest, bonus etc ...)
Instead of a $100k lump sum by the first employer, what about $10k each year by the current employer? Or even $2.5k each quarter? That way there is no particular incentive to poach a "paid-off" H1B employee, and the company doesn't have to worry about making a $100k investment up front.
But then you can't make a placement firm selling access to the US job market.
You care about that, and you say that's the problem with H1B but I think that, really, a lot of tech workers in the US, and even a lot of the HN crowd _really_ care about protectionism. They want to suppress competition for their jobs, they want to keep their salaries high. I think this is myopic, but... What the heck, your country is speed running some interesting trajectory, this measure is the not even the biggest one on the radical measures pile.
What's myopic about keeping your salary high? Most people work for themselves an their families, not how their countries will appear economically in three decades? The situation of wage suppression helps investors and the owning class more than anything.
If you see near, but you don't see far, that's myopic. Even you agree with this in your post. Therefore, I don't see where the confusion comes from.
You can argue you only care about the now and, sure, if that's all you care about, who am I to say your priorities are wrong?
I do think that you're wrong though, I think it doesn't make you better off neither now nor in the following years. But, again, who the heck am I to tell you how to run your country. I guess we'll see how this plays out.
For that matter it's not necessarily my country, despite my being here, and I don't necessarily have just one country I'm attached to. I'm not particularly nationalistic. However I do care about how retirement might look and how much I will have saved. It's almost as if you are implying I should accept a wage cut for the good of my country. (How that's good for the country and not just for a select few percent at the top of my country eludes me)
They should set a very high salary as a criteria for hiring someone from abroad. You want exceptional people, not regular people that you pay less than the ones you find in your own country.
Your proposal is the same as shutting down the program, no company will take this? Like what's the benefit?
Isn't getting specialized workers (who you supposedly can't hire from the national talent pool) incentive enough? My understanding of the H1B system is that it was supposed to be a "last resort, exit hatch" sort of a programme.
hard disagree on the 'search for qualified citizen' or something to replace it. American policy needs to put Americans first.
Your other points are a good start. The main thing I would add is a floor on salary. H1B for a >$200k job makes some sense, it shows it's essential, the employer really wants to fill it and is having a hard time finding a US citizen. H1B for average or below average salaries is where the real abuse is. It's basically a form of indentured servitude.
The search for a qualified citizen is a sham process. Why shouldn't it be eliminated?
Make the incentives align with the priority, is what OP was getting at.
I'm with OP. Make it crazy expensive and let the employee quit if they want. Employers will immediately build the 'search for qualified citizens' into the process themselves.
I agree the current process is broken. I disagree that you don't replace it with something workable. Like many govt regulations, it's several decades out of date. Heck, a simple "I submit under the penalty of perjury that at least 10 US permanent residents have had good faith interviews for this position." type submission would be sufficient for me. HR people aren't going to want to commit a felony for their company, so the scams are going to go way down.
I agree with the protectionism aspect, to a degree. I also believe the current system does not achieve that in any way.
I mean I'll admit I'm a bit of a radical on this issue, but I think the most sensible work authorization policy is "you're welcome if you're not a criminal, terrorist, or public health risk, and on that last point here's some penicillin and a flu/covid shot, let us know when you're feeling better"
My ancestors came here ~140 years ago when the only "visa" process was a look in the mouth at Ellis Island. I don't see any fundamental reason why we need to have stricter regulations than that, and I reject dragging the Overton window further right on immigration.
Hear, hear.
In 3 months after implementing this policy there will be ports of entry full of people who paid any money to get to the US and that ready to share beds and work for $4/hour. Salaries will plummet, rent will skyrocket, crime will go up, quality of life will drop. Your neighbors will have to move out and new tenants will be 20+ people who don't speak your language and share none of your values.
Funny thing is those who opened the gate will be protected from consequences of their own policies in their gated communities.
That's what we see here in Canada after reckless immigration policies implemented by past government.
I wish I lived someplace where we could take the huddled masses yearning to breathe free instead of a place where they're literally rounding up my neighbors for the crime of wanting a better life.
For what it's worth I know multiple people who have been turned away from Canada because their immigration laws are even stricter than ours. So I don't know how much you can attribute your lack of housing to immigration.
> * Dispense with the 'need to search for a qualified American' which just complicates the process without achieving the stated goal, and includes a ton of legal and bureaucratic expense and time.
Most H1B go through perm process that does this already.
Everyone in these threads always points out all sorts of issues with the H1B system, which are mostly true, but it's not like there's a suggestion for a replacement here. This is a de facto shutdown of the program, not a reform. I'd be happy to see a reformed skilled immigration program for the US, but this isn't it.
The US makes up about 4.5% of the global population and it seems silly to think that the FAANG companies and the new AI startups chasing behind them are going to restrict their hiring to this tiny slice of the global talent pool.
The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US.
I myself became a US citizen two years ago after being on a H1B. I was paid the same as all my peers and for all its shortcomings the program worked for me. It stunning to think this has been closed off, killing the main path for skilled immigration into the US.
In this supposed competition with China, Trump is deeply dedicated to giving China every advantage possible.
From defunding science, fining the biggest universities, defunding green energy, making hiring ambitious foreign workers economically unfeasible, replacing technocratic administrators with incompetent lackies with quite literally zero experience, imposing inordinate tariffs ... It's just win after win for the CCP.
Couldn't possibly be more generous
Yes, but all these things will have bad long-term effects. The short-term effect would be payment into the federal budget and increase in local employment.
Even with tariffs, the initial effect was to increase purchases before the tariffs hit. Later the companies started eating from their margins instead of increasing prices right away. So it all resulted in increased economic activity and then increased tax payments into the federal government. However, because this is tax on consumption, it will eventually reduce business profits and personal wealth of the consumers. Meanwhile, Trump can claim that the economy is booming and he is collecting huge tax revenues without any negative effects.
> This is a de facto shutdown of the program
Is it? $100k per hire isn't much of a cost to pay for large companies. Smaller companies may -- may -- end up having some trouble with this, but consider that $100k often amounts to less than a yearly base salary (and will pretty much always be less than a year of total comp/total employee cost), not to mention the costs of legal staff that they're already paying to deal with this stuff.
What this may do is cause some of the "body shop" consultancies to drop some of their "low end" business, so they'll focus more on targeting positions with higher salaries. That's... probably a good thing.
And yeah, we may see some higher rates of offshoring, but I don't think that will be significant. And I'm not even really convinced: offshoring is already possible, and in strict dollar terms is already cheaper than going through the H-1B process to bring someone to the US. If companies preferred offshoring, they'd be doing it; clearly the already-higher-cost H-1B program is still their preference.
I agree that this isn't going to fix the H-1B visa system, and is not a reform or even a particularly positive step toward a reform, but I think you're overestimating the negative impact. I really don't think this will change things much at all.
$100K per hire per year.
That's almost as much as the media H1B salary. It's a huge cost overhead. I don't understand how you can be dismissive of a number almost as high as hiring another engineer.
I think it's pretty reasonable line that it should cost the company at-least 2x normal to import someone.
Id much prefer the companies pay $150k so that it entices someone to move from Nevada to California.
$100k for a startup is a no-go from the onset. This makes foreigners basically unhireable for startups, and probably shuts down founding startups as well?
>> Is it? $100k per hire isn't much of a cost to pay for large companies.
It is $100k per hire per year.
https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-trump-immigration-8d3969...
> Smaller companies may -- may
Really? 100k on top of a salary per year? Why would anyone do that?
> The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US.
I’m honestly tired of hearing the argument “if we do X then business will move to another state or out of US”.
Good riddance to the companies that flee from jurisdictions enforcing workers rights, don’t allow exploitation, etc.
The most important thing is protecting people, not fearing the cries of money-making machines.
Particularly in tech, where the network effects and first mover advantages are so strong.
California could introduce a million dollar minimum wage for software engineers, ban electricity on Thursdays, raise corporate taxes to 60% and still probably have more new unicorns founded in the subsequent year than Europe.
Subsequent year, probably. In later years, no. Massachusetts is case study on this.
What happened in Massachusetts?
Seems like the point is what’s not happening there
Don't be so sure of that. Network effects are still subject to tipping points.
They'll still end up in the US as they can work a year abroad and come in using L1-B program for 5 years (3 + 2 years on renewal).
L1 has no PWD, no min wage requirements (beyond min wage law in US) and is completely uncapped.
The business must go where the talent pool is if the talent can't be brought to the money. This H1B change is intended to remove a sizable portion of the talent pool from the US, so companies will have to follow (and spend US investor money on wages abroad).
>The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India
Such offshoring was possible before and after today.
Put another way, if all the H-1B jobs really can be offshored quickly and easily the way so many Indians and anti-Trump people here and elsewhere confidently predict, *that would have happened already*.
The offshoring has started happening in the last 2 years in some of the big companies, by for example opening offices in Eastern Europe.
I suspect it didn't happen before because these companies were more focused on growth than efficiency.
That being said, thanks to AI parts of the big companies are again focused on growth at all cost.
> This is a de facto shutdown of the program
Is it?
Some AI recruitments have seen 9-figure contracts. $100K is actually a surprisingly well-considered number and would still see the intake of legitimate talents, obviously contingent on the specific details. Indeed, those people wouldn't have to compete with masses of consultant trash and the whole lottery system could be done away with.
$100K actually seems perfectly coherent with forcing the program to winnow down to actual talents. People truly good enough to get the employer to pony up $100K to pull them in -- presuming there isn't some kickback fraud happening -- will truly be the best of the best.
> The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in
Paradoxically the #1 reason H1B employers bring in H1Bs is to bridge offshoring work. Pull in a dozen Indians and they're your bridge to the big Indian office, which is precisely why Infosys, Tata et al are such H1B users.
> Some AI recruitments have seen 9-figure contracts.
These are crazy outliers who would go through a different visa path anyway. US tech companies still need mid-level workers making low-to-mid six figures. Weirdly O1 visa holder spouses will get an O3 which doesn't allow them to work, making it worse than the H1B/H4 visa for some set of people. (H4s allow spouses to work)
>US tech companies still need mid-level workers making low-to-mid six figures
Yes, and there are plenty of US citizens to fill these roles.
I wasn't aware that we've already reached the end of 'work that needs to be done'.
Does this utopia come with four-day weekends?
Countries become wealthy because people in them work and make stuff. It's incredible to see people actively advocating for making their country poorer. "No, no, we have too many people working..."
> These are crazy outliers
They are. And in the truly talented spaces there are many at all of the ranges in between.
> US tech companies still need mid-level workers making low-to-mid six figures
$100k for three to six years seems entirely reasonable if it's really such a critical need.
It sounds like this expired each year. So it is 100k extra per year.
> People truly good enough to get the employer to pony up $100K to pull them in -- presuming there isn't some kickback fraud happening -- will truly be the best of the best.
And what stops those people, best of the best, working somewhere else, with much better living standard(EU) ?
In the past, it's because of salary, but now, the 100k/year will either make company to lower their package, or try to extract much more from the employee.
$100,000 per year.
> This is a de facto shutdown of the program
No, this is just another tariff. If it costs $200k/yr to employee an H1B Software Engineer, and you expect them to work for you for 3 years, it raises the cost of employment from $200k/yr to $233k/yr. It'll discourage people from applying on the margins, which will bring the application rate down and acceptance rate up.
It's an annual fee. It would raise the cost to $300k/yr.
https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-trump-immigration-8d3969...
AP is reporting that It's $100k/yr. So it wouldn't amortize like that.
Yeah but no offense if you're paid the same as your peers, you're not necessarily exceptional.
There's literally millions of talented Americans out of work in the tech industry right now while companies continue to hire H1B.
The companies post impossible requirement job ads in obscure locations..to get around the requirements to hire Americans first.
There's between 5 and 16 million tech workers in the US depending whose definition you use. The tech sector unemployment rate is 2.8% per https://www.comptia.org/en-us/about-us/news/press-releases/t...
That is, at most, less than half a million people in the field and the majority of those jobs aren't the ones looking for overseas hires anyway. If we take CompTIA's number of roughly 5M tech workers it's 140,000 people, not "literally millions."
If you have better numbers, please, let us know.
To be clear the H1B is not for exceptional workers. There’s a separate visa category for that.
> Yeah but no offense if you're paid the same as your peers, you're not necessarily exceptional.
Says you. I work in Lake Wobegon.
I'm happy you're here but the H1B program needs to slow down in America for a while.
Out of curiosity, why do you believe that's the case?
I think there are certainly abuses of the system, but we should be focusing on stamping out that abuse, not just generally "slowing it down". A $100k price tag is not going to affect abuse all that much; yes, it will make it less profitable, but probably not to the point where it will fix anything.
As a US-born citizen working in the US, I would rather work with a smart, motivated person from another country than a mediocre person from the US. The problem is that there are a lot of non-exceptional people being brought in on these visas, so let's focus on stopping that as much as we can. And while there are plenty of exceptional people who are US citizens, there are also many more who are mediocre or worse; we should be importing talent in order to raise that average.
Is it weird that there are like entire orgs practically of H1Bs at big tech companies these days? And if you hang out in the towns where the big offices are, the demographics are completely different from not that long ago and it’s not from the general demo shift in America since Chinese and Indians are not that large of a percent of immigrants overall. Like is there such a big shortage of workers that all of Redmond needs to be Indians now? If serving the economy demands that, perhaps we should reconsider whether serving the economy should be our top priority.
Why is it a problem? Indian people are great.
As humans, Indian people are as great as any other humans. In my experience, though, first generation families from India and China practically tend to be quite insular socially. They hang out amongst themselves. Which, like, I don’t blame them for, if I were them I’d probably do it too, but it has a strongly detrimental impact on the social environment for people who aren’t in those groups. When a house goes to one of those groups, it feels as if it disappears from the neighborhood. If the flow is slow enough then they are in theory functionally forced to integrate socially with the existing inhabitants, but the flow is not slow.
And by the way, what reality do we live in that your local megacorp can decide to radically alter your population demographic and people support the megacorps ability to do that? There was no vote for the existing inhabitants about whether they wanted to take the trade off, the decision was made for them by businessmen. It’s pretty weird when you think about it.
The sole purpose of companies hiring foreign workers is to pay less in wages. This results in lower wages for Americans. It’s that simple.
You think 4.5% of the world's population is smarter and works harder than the other 95.5%? Maybe there's other reasons.
The H1B program isn't for exceptionally smart workers.
Big Tech chose to get elect an anti-immigrant candidate while relying on immigrant labor. Let them burn themselves down.
Putting all else aside: if you’re an H1B holder currently outside the US you must return within 24 hours or you’re on the hook for $100k:
https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3l...
Unfathomably cruel.
Oh! This is unexpected, I thought it’s only for new applications, asking every h1b holder to pay 100k is just unfathomable. We will see thousands of layoffs and people moving out on an unimaginable scale.
They said at the signing that it was per year. No idea if it’s applicable to existing h1-b’s.
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lz7tewnfrr23
Where does that per year come from? I dont see it in the proclamation.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
Howard Lutnick stated it was yearly in the video.
Ok found it: https://youtu.be/QKUhWjPEHsM strange that it doesnt match what the proclamation says
This is announced with so much confusion and ambiguity too. Does it apply to current visa holders? Don't know. How do companies pay the fee? Don't know. Also announced on Friday night to go into effect Sunday midnight. Probably a feature though not a bug.
This link is dead already. Not sure if this is correct, it truly is confusing.
> Deleted the below posts out of an abundance of caution. Despite the words of the Proclamation, an unnamed White House official told New York Times that they intend to apply the $100,000 only to new applicants only.
> If that is correct, the implications are not as urgent.
https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3l...
I've been hearing that H1B holders are currently trying to stay within the US in fear of not being let back in or because of shenanigans like this[0]. Wonder how many people are currently looking for a flight.
[0]: Oh, it looks like the bsky link has an article with companies advising as such - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/03/31/immigra...
Companies have abused the program. At the top end it’s an excellent program, and then there’s the rest where companies are making fake claims that they can’t hire Americans and need to import folks. This is what the administration is cracking down on. The idea isn’t crazy IMHO. If you want to import someone vs hiring and training an American then pay an extra $100k. If the skill is truly needed and rare companies will do that. If it’s not, then pay up.
Some saying companies will just offshore the roles but I doubt it. That was always much cheaper… if it was just about cost they would have done that already.
If this is truly per application, the companies that try to boost their chances with the lottery by creating multiple applications for the same person are going to get hit hard. Phantom companies that only exist on paper so people can tweak the probabilities are now liabilities.
We'll see a rebalancing for sure.
> the companies that try to boost their chances with the lottery by creating multiple applications for the same person
This was already addressed by changing the odds to be per unique candidate, not application, thereby reducing the incentive to game it. More context here: https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/uscis-announces...
Unfortunately that doesn't work in practice since the consulting firms submit multiple applications for multiple candidates to get one candidate in. I believe charging extra for each application is a good way to discourage this practice but I'm not sure if $100k is the right number or not. To me it seems a bit too high.
The odds are now per candidate, not per application. If they submit multiple applications, it does not up chances for that candidate in any way.
And yes, it does work, because we have data from the year before this change, to the year after to compare against. The "Eligible Registrations for Beneficiaries with Multiple Eligible Registrations" dropped from 47,314 for FY 2025 to 7,828 for FY 2026. Source: https://www.uscis.gov/archive/uscis-announces-strengthened-i...
> If they submit multiple applications, it does not up chances for that candidate in any way.
I believe the parent commenter's argument is that they instead play the game with multiple people. The increased chance is not per person, but achieved by using more people, each with their own chance.
I don't know if they do this, I merely find the argument itself intriguing with the shift in perspective, and that you as the reader has to keep track of the change in context from the individual one level up.
> the consulting firms submit multiple applications for multiple candidates to get one candidate in.
Wasn't the application linked to the candidate's passport number?
Again, it doesn't matter. You could apply for 100 candidates hoping to get one candidate accepted. For these firms, individual candidates don't matter. They want to get X number of cheap employees into the US per year. And they never file for a green card.
Ah the conservative mindset:
When faced with an arbitrarily small, insignificant problem, in lieu of the status quo, the solution he/she advocates is to completely dismantle the status quo without any form and reason instead of actually focusing on the solution.
I.e punishment over progress.
In one sense they won't - it will reduce the queue enormously.
But you'll really need that person. It will also kill OPT in general.
It’s per-year.
This straight 100k to the top is not a good way to implement this. It should be a percentage (say 50%, we can talk about what the number should actually be) of the total compensation that is being paid to the H1B. We should also just completely remove caps on H1B.
This allows companies that truly want extraordinary talent to pay a premium to acquire it with no red tape . It also makes it far less likely that they can significantly underpay foreign workers to work in the united states and undercut American employees (at a 50% surcharge, you would have to pay 2/3 the prevailing salary to break even (assuming all employees are the same)).
The 50% number is something I made up, I think we can have an honest discussion about what that number should realistically be (and it should probably be different for different industries). But my main point is it should simply be a percentage tax paid on top of all compensation for foreign employees. This is the correct way to balance domestic companies undercutting domestic labor, while allowing them to access genuinely extraordinary talent with no impedance.
Or we could have a functioning smart government who lets say, Nvidia or Apple hire more folks and Infosys less instead of having a lottery? Folks on H1B pay federal income taxes
There was a proposal for an auction. Highest prices get the visas.
That would just make the top companies get all the talent and new players and startups to stop hiring internationally.
I disagree, why would they then not just hire the H1B at 50k and pay a 25K fee.
100k flat annual fee plus the new minimum 150k salary returns the H1B program to its original purpose of allowing US companies to hire truly exceptional foreign workers who have skills US workers do not. This allows companies to do just that and pay for it and at the same time protects the jobs and job prospects of US workers
> new minimum 150k salary
Where did you get this from? It is not in the EO passed today: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
I'll be honest that I read a different article on the same topic and did not know about the salary floor. So I wasn't thinking about that. I'm... mixed on that, but it does add a wrinkle to the equation.
I prefer a purely compensation relative approach because it let's the market decide what the actual salary for a software engineer is (with a percent of compensation premium for a foreigner and a 0 extra cost for a native). The market can dynamically adjust what a software engineer makes (not fixed price control) but it just cost more to hire foreign people.
In direct response to your first sentence, I think even foreign workers (who largely work harder and have more on the line than domestic workers) would question the wisdom of working for 50k a year as a software engineer in the US. They are actors in this system as well, and you can't just assume that you could offer 50k and get them to accept.
What's the basis for saying that the "original purpose" was to let companies hire "truly exceptional foreign workers"?
My understanding is that the H-1B was introduced by the 1990 immigration act, where the H-1B is supposed to be for "specialty occupations" other than nursing. But the same act introduced EB-1 and O-1 for people with "extraordinary ability", which sounds a lot closer to your "truly exceptional" understanding. I think maybe you're projecting a purpose onto the program that was never really there. The H-1B quota when it was introduced was 65k, so it's not like it started out being dramatically rarer than it is today.
The entire point is to block middling unneeded H1Bs that are just taking middle-class American jobs, a high yearly salary bar does exactly that.
IMO, the fee is the wrong thing that needs adjusting. It's the salary that should be adjusted. The minimum salary for an H1B should be $200k. It's something like 50k right now which is ridiculous especially with all the restrictions an applicant is under. It both suppresses wages and abuses the worker.
Can every industry pay $200k? I bet software, AI, or finance would be okay paying $200k, while e.g. hardware, aerospace, or biotech would have a harder time.
The idea of requiring a high salary is reasonable, but I'd make it rather e.g. 120% of the median salary in a particular industry.
Dare I say - If you're desperate for skilled workers, they should probably be highly compensated due to simple supply and demand.
If you can't find somebody skilled enough here to work for 200k or less, then you should probably be paying 200k or more since you're looking for a role that is niche and low supply.
There's also a bunch of organizations that are desperate and can't pay. E.g. a lot of rural and VA hospitals are staffed by H1B physicians. A rural hospital in the middle of Idaho won't attract a cardiologist through salary (i.e. the 500k/yr they can make in cities) and probably won't be able to afford a 100k application fee to get one. Also for lots of researchers and post-docs, 100k is more than their annual salary.
This fee is a great way to ensure that there's very little medical services available to rural populations and to help kill science in the US among other things.
The MD shortage is entirely artificial - limited by the number of taxpayer-funded residency slots, itself a result of federal congressional action (or inaction). You may ask, why is the taxpayer on the hook for resident training, when there already oceans worth of government and citizen money flowing into healthcare? Because the healthcare industry lobbied for it.
> E.g. a lot of rural and VA hospitals are staffed by H1B physicians.
Doctors, pilots and other genuinely essential professions are well covered by a number of other visa categories, such as EB-2.
I don't think the EB-2 is an alternative. If the applicant is outside the US, the process takes ~3 years to get the applicant into the US and up to 4-12 years if the applicant is Chinese or Indian.
I don't think the EB-2 process allows the applicant to stay within the US while waiting for the priority date to become current so staying in the US and working during that 3-12 year period won't work without another visa type.
There are plenty of first-rate medical schools in the US, it's very possible to increase the supply of qualified doctors to re-balance. Yes it will probably mean a similar scenario where doctors are paid somewhat less than they have been previously, but hey, look how bad engineering has gotten these past 20-something years relative to where it once was as a comparable profession to medicine.
Exactly. The difference is doctors were able to cap the number of doctors graduated, and now we have a shortage. Welp, I know the solution to that.
Except for the DOE student loan programs just capped loans for med school to 200k lifetime so unless students are fairly wealthy, they're going to find it hard to become a doctor.
The cost of becoming an MD is astronomical. I have a nephew currently studying for it and he's looking at $500,000 in student loans. For a school in idaho of all places.
Part of the shortage is also because very few people can afford to become doctors.
There are no empty slots for med school in America. We turn qualified kids away.
> it's very possible to increase the supply of qualified doctors to re-balance.
In many cases, the rebalancing that is needed is from subspecialties to community based primary care in rural and other underserved areas. Some new medical schools appeared in the 1970’s to address the need for more family medicine docs. What happened was completely predictable… more subspecialists. Graduates follow the money trail when choosing residencies and fellowships.
> Also for lots of researchers and post-docs, 100k is more than their annual salary.
Don't post docs usually come over on J-1s (if they aren't using practical training)?
I just read a thread earlier today in the medical-professionals /r/medicine group of reddit that had a lot of participation from medical people:
"My rural patients are so much more insufferable than my urban ones"
https://old.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/1nkb8f9/my_rural_...
It seems that the reasons for missing doctors are... complex.
> My rural patients are so much more insufferable than my urban ones…
I retired from medicine, having spent my career at a well-known institution in the upper midwest of the U.S. Over the course of my tenure there, I took care of patients from all parts of the world, all walks of life. Some of my most cherished patients hailed from rural farm communities. Whatever that commenter’s issues might be, this doesn’t line up with my experience at all. The work of the physician is to tailor their work to meet the needs of the patient by understanding their needs in ways that may be difficult to discern through ways other than empathic understanding.
It is not about that one commenter, I would not have posted it for a single anecdote. I read through most of the comments. While there are voices like yours, the many people having similar things to say as the OP, and what exactly they say, DO make it sound like they have something interesting to say. Given the quality of many of the comments there, I don't think simply ignoring it with a counter-example is correct.
Reddit and internet forums have a bias for negative anecdotes.
I'm from Idaho and grew up in rural Idaho. My mother was a nurse for such a hospital.
Rural hospitals are lucky to have any doctor on staff let alone a cardiologist. They are mostly staffed by nurses for quick patch-up work and life flights to major medical centers.
H1B doesn't solve the problem of poor communities getting poor healthcare. Frankly, it costs too much to become a doctor which limits where doctors can be employed. Plenty would like to work rural, but not with $500,000 in student loans. And no, that's no joke. I have a nephew going to medical school in Idaho and that's what his loans are.
It might be that in that industry, paying someone the $200k might mean the position doesn't make sense compared to the value delivered, and that you should instead open up another offshore office
Since we have relatively reliable economic data on median income per industry, it would be really stupid not to use that data in a formula such as the one you suggested.
To go further, I believe there’s good data on cost of living, geographically. It would probably be wise to use that in the formula as well, so as not to disadvantage smaller areas, where cost-of-living and salaries are lower.
> To go further, I believe there’s good data on cost of living, geographically.
I like the goal of making sure visa works are paid well for where they live.
I would not want to restrict the visa worker geographically though. Or alternatively I am unsure about the overhead of tracking the location visa holders and enforcing salary changes.
Might also have unintended knock on effect of encouraging job growth in low cost of living areas.
This already happens. One of the ways of qualifying for a National Interest Waiver for doctors, for example is by agreeing to work for some time in a designated underserved area.
Who would have a harder time? The company that wants to bring in employees? Sure. But I'm also sure that the top experts would be lining up to take such a job. The companies wouldn't struggle to find someone abroad.
The percentage could be reasonable, but I think it's too easily gamed. You just know the company would try and say they are bringing in entry level people for whatever they want and use whatever lowest median they could find. There needs to be a fairly significant minimum salary to avoid such monkey business.
An H1B job should be cushy. Otherwise, the company should simply raise salaries to find local workers.
This is why I say about the median salary across a branch of industry. A company is free to bring in anyone they want, but not free to pay them entry-level salary then. They should rather pay entry-level salary to local folks, e.g. recent graduates. The point is to bring above-average workers from abroad, as you say.
I don't think it's easy to game the median number, or the third quartile number if you prefer. Unless the salary distribution is severely bimodal, it should work reasonably.
The entire market works through supply and demand. The basic idea is if you can't find someone willing to work for $x an hour you have to raise x until you find someone.
The h1bs are often used to abuse that system by just importing someone willing to work for x, with the added bonus of it being very hard for them to ever leave your company.
All things like this should be percentages/ratios. The idea of using $ amounts in legislation and regulation is fundamentally foolish.
If they can pay a $100k fee, they can pay a similarly higher wage instead
This makes sense if H1-Bs are about lack of talent instead of cheap labor.
That's what they're supposed to be about. OP proposed a way to put that into practice. Of course it is abused for cheap labor
Is it too complex to just look at the companies taxes and be like... "Hey you are paying H1B workers 25% less than their peers. You get hit with a fine".
If you couldn't undercut H1B salaries there is little incentive to use them except for their desired purpose (you can't find any local workers).
Even paid identically, a company might prefer H1Bs for retention purposes. Having an indentured serf who's difficult for other companies to hire and is at constant risk of deportation if they lose their job is a winning prospect for the worst companies.
As my manager at Amazon once told me, “Amazon prefers H1Bs because they take more abuse.”
It also prevents wages from rising, can't find anymore local talent at 80K/year so you hire H1B at that wage. If that didn't happen, wages would rise until they found someone local. I think something like equal pay and then a 10-20% fee that is funneled into american education/up-skilling efforts.
A great way to circumvent this is to build a large headquarters in an undesirable location. "No American software engineers are applying for my job in <random midwest town where I will be the only software employeer>! I need H1bs!"
Didn’t IBM try this with Dubuque?
The nurse that helped save your life at ER might be on H1B getting paid $80k a year.
the counterfactual is 'is there an equally qualified nurse who didn't get the position?' There is a lot of under-employment for highly qualified US citizens.
Because there aren't enough "equally qualified nurses".
> There is a lot of under-employment for highly qualified US citizens.
No, there isn't. Even with the current AI mess, the unemployment for highly-qualified software engineers is 2.8%: https://www.ciodive.com/news/june-jobs-report-comptia-data-I...
The AI is now decimating the jobs for the recent CS graduates.
under-employment != unemployment. I carefully selected my words. And you switched from nurses to highly-qualified engineers.
qualified nurses are having to get jobs at retail, etc to survive. For some sectors, it's importing cheap labor (aka wage suppression).
The same applies to nurses. The nurse shortage has been basically non-stop since 80-s: https://nursejournal.org/articles/the-us-nursing-shortage-st...
Hmmm, so a nurse can come from any country with any level of English and work in a US hospital without re-certification? There is a smell to this claim…
Maybe more talented Americans would become nurses if the pay met the demand.
We know that the US is not the only country with shortage in healthcare workers. Most countries with an ageing population face this.
We know that's not going to happen.
What now?
Eventually robots. Seriously, automation can eventually do a lot to make each nurse way more productive than they are.
They pay $150k for a foreign nurse and attract the best foreign nurses instead of the cheapest.
That nurse may have just done their 6th 12h shift as well. Which they have to do or risk deportation.
Do we know what percentage of H1B's are NOT in the tech industry?
Nurses would be TN or in the past H-1C.
The H1B program should be scrapped and replaced with a program where anyone (who passes some background check) can pay $100k a year for a green card
Rich drug dealers from corrupt countries rejoice! your green card is in the mail
That's why you've got to pass the background check. It doesn't seem any more prone to abuse than the existing H1B program.
Isn't that Trump golden card ?. Pay $5mil and boom, welcome to the US, rich drug dealer.
> It's something like 50k right now which is ridiculous
It is ridiculous. Do you have a citation for the $50K number?
Why not both?
Because I don't really want to penalize a company for bringing in foreign labor. If a company can't find someone for a specific job or role then I don't care if they go abroad to find that person.
What I care about is the current system isn't being used to find hard to find labor, it's used to bring in cheap labor in an abusive situation.
We as a nation are really better off if we bring in the best in the world to work here with a cushy salary.
Multiple registrations are being filed for the same person in order to game the system. This is discussed in some details in a USCIS report [1]. The increased application fee is presumably to stem that practice.
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
Honestly, with a much higher minimum salary I don't see a reason why the cap couldn't simply be eliminated removing the need to play such games.
"If a company can't find someone for a specific job or role then I don't care if they go abroad to find that person."
You're believing and repeating the propaganda. The H1B was sold to Americans as for this purpose and then very deliberately turned into a loophole for importing massive amounts of foreign labor.
How silly is it to accept the idea that Big Tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Tesla are not be able to hire Americans for any role they want. They're the richest companies on the planet!
These companies use the H1B to increase their labor supply, suppress wages, and gain indentured workers.
If they couldn't cheat by importing cheaper foreign labor they would have to compete against each other much more than they do for American workers.
This is all about big companies rigging the system. They do not care if it's good or bad for America, the foreign workers, or anyone else. It's simple greed.
this is also believing and repeating the propaganda, just a different propaganda.
and entirely different propaganda is that without being able to hire so many people constantly, the work just doesnt happen, and companies downsize to save money rather than grow to make more money.
a greedier facebook doesnt dump a ton of money into VR or ai glasses.
US has the highest salaries for software engineers in the world. If this is what suppressed salaries look like, then what do you think they should be paying? I think if the labour pool is further restricted by measures like this one, it can only lead to companies doubling down on opening R&D offices abroad.
The fee should help ensure that only higher paying jobs or truly hard to find roles would be worth paying for as well (not that this is the right option, but playing it out). You would gladly pay 100k if the role already is high paying, it will be a small fraction of the cost, you won’t do that if it’s a couple year salary. It will also help curb abuse through multiple applications. I agree hard to find jobs for highly talented people (who are paid well) should be brought in.
Well, again, I don't really care about prioritizing local hires. The 100k fee really only penalizes the company from hiring abroad.
I'd much rather push everything into the salary of the person being hired. Both because it ends up raising the median salary for local workers and because it stimulates the local economy where that person is brought in. It's also a yearly fee. I think there's value in getting a very capable person working in your company and having a high salary is one way to make such roles highly competitive. A highly capable person will ultimately make everyone they work with more capable.
>If a company can't find someone for a specific job or role then I don't care if they go abroad to find that person
It was never, ever that they "can't find someone".
If country has 10 qualified people but 15 positions to fill you cant find it by just hiring in the country. Then you just end up with a circle where the people move around.
Yes, I also can make up imaginary math. 6 is bigger than 3. But 9 is less than 12.
There are extraordinarily few roles handed out to H1Bs where there aren't enormous numbers of domestic options. Indeed, by far the biggest users of H1Bs in tech are shitty consulting firms like Cognizant, Infosys and Tata doing absolute garbage, low skill development.
Yes, there are exceptions. There are truly unique talents in the AI space, for instance. Not someone to build Yet Another agent, but someone who actually understands the math. They are extraordinarily rare in that program. And for those exceptional talents, a $100K fee would be completely worth it. But they aren't going to pay it for an army of garbage copy-paste consultant heads.
In actual reality it's just a way to push down wages by forcing Americans to compete with the developing world in their own country. In Canada we have "TFWs" filling the same role. It is a laughably unjustified, massively abusive program.
You may have policy opinions but what would incentivize the current admin to require more money given to foreign workers vs keeping wages low (which also helps suppress wages for non-foreign worker peers industry-wide) while collecting more fees for federal use?
Having a $200k minimum salary will just see outsourcing to Asia / Eastern Europe.
Is there a special tax on income generated by off-shore workers? That would be the software analogue of tariffs on physical imports.
The opposite, there's a US corporate tax loophole for having operations overseas.
https://thefactcoalition.org/tariffs-manufacturing-tax-break...
it is very difficult to determine this. Companies that do h1Bs are all multinational, so they can locate dev offshore and just say they did it internally. There's also the reality that even if you go out and try to evaluate the revenue that comes from IT, you basically can't get clean attribution even if you want to. many H1Bs are not working on customer facing product, but internal projects and that makes treating things like application maintenance or service desk pretty difficult to calculate for ultimate revenue outcome.
That's going to happen regardless.
Why is that a problem? Thats how the program should work, to recruit talent wherever it's found.
This article implies the minimum will be tripled. https://www.newsweek.com/h-1b-visa-change-proposal-2132484
EDIT: This is a proposal by 1 senator - not Trump.
It's not in this article but in others that this will be addressed.
"The proposal would increase the wage floor for H-1B visa recipients from $60,000 to $150,000, eliminate the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, and replace the current lottery-based selection process with a highest-bidder system."
EDIT: This is a proposal by 1 senator - not Trump. https://www.newsweek.com/h-1b-visa-change-proposal-2132484
I would appreciate some links if you have them
Done above but that's a senate proposal. Sorry for the confusion.
IMO the minimum salary should be $0 and Americans should be free to hire whoever they want, without paying a fee and asking permission from the government. Non-citizens should be subject to the same minimum wage and workplace regulations as everywhere else. Whoever wants to come to America should be able to freely come, treated the same as anyone else.
But that would be a free market that respected human rights, and Americans don't want that! Equality? Freedom? That's just marketing!
If the non-citizen worker can't change jobs as easily as an American can, you still don't really have freedom.
This is actually smart. Many H1B visas are used to undermine fair labor wages for already local talent. We should ensure that H1B visas are for actual unique talent and not just to undercut local wages.
H1B is ripe with abuse - this article by Bloomberg says that half of all H1-B visas are used by Indian staffing firms that pay significantly lower than the US laborers they are replacing:
- https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-h1b-visa-middlemen-c...
This is very short term thinking, in that it assumes a constant amount of work and ignores the global competition for labor.
If the US loses its massive lead in the network effects of a large labor pool, the amount of work in the US will shrink, both by moving to other countries and less overall innovation.
This is not a beneficial move for most software engineers.
There is not a global competition for talent.
How many people on here can truly say that they were considering between two different countries. That doesn’t happen at scale.
There is a global competition for coming to Western Europe, Canada, and the US
A common problem in latam and other geos is brain drain. Most of their best minds simply leave the country looking for better opportunities. That is impactful for the countries economies, the country invest a lot in people,but others see the benefits.
During last century, USA has been the most benefited from that kind of immigration.
Personally I think that this is a very short sighted decision by USA administration. But overall, I think that this will benefit the rest of the world. Maybe in a few years even USA will start exporting their best minds abroad!
> During last century, USA has been the most benefited from that kind of immigration
This is inaccurate. The U.S. had a highly restrictionist immigration system from 1921-1965. The foreign born population dropped from almost 15% to under 5% by 1970.
During that time, the U.S. had a small number of highly skilled immigrants, such as German scientists fleeing the Nazi regime. You’re talking about a very small number of truly exceptional people. A $100k/year fee is not going to shut down this kind of immigration.
Between 1921 and 1965, about 9.6 million people were admitted as lawful permanent residents. That's not what I'd call a "very small" or "highly restricted" inflow.
Source: DHS Yearbook, https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2019/table1...
You can see the restriction easily on a chart: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/ann...
We have been around 1 million per year for decades. If we still had that policy, adjusted for population you’re talking about cutting legal immigration by one-third to one-half.
And that’s not counting a large increase in “gray market” legal immigration (TPS, asylum, etc.)
Employers pay these fees, not the employers. A white collar worker already costs close to $100k in overhead, benefits, and payroll taxes. The true geniuses are easily worth $100k to a university or employer.
> How many people on here can truly say that they were considering between two different countries. That doesn’t happen at scale.
/me
I started in Slovenia, considered London, actually got an offer in Canada, but ultimately chose San Francisco. Figured that if I’m going to the trouble of moving abroad, I might as well go to the center of the industry.
Got lots of friends who chose various EU companies based on desired lifestyle/work/partner balance. You have lots of options as a good engineer. Especially before the last 3 years of market shenanigans.
>There is a global competition for coming to Western Europe, Canada, and the US.
As someone who lived in all three geographies and interacted with immigrants who lived in there, here is my raw take:-
Western Europe:- Love it and people are so nice but they are also (I am sorry to say) racist. Proof:- How many immigrant CEO's do you see from companies based in Western Europe? The top 4 largest tech companies in the US have two indian CEO's for more than 10 years now.
Canada:- Super nice and immigrant friendly more than the US, but the size of the country (approx 10% of the US) doesn't have the financial/economic/social infrastructure that is needed to support a large number of immigrants. Also tech salaries are miserable compared to the US
US:- For all its faults, US is truly the only country where immigrants looking for a better future can immigrate and assimilate into. For how long this lasts remains to be seen but I don't think that is going to change anytime soon.
> How many people on here can truly say that they were considering between two different countries
Hi!
I know I'm just a datum, but I gotta represent myself.
Same, three actually, none of which the US. A closer representation for the US brain may be who is considering between different states? Here is the thing, other countries do not necessarily work exactly the same way as the US or individually have large enough local markets to contain all aspects of the overall tech industry, just locally.
Not yet.
The slate of policy choices in the US is removing it from that list of countries, and will strengthen those countries' labor forces.
Right now SV salaries command a huge premium, because all of SV is predicated on increasing productivity, increasing the economic pie, and rewarding those who do so with a fraction of that gain in GDP.
Treating SV labor like plumbing or construction labor fundamentally misunderstands the dynamics and the creation of wealth.
Removing demand doesn’t create more competition, the opposite in fact.
SV labor is largely not different than a skilled trade, except at the higher levels.
The whole system of SV is exceptionally different, it's all about expanding productivity and GDP.
That's where the massive salaries come from, that massive wealth creation. It's not just taking larger chunks of a fixed size pie.
What do you think an electrician is doing?
Sure some electrical capacity goes to non-productive uses, but much of it is also spent doing things like enabling widespread computer usage.
SV labor is downstream of skilled trades.
Keeping the lights on is an absolutely essential societal function, and for keeping an economy running. But expanding the technological capacity of the US is what made us so much wealthier than any other country in the world. And expanding that technological capacity faster than the rest of the world comes from attracting the best technological innovators from the rest of the world. However, with China's and India's size, it's likely that they will now be able to overtake us without relying on much immigration.
I was about to ridicule this, but then I thought about it. My wife is in a skilled trade in SV, and that actually sounds about right. She has nothing to do with software, but probably earns, dollar/hour, about the same as a mid-tier L6 SWE at Google. I do R&D program management, government though, so the conversion to quality of life is kinda weird. Most people would see our house and assume I'm a director.
Exactly, and especially SV and the US has seemingly been almost entirely locked down by Indians.
For FAANG engineers this will likely mean moving to Vancouver, Zurich or Singapore with their job, salary, rsus and taxes.
Because of our historical strength. If we drive people away, that just makes room for other contenders. How is that smart?
How many people on here can truly say that they were considering between two different countries. That doesn’t happen at scale.
Mmmh...How about four countries?US,UK,Canada &South Africa.
As a student,though
I had to choose between California and Germany. It is a thing.
Did you have to choose? Or did you have the option? I would wager to bet that a significant amount of people in the US cant afford to move to another state.
Can you distinguish option and needing to choose here? Having an option would necessarily cause a need to choose.
I can confidently say yes. Choosing between working in two different countries separated by an entire ocean is an option. Moving to a different state is expensive for many, but moving to another continent is only afforded to a privileged minority.
Why is it relevant, though?
Interestingly, Germany is the third, and California the fourth, largest economies in the world.
Only two?
> If the US loses its massive lead
By US you mean corporate America? What if they maintain that massive lead on the backs of the US citizens?
The exploitation of the US worker needs to end, if the company does not have 100K to bring in global talent then that company cannot "massively lead" in any domain and the "talent" is neither global nor talented.
I am an American-born worker at a giant tech corporation. My coworkers are all immigrants, my job was created by immigrants, if they left I'd be unemployed because there's no way I can build this whole thing by myself. The work would simply disappear without them.
Your employer would just hire local talent at a $100k discount. Problem solved.
We are already trying to hire local talent. It is not as simple as you think.
and so who owns the shares of "corporate america"? Newflash: Teachers' and firefighters' and cops' pensions are all invested in "corporate america". As well as pensions of union workers. As well as 401ks of all the other middle class people. Come on.
"the exploitation of American worker" ? American workers have one of the richest standards of living in the world.
That’s what they said to secure the too big to fail bailouts which only solidified the moral hazard and made things worse.
To me that just reads like following the gamblers fallacy. Just because you already threw a bunch of money into the pot doesn't mean you have zero choice but to keep playing until you likely lose it all.
it's not a gambler's fallacy. "You threw money into the pot" and "you own a % of the pot" are two distinctly different things.
How many American teachers or firefighters would trade their own kid's job away to a foreigner in exchange for some hypothetical marginal increase in 401K returns? Not many. The only Americans who like that deal are managers who care more about their headcount than they do about their countrymen.
you keep thinking about it in Soviet zero sum terms. First of all, the foreign engineer doesn't disappear if you don't give him a visa, he or she just works somewhere else and still takes your kid's job away. Secondly, it's not a zero sum game ! that's the most important thing to realize. Number of jobs is not fixed ! it's not a fixed pie! you are on hacker news. A startup forum. And you are talking about number of jobs as a fixed pie.
Oh now they care about teachers, firefighters, cops and puppies? Is that what this H1B is about?
> American workers have one of the richest standards of living in the world.
What are you even talking about? Being able to hold more tokens that can buyback the products of the asset class does not make for a "rich standard of living".
Having to run gofundme's for medical care is not "rich standard of living". Them trembling on every unscheduled meeting with their boss is not "rich standard of living"
The American workers' existence is sad.
if you are going to argue that Americans don't have a rich standard of living, that is just an absurd argument. It's obvious to anyone who has lived or worked somewhere else.
The competition isn't for labor, it is for net productivity. These are not the same thing. As anyone who has ever worked on a team can tell you, "more team members" absolutely does not equate to a more productive team. In fact we have a plethora of phrases and anecdotes which indicate the opposite is often true.
I suspect the very best engineers will be worth every penny of that $100k/yr and the amount of abuse will drop. There is the very real risk that companies will move to outsource more roles, but I will personally be boycotting them.
Good. I’m sure you and the 10 other individuals who choose to boycott all of FAANG will ensure that this all balances out in the end.
very real risk ? it's a certainty not a risk.
It isn’t?
it isn't a risk, it is a certainty that companies will off shore more as a result of this.
You think the US government will really allow that? You think they're gonna do this and then just let them outsource?
I’m incredulous you’d expect otherwise? This is clearly pandering favor with a certain demographic, in a way that didn’t upset the big money going to Maralargo.
Why would they intervene with outsourcing the jobs instead of H1Bs? And more importantly, how?
There is no way around it, you either outsource or lose (and they already outsourced almost all factories). Companies will move HQs to India and "outsource" some operations to the US.
That is their right. It is our right and, I’d argue, our duty to boycott them.
The great America taught the Saudis, and the rest of the world how to drill for oil. without importing cheap labor don't forget this.
Companies are laying off people, so there is no competition for labor.
Right now. What happened in the future? When the job market recovers will it happen in the US or elsewhere?
You're applying economics when the problem is fundamentally racial. Trump has exposed the dark underbelly of the US. The comments in this thread as well as elsewhere just show the fundamental lack of empathy - which I know is a made up word unless someone with the "right" political leanings was harmed.
Of course the visa is a privilege and there are tons of abuses associated with it. There are methodical ways of going about it and actually fixing the problem. Slapping a $100k fee with unclear language and no heads-up uproots while uprooting lives of so many people have lived in the country for years if not decades, maintained legal status, and paid taxes including Social Security and Medicare is "a smart move" according to the top comment.
But we all know what the real problem is. If majority of the H-1B visa holders had the right skin color, they would be welcome with open arms regardless of any abuse of the system. Just like how South African refugees are welcome while other those from the "wrong" kind of country are not.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." ― Lyndon B. Johnson
It has nothing to do with “skin color,” but economics, culture, and worldview.
“The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family. The opinion advanced in the Notes on Virginia is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived, or if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism? There may as to particular individuals, and at particular times, be occasional exceptions to these remarks, yet such is the general rule.” — Alexander Hamilton
"culture" is such a silly argument.
Urban-environments in the hyper-individualist age have no culture (no, drinking and watching "football" is not culture). Even Church-attendance is so low that these people you hate are buying up these abandoned buildings to create communities.
What you're complaining is that "they" have a culture, while you don't. I guess it's semi-understandable if it results in mob-violence and ganging-up, but I haven't seen this happen outside some Islamic-communities (even there, I think it's typ. only the S. Asian ones).
he hasnt been particularly right with that, in hindsight. the people most excited for freedom and republic are the new immigrants escaping dictators, while the american born folks are either accepting of or promoting a move towards monarchy.
maybe it was true before the US became the global propagandist, but almost everyone on earth is a native born american now.
That’s only true if you define “native born american” as someone who watches Marvel movies. There is no immigrant community of significant size that is culturally American below the surface. None that embodies the self-flagellating communalism of Yankee America, nor the reflexively anti-government individualism of southern america.
Even the groups who superficially assimilate into the progressive culture embraced by Yankees do so as subordinates, not peers. The Yankee will condemn his own ancestors and discriminate against people who look like him. Most immigrants are happy to be the objects of that pity, but do not behave in the identical manner. They respect their own ancestors and retain their own ethnic attachments.
Virtually everything Hamilton worried about applies to contemporary immigrants to a T.
What? This is such weird nonsense.
You wanna say that about the Irish and the Polish of a century ago, too? lol
Don’t play the race card, you sound emotional saying that.
You admitted that there were tons of abuse. This gets back to the law’s original intent. This is the best fix that corporations “pay up” for.
It’s just politics. You have CS grads facing employment headwinds against AI, H1B, and high interest rates. They aren’t going to vote for the incumbents if they’re unemployed. Now they’re going to have a $100k discount to hire them instead of from a WITCH company. FAANG will still hire H-1Bs.
It could have been a smart move if it were staged like this :
Any oversubscription in a category - you have a choice of either going through lottery or paying for the higher category.That classification already exists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B-dependent_employer
... and is done for these employers already (though not to the level that is being proposed)
A huge reason that no one can afford anything is because of wage suppresion
Yep. There is a huge amount of American talent wallowing in low-level, dead end jobs because corporations have been actively incentivized to hire cheap, captive foreign labor rather than foster American talent. I am absolutely thrilled to witness this return to sanity.
For tech jobs a lot of offshoring will happen. Been working for US for last 8 years. It’s great.
That is a real slippery slope you made from $1000 H1-B visas. It is nonsense.
Do you think those countries will be nice and invite us to be reverse "H1Bs" into their countries or will they keep the pie to themselves? If they think like you they'll invite the whole world talent pool into their countries.
The US has the nicest biggest pie in the world. Why would somebody move to a place with less opportunity?
The opportunity created in the US is due to the concentration of talent, high productivity, and extensive networks of people creating innovation that inflated the pie even larger.
Go ahead and move to any of those countries from the US, it's prettt easy, because everybody wants to be like the US! The only possibly better passport was a Canadian one!
Something deeply sick has infected the US when we no longer recognize the source of the wealth of our nation. Nobody could touch us. At least until we started to intentionally make ourselves poorer.
Probably you can go most countries
Strong disagree. This is a dumb move in that the US wins wins when people move to the US, especially young, skilled people.
There are big issues with the h1b, particularly how strongly tied to the employer the employee is and how few of these we give away. But this basically closes the door for hiring foreign talent to anyone but BigCo.
It is a sad shotgun shell on the right foot on a long streak of the US feet shooting it's way out of relevance.
Student visas still exist. O1 visas still exist. Other routes I can't remember off the top of my head exist. The door is not closed. Indeed, even H1B visas still exist, assuming that young talented person is worth $100k more than a US citizen.
> the US wins wins when people move to the US, especially young, skilled people.
I personally lean towards this being true, but it is a claim that needs to be demonstrated comprehensively for your argument to hold water. It is not trivially true.
you know what's really stupid? when we give someone a student visa and then don't have a easy to keep them in the country on a work visa
How so? Anybody who has a student visa had to prove that she or he has strong ties to the home country and no intent to remain in the Untied States, and that she or he only needs to get education in the US to come back and apply it for the home country's benefit.
If these people have not defrauded the US then they would not know what to do with a work visa as they'd be hurrying back home as soon as they received their diploma, pulled by those strong ties and the desire to finally put the education to use at home.
Student visas in the US come with the right to work for some time after graduation. If the foreign student isn’t valuable enough to stay after a degree and multiple years of work I think it’s fine to send them home.
But me personally, I advocate many fewer student visas.
What world are you living in? Many Chinese come in on student visas, get jobs at FAANG and then have to move back to their country after losing the H1-B. These are the people we want, doing the jobs that we want them to do, and we’re too nearsighted to figure out how to keep them.
Again, these are the most talented, most affluent minds that China has to offer. Sure, let’s have them work for the CCP rather than keeping them in the west.
what does valuable enough to stay mean? that they have the job?
Indeed, though if you make that route too easy (or with limited oversight), you end up with diploma mills that aren't actually educating anyone. Incentives are hard to align well.
It wouldn't be hard to select and accredit at least the better universities. Giving an automatic work visa to every foreign Ivy graduate should be a no-brainier. You could take the top 30% or 50% ranked US News universities and accredit those, or some similar heuristics.
Great point, and since the post-graduation right to work is already a thing I believe this has already happened
Is that a thing in most countries? Like if I go to university in Brazil I can easily get a job as a foreigner there?
Brazil isn't a great example here since it is a Portuguese speaking country leading to relatively low immegration, but for Germany, for example a work visa takes 1-3 months to process, and unlike h1b there is no quota.
There are studies regarding that: almost half of S&P 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children https://www.brookings.edu/articles/almost-half-of-fortune-50...
This doesn’t really tell us much, and isn’t really relevant to H1B either. If we had 0 immigration, all S&P 500 companies would be founded by non-immigrants.
Not really. Companies would still be founded, but there's no way to tell if they would ever grow to the point that would be listed in the S&P 500.
Not sure if you don’t know how they define the S&P, or straw-manning.
These other visas are incredibly complicated to get. And funneling everyone through student visas is just inflating demand for uni degrees.
What someone's labor is worth is up to the market to decide. Also those $100k are taxed out of the employer and employee's value.
On the benefits of people moving to the US: it's been widely studied and it's basic economics, immigrants bring both supply and demand, so the size of the economy grows and so the opportunities to current residents.
Take the extreme: when people leave a country or city the economy there collapses, see Detroit or the increasingly old and depopulating European countries.
Or take the extreme on who comes: fiscal studies show that even low skilled immigrants are net positive fiscally. Only very old and unskilled immigrants are a fiscal burden.
Finally, thinking that we can capture the world's economy in a bottle and live lavishly without competition is delusional. If we stop letting people build here, they will build elsewhere and without us. We are increasingly less relevant.
Let's turn this around - would the US win if young, skilled people were net-leaving it?
Imagine spending 25 years raising, educating, feeding, and clothing a person, investing over a million dollars of money and labour in them, and then they just pack their bags and leave.
Educated, skilled, young immigrants are a colossal gift to the host country, and a crippling debit on the welfare and prosperity of the country they have left.
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Anyone who has ever given it more than thirty seconds of thought knows that countries become wealthy when people living in them work - and make stuff. So what do you do to improve a country's prosperity?
Obviously, in backwards-logic, you start raising barriers to people who want to do useful work in it.
(Because dealing with the systemic issues that have resulted in the country becoming prosperous not being correlated with the plurality of people in it not becoming prosperous would upset wealthy people who don't actually build anything.)
Have you never met an H-1B worker?
I genuinely don’t know: how many H1Bs were granted this year while we have read about numerous layoffs? Were those H1Bs truly necessary? Were they paid at or above market rates?
My limited experience with H1B labor is not folks who are young nor particularly skilled. They are cheaper and faster to staff.
I'm by no means xenophobic. Bring in all the immigrants you want. But I can't agree that H1Bs are working as designed and pull in labor that doesn't otherwise already exist in the US.
But if you want to attract young talented and skilled people into the US, I don't think H1B is a good way to do it. I would imagine is more likely to result in people leaving after gaining skills and experience and set up shop back home where the money they earned stretches farther. Many of them are forced to do so after their employer tosses them away so why would you come here with any different plan to start with? There is no clearly laid out path to come here on an H1B and guarantee you get to stay even if you do stellar work.
The only way to do that (and preserve H1B) is to entirely disconnect the subcontinent from the application process. Their top companies exist only to scam immigration programs around the world, it is their raison d'être.
I have met very talented people from the subcontinent. I think the issue is the H1B structure is open to fraud.
Yeah exactly. And they embrace that fraud and turn it into a cornerstone of their economy. I too have worked with extremely talented people from the subcontinent and not one was on an H1B. The H1Bs I worked with were less competent than an undergraduate intern. Thankfully I only had to do that once during an on-prem install in Tyson’s Corner.
I’m curious what visa the “extremely talented people from the subcontinent” were on. If they have a green card or are naturalized citizens, there are very few paths to those statuses that doesn’t involve an H1B.
I'm against these top sweatshops, but is the answer to that is ban the entire subcontinent?
Also, I don't know how many h1bs have you worked with. I have worked with many (hundreds), and it's the same spectrum of talent you'd find anywhere. This is probably not the intent of h1b, but banning a set of countries is not the solution. Changing the criteria is.
The fact that it’s the same spectrum of talent (in your experience) is a glaring indicator that the system has been systematically abused by Indian WITCH to the point it’s no longer fit for purpose. Unfortunately systems constructed in high trust societies (1950s USA) must adapt with the arrival of low trust societies. Much like the European refugee conventions established in the echoes of WW2 and now gleefully exploited by these same low trust societies.
So both people and companies from those countries?
Yep.
>> The only way to do that (and preserve H1B) is to entirely disconnect the subcontinent from the application process.
In that case, better to rephrase to "US should close borders for Indians (and China?) workers and companies". Why sugercoat it?
I didn’t include China. I also don’t think there’s any reason to close the borders to Indians. Rather, simply close off access to their Frankenstein cottage industry of scammers.
I agree that H1B abuse should be fixed. Its also bad for other H1Bs which have the skill and didn't abuse the system (which many of them are).
Maybe this 100k thing will fix it and maybe this wont. My main complain with this administration is always the chaos and impulsiveness which doesn't bring much confidence that they are actually capable of actually fixing the problem, as it always doesn't seem well thought through or executed. More like headlines to get some cheering from MAGA crowd.
> My main complain with this administration is always the chaos and impulsiveness which doesn't bring much confidence that they are actually capable of actually fixing the problem, as it always doesn't seem well thought through or executed. More like headlines to get some cheering from MAGA crowd.
I think it could also be that they don't want to fix any problems, but they do want the chaos and media attention that provides catharsis to the voting base.
Thats complete bullshit. Nobody can "steal" a job. Americans are lining up to give them jobs.
Why are you using quotes around steal as though I used that word somewhere? Read what I wrote, repeat it to yourself when you fall asleep, come back tomorrow.
Okay, you said scam, not steal. You didn't write much of anything except throw wild accusations.
Yes, scam. Scam. India. Scam. India. You’ve never heard of these two together? Google is your friend. Diploma mills, good old fashioned racial discrimination, hiding job listings in obscure outlets to avoid domestic applicants, man they are truly talented in this endeavour. Maybe if they put so much muscle into improving the home country everyone would be better off.
So your employer's interview process isn't able to differentiate between a fake degree holding scammer and you? I'd focus on that first...
That’s a cute ad-hominem but ultimately off base because that’s not how the diploma mills scam works. I really encourage you to research those topics a bit - it is genuinely fascinating how complex the scams get. There’s also a bit of self-reflection that arises when you learn that these people don’t understand why scamming and cheating is wrong - they’re genuinely incapable of comprehending this. It makes you appreciate people who aren’t like that, including yourself! (hopefully)
> these people don’t understand why scamming and cheating is wrong
Moreover, they openly brag about it. My wife's brings stories from her hair stylist that's very chatty about the ways they literally move their family from India to US and Canada. People fake marriages, divorces, report abuse etc etc. I'm still not sure if it's all true, but the very fact she brags about it is astounding.
Also to your original question here, I am involved with hiring :). I can differentiate with very little effort.
Great, so if they're as obviously bad as you claim, then it should be easy to weed them out for any competent HR department. And if the HR department isn't competent, the company is going to fold. Either way, problem solved.
You felt it appropriate to jump on your little throne and pass judgement on large groups of people, but cried ad-hominem when I slightly criticized you. Sensitive much?
How is the problem solved? You have an entire industry dedicated to scamming immigration systems around the world and your solution is to simply avoid getting scammed? It’s a lot easier to cut them off as per the article. The problem IS the scammers.
I don't fix security bugs by requesting people to not exploit them.
As always with this administration using a cannon to kill a mosquito for the right reasons. And then people debating the reason rather than the cannon.
The logic from this administration and it’s supporters is opposite of Benjamin Franklin. Rather than thinking that it is better a hundred guilty persons should escape than one innocent person should suffer. They think it is better a hundred guilty persons be punished than one innocent person’s suffering. We have seen this from the South Korea detainees debacle and here too.
There is fraud in H1B system. People do take advantage of it. People do suffer from ghost jobs. But the question at the heart of the matter is what is the basis for a flat 100k fee? Because lots of numbers from this administration seem to be pulled out from thin air. There are reasons fines are set low in comparison to a company revenue but POTUS doesn’t seem to know.
OTOH many H1Bs come with the intent of moving to the US and permanent residence eventually. Which makes our workforce stronger.
> OTOH many H1Bs come with the intent of moving to the US and permanent residence eventually. Which makes our workforce stronger.
Sure. But we are arguing about two separate things here. I am pro-immigration. But I am also against using immigrant primarily to depress wages.
So the replacement is the talent stays in their own country, making local wages there where their talents are leveraged via offshoring instead. They still work to their skillset, wages remain suppressed but their country of origin get their personal taxes instead. But at least the talented individual gets a lower quality of life, that will teach them to roll the dice wrong on the geography they were born into.
We can still use policy to disadvantage the economics of offshoring, we just haven’t gotten there yet. This took time, that will take time.
Does it suck that billions of people were born into lesser global economic circumstances? Absolutely. Does that mean we should allow corporations to exploit labor (both imported and citizens who have to compete against that imported labor) at the disadvantage of domestic citizens? No. This is workers vs capital, not immigrants vs citizens.
There's a logically fallacy in there. Throwing up border walls does not stop capital. Capital can still exist outside the borders and work with the supply chains of the other countries minus 1. And pick an inflow metric that capital cares, and the US does not control more than 50% of it. number of consumers, GDP, income growth, all of it. The capital will continue to service the bigger number that remains offshore through cutting the US out of that pie reciprocally.
The US as a feature of it geography and population (Japan, UK and the Philippines) can choose isolationism as a policy. But the rest don't have it as an option due to direct contact to neighbors or economics too small to sustain. Most of the world will not follow the on-shoring path, because they cannot.
There is nowhere else to invest. China, Russia, and Africa? No trust. Europe and Japan? Too old. That leaves India, which may or may not attract material capital inflows.
https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-dep...
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf
https://www.columbiathreadneedleus.com/institutional/insight...
Who, funnily enough, will probably be the largest impacted by such things as locking down H1Bs.
Old and still accessible beats inaccessible. BTW the source of the USAs demographic resistance to aging has been the sheer fact it was that immigration melting pot of bringing in young talent to offset its local aging population. A few decades of this path and the US can be just as dismissed as Japan who have taken this path decades in advance.
All countries will end up like Japan, it’s just time (explained in the links I cited). Some countries are likely willing to eat some economic gains out of other preferences. That’s a choice. It’s not all “line goes up.”
India’s total fertility rate is already 1.9, below 2.1 replacement rate. Its demographic dividend (and any potential capital investment opportunities) is already on borrowed time. So capital would rotate and reallocate there, while there is still time, regardless.
https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/dont-panic-over-falli...
Per slide 8 of your second link: Except Africa and half of Asia who will still be above replacement rate for the remainder of our natural lives.
Per exhibit 5 of your first link: The US still to be as bad as Europe and Japan you disparage as "old" and that is based on 2024 analyses. A few more years of these events if sustained will drop that further.
And per Exhibit 1 of that same link, sure India will be at 1.9. And the US was at 1.6 two years ago, which is worse.
> Per slide 8 of your second link: Except Africa and half of Asia who will still be above replacement rate for the remainder of our natural lives.
https://www.science.org/content/article/population-tipping-p...
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/15/5-facts-a...
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-worlds-birthrate-may-already-...
Most of the world will be below fertility replacement rate by 2030. This is important, because the faster fertility rates decline, the faster the light cone of capital returns into the future shrinks (people = profits = returns).
So, to tie this all together: for the reasons I’ve laid out in this subthread (with citations), I’m not too concerned about the need to cater to the demands of capital. It needs returns more than humans need it considering population growth is almost over, and it will continue to slowly exhaust investment opportunities as the global demographics transition continues.
Yes I would prefer just faster road to skilled immigration. It also doesn’t help string people along with this distant hope of permanent residency
there's a lot of new policy that seems to be intentionally inflicting severe brain drain
the US is no longer the clear destination for the best and brightest
Unless you are an American tech worker looking for a job
I am an American-born tech worker and every job I've had that didn't involve bagging groceries was created by immigrants. Without these workers my career wouldn't have been possible.
Economy isn't a zero-sum game. Foreign talents were the enabler of the growth in this field.
Over a long enough time-span it isn't zero-sum. Under any sort of limited time span, which is what people with limited amount of life live deal with, it is zero-sum. It doesn't matter how much money you spend, the economy has material and man power limits than cannot be exceeded no matter what someone manages to pull out of their butt. On top of that, the value of money IS affected by the total amount of currency in circulation as history has shown many times over, and only in a theoretical economic vacuum where customers are infinite does one guy holding a trillion dollars not devalue someone else's $1.
Why does America have all the tech jobs in the first place? It is because of people like Elon Musk immigrating to the US and building the tech industry.
Because US companies like Bell Labs invented it.
Ha! And who worked at Bell Labs, the US company? Immigrants.
Mohamed "John" Atalla, raised in Egypt, and Dawon Kahng from Korea, who together invented the MOSFET transistor, which underpins modern electronics and computing. Both immigrated to the United States for graduate engineering education and made their breakthrough at Bell Labs in 1959.
Yann LeCun, born and raised in France, immigrated to the U.S. in 1988 to work at AT&T Bell Labs, where he became head of image processing research and contributed significantly to artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish-born inventor of the telephone, was a founder and major figure in the creation of the Bell Telephone Company; AT&T, created by American Bell in 1885, later established Bell Labs.
Immigration has always bolstered the American tech industry, but the bulk of the industry has always been American. Just look at the distinguished members of Bell Labs. Many are immigrants, but most are American. The reason why immigrants come here is that American industry is already very strong. It’s not mutually exclusive to claim that Americans build a strong tech industry and that skilled immigrants have invented many new technologies here in America.
You are right about Bell Labs, the majority were US-born.
But let's consider one of the biggest innovations of recent times: Artificial Intelligence (transformers/LLMs specifically). Where was it invented? In America. Who invented it? Let's take a look. The seminal research paper that kicked off this revolution (titled "Attention is all you need") was written by 2 Indians, 1 German, 1 British Canadian, 1 Pole, 1 Ukrainian, and 2 US born people. So only 25% US-born.
Have you watched OpenAI's demos and how many of their researchers are Asian? Would you prefer for them to remain in Asia and contribute to DeepSeek instead?
this is not smart. If you want to reform an H1B program, reform it. This is not a reform, this is a bizarre attempt to do what? stop companies from hiring foreigners? they will simply hire them in their foreign offices or offshore.
What is reform and what is not reform? This is a change, not a cancellation. That sounds like reform to me.
reform is a type of action that tries to identify a concrete set of issues and fix those issues, implies a positive change.
this is a change in the direction of significantly reducing hiring of foreign workers by American companies, which is bad for everyone. It's bad for American companies, because it will reduce their growth. It's bad for American workers because when our companies don't grow, neither does our economy and that hurts Americans. So it's a change, but it's a dumb change.
In other democratic countries, reform is mostly proposed in parliament. Experts and other government institutions are publicly consulted. Reform is seldomly passed under emergency grounds, and H1B rules are an unlikely area for emergency executive action that has a transition period of not more than 2 days.
Of course in other democratic countries their parliaments haven't purposefully and willingly seceded their powers to the executive branch and spent the last 50 years completely ignoring the entirety of the people's will, needs, and desires as they gathered and concentrated as much additional power as possible.
Reform is done legally. The statute this falls under requires the fee be based on the administrative cost to process the application.
Changing the statute requires Congress to act.
So if congress passed a law to impose a $100k fee it is reform? That is the only aspect that is concerning?
Unless they follow this up with some major excise tax, this is the obvious outcome of this, IMO.
Are H1B visas undercutting wages significantly? I haven't really looked since the zero interest rates era, but back then H1Bs were getting paid the same as everyone else. I got the impression that companies would like to hire citizens (for their own convenience), but there were more jobs than people.
The economy kind of sucks right now but it ain't H1B visa holders that are the problem.
Please read the Bloomberg article I linked in my original post. It says that half of the H1-B visas are taken by staffing companies and they pay their staff significantly lower than the US laborers they are replacing.
Any addition of labor will push down wages just be increasing competition for jobs, even if they are all paid the same.
you're not applying for .net analyst at midwest regional bank corp.
Crossposting from elsewhere:
Looking at it solely from a perspective of competition between labor glosses over the fact that insufficient labor is also bad because it keeps companies from growing and hiring more people.
So sure, while the fewer jobs that they can fill could have higher wages (not a given, because lack of labor can stunt or kill companies) there could be much fewer people employed overall, which is clearly bad overall.
Of course, that assumes there is enough room for companies to grow. There are strong indications (e.g. the various labor and unemployment surveys) that this is the case in the US. In fact, there is a credible theory that the reason the US managed the inflation crisis so well was due to the immigration crisis.
I elaborated more here (along with a couple of relevant empirical studies about how H1B actually impacted employment and wages of native workers): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45308311
Did you look at the Bloomberg article I linked in my original post? It says that half of the H1-B visas are taken by staffing companies and they pay their staff significantly lower than the US laborers they are replacing.
I could not read the full article so I don't have all the details about the report, but the scope pretty limited. There are equally numerous reports about e.g. BigTech H1B salaries being much higher than typical. So that raises the question, which is the greater effect?
Better instead to look at larger scale studies out there, including the ones I mentioned in the comment I linked. The results are much more nuanced, but generally they find negligible or mildly positive impact on native workers, suggesting they are largely orthogonal to foreign workers.
The point is that the dynamics are more nuanced than simple supply vs demand.
How is that possible ? Doesn't h1b have to pay within a set range of wages?
Every h1b role I see posted at my bank pays more than I make so I don't get the lower paid comments
H1B holders have to be paid the higher of the prevailing wage or their employer's normal wage for similarly employed workers. So if a contracting company can ensure that the position their employees have is sufficiently different than the position a parent company is seeking to replace, there's an arbitrage. (This famously happened at Disney in 2014-15, with some workers directly training their H1B replacements.)
Ah interesting. Thanks
It can be a cheaper source of human resources without direct outsourcing. This will just offshore jobs, not foster recruiting of citizens.
The intent is obvious, but the foresight into potential outcomes is shortsighted.
Labor is expensive, more competition will rise overseas, as it will become more expensive to operate.
It also crushes the opportunities of a gigantic number of individuals who are here today who had a plan in place to exist in this ecosystem. Additionally the institutions that supported them will also be hurt. Although, they might have been aware of the writing on the wall over the past year.
I believe that the United States has long benefited from being able to attract talented people from other countries. They pay taxes, they participate in the economy, and they make the US more innovative and competitive in the world.
If there are abuses, then let’s fix them. But this is too heavy handed, and may have an impact on US competitiveness for generations to come.
This is idiotic. We’re already pushing China and India into a partnership with Russia. The sheer volume of people in those countries mean “on average” more brilliant people than we do.
The US competitive advantage is built on us being a destination for the best and brightest. Between this and the crackdown foreign students at US Universities why would the anyone want to come here?
The misuse of H1Bs is a small problem compared to the value it provides.
The best and brightest are worth the extra $100k tax, no?
Doubtful. Not sure I'd be hired. I was hired at like $160k/yr. Would my employer have paid over half my wages to import me? I'm not so sure. Am I not bright enough? Do ya'all not want me here? It's possible. I'm no genius but I think I'm pretty good at my job and I dare say above average, and I don't think my employer could fill all the positions they have with equal or greater talent with only American citizens.
The question is more are you irreplaceable - is there no way an American could do your job even if they may need more training?
We pay taxes, we compete for limited schools and jobs, yet far more people want to come here than leave. Americans have become a lot less wealthy the last 40 years relatively thanks to stagnant wages and skyrocketing prices.
The last thing we need is an unlimited supply of competition that only moves in one direction. Average H1B salary is like 60k, rich companies like MS are employing thousands of IT workers. These are jobs that anyone here could do with a 1-2 year online technical degree.
> I don't think my employer could fill all the positions they have with equal or greater talent with only American citizens.
I assume that's because the wages are too low, since you have already described your skill level as merely above average. Unless I'm significantly misunderstanding something, Americans would be better off if your company had to pay higher wages, even if the company ended up shutting down as a result.
Speaking as an employer, I’d be a lot more picky if I was going to sponsor a candidate to make sure I could make my investment back. (We’ve never sponsored someone though)
The potentially sad thing/abuse that might come out of this is that employers will keep even higher margins from the H1 person and make them pay back that money faster. Even through some shady deal back in their home country.
$15K extra per year? Absolutely. $100k pre-payment? No. That's impractical since the visa holder may get hit by a truck or return home due to an emergency, etc.
$100,000 per year.
why not just hire them in Canada or literally in any offshore office and not pay the 100k tax?
maybe they're occidentalists at heart?
If we’d fix the green card caps so that Indian workers could get green cards we wouldn’t see as much abuse. The system is broken, so you’re suggesting break it further? The US benefits from a lot of smart immigrants, we should be making it EASIER, not harder, to attract and retain the best talent from all over the world. The United States is ceding its leadership here and we’re going to pay for that for generations.
> This is actually smart.
The policy topic is irrelevant. This is not normal reform. Looking from the outside, the United States is clearly democratically backsliding and is imposing decree upon decree of emergency measures, without a functioning parliament, with a sand-in-wheels judiciary, along with an enormous cult of personality, without any empathy towards the victims of sudden policy changes and black-bag jobs.
> This is actually smart.
Do you personally know any H-1B visa holders? I can only assume that by your comment that you do not. The ones who play by the system have their entire livelihood and home held over their head while under an H-1B visa.
Punish the companies and staffing firms abusing the H-1B visas instead of creating a blanket, anti-immigration policy that will only bolster those abusing the H1-B visa, because those already abusing are the ones who have the funds to pay this fee. Companies who do things legitimately will not be able to easily absorb this fee.
I will lose friends and colleagues because of this imposed fee. This will kick out all the good people we actually want working in this country. This will further reduce good people wanting to come to this country.
Exactly, it's not lime the visa holders get this 100k. The state does.
The trivial way to fix that issue would've been to ORDER BY offered_salary DESC LIMIT $h1b_cap, not this.
That moves all H1Bs to software though, which I’m not sure is right.
not a bad idea.
If you want a good job in tech, go look at Walmart’s job board in the coming weeks. They literally have thousands of Indians doing all kinds of jobs that could easily be done by Americans. I liked my time there, and there’s lots of great people, but it felt very clear that the system was being abused.
homedepot too
in my team of 23 there were 2 americans
I have to say, when one thinks of jobs available at Walmart, tech doesn't exactly come to mind first.
As of 2025, Wal-Mart's main corporate structure has ~2500 H-1B Visa Holders, $141k median, which allegedly no citizens can fulfill.
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=wal-mart+associates+inc&jo...
Maybe it’s true they can’t find citizens:
- at that price - in the Bay Area
But certainly they don’t have grounds to say they can’t find citizens to write JS or make apps.
My understanding is the vast majority of Wal-Mart corporate employees are based in Arkansas.
From my datalink, above, it seems the SFBay (Sunnyvale / Castro Valley / &al) has comparable H-1Bs to Arkansas — but these employees are spread all over The States. Not sure about citizen workforce, but I'd recon' they're similarly proportioned.
It's obvious to me that the problem with H-1B visas is the same as that of undocumented workers, in that we've created a second class of people who are trapped in a system seemingly created specifically to exploit them, while simultaneously making things worse for the rest of us.
It's my opinion that anyone already here should have a path towards citizenship, or legal permanent residence. The exploitation of people needs to end, and the dignity of everyone in this country should be respected.
Of course we need to have rules, and borders that are secure. It's unreasonable to want to abolish them or close them completely.
Interesting decision. I'm on the F1 -> H1B pipeline myself as a software engineer. And my wife is a researcher working on Genetic Engineering.
Of the both of us, I've been the strong proponent for moving the US. and with each passing day, its getting harder to make a strong case for the pain, and uncertainty of moving here.
Lately everything has been counter to what one would expect from a pro-growth, accelerationist country. But I understand where the reasoning is coming from, though.
with each passing day, its getting harder to make a strong case for the pain, and uncertainty of moving here.
That is exactly the goal here by this administration.
Shutting down the H1B is the end of the American success story. First generation immigrants have started the majority of our unicorns.
So there were no American immigrant success stories pre-1990, when the H-1 program started?
The H-1 program started as a "correction" to the tightening of immigration rules as a whole over time.
Consider that, in 1905, my great-grandfather got on a boat in Italy, sailed across the Atlantic, arrived in New York, went through a very simple immigration process on-site, and at that point was legal to live and work in the US for as long as he wanted. He eventually naturalized as a US citizen in 1920, only needing to prove his residency and present the record of his legal entrance 15 years prior.
We're a long way from that state of affairs now. The H-1 program was developed because we weren't getting enough of an influx of skilled work due to the reduction in immigration caused by new, more-restrictive immigration laws enacted over the prior decades.
Yes, but race was also very very central then,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1907_Bellingham_race_riot
(and even with that regime, Italians/Irish/Catholics etc. were discriminated LOL).
Today, US is forced to comply with anti-racial position so it can't quite do what it really wants - to open the doors to white-immigrants but to restrict it to everyone else. This happens in the background with the way the green-card process is structured, but frankly, I think everyone is well-served if we stop this farce and just have racial quotas. US empire is failing, so there's no need to keep up such pretences today.
There's quite a bit of research on how anti-racism was a strategy adopted by the US/West after WW2 to prevent the then freed countries (starting with India ironically) from seeking revenge for the centuries of total devastation and mass violence imposed on them.
I don't think their statement implies that. Note that they said it will be the end of the American success story, not the end of the American immigrant success story.
The nature of the American success story changes over time and with that the nature of immigrant success also changes.
In the last decade or so tech, especially information tech, has been one of the biggest contributors to growth in the US economy, and first generation immigrants have been a big contributor to that. For example, first generation immigrants have founded many of the tech unicorns (although I think he overstated it a little--my searching suggests it is closed to 40-50% rather than a majority).
In earlier decades the biggest contributors at various times included manufacturing, farm technology, defense, the Gulf Coast petroleum industry, and construction.
There were certainly immigrants involved in all those but not nearly to the extent that they are in present day tech, especially at the top.
No, there was no immigration process back then, you just came.
Which is why all the people yelling about immigration today, who are second and third generation, need to be quiet.
I can see you’re downvoted , but I think you’re right. It was much more liberal time.
You don't think this administration would cut off their nose to spite their face?
We are seeing it in real time.
Accelerationist doesn’t mean what you think it means here.
if you are exceptional, there is always the O-1 visa
O-1 is a subjective visa which means the process is heavily gamed. Pay conferences to host your papers, pay newspapers to write meaningless articles about you, get a famous personality to sign off on your recommendation letter (I know startups used their board of advisors only for this) and on and on. It’s mostly a joke at this point. O-1 can be scrapped and you wouldn’t lose anything
The H1B really should have just been an O-1 from the beginning. Being a software or genetics engineer isn't really that interesting, we literally have millions of software engineers, and more genetics engineers than we have good jobs. If someone is truly exceptional than they deserve an O-1, and if you truly can't find any engineers in the US at your salary then maybe you should move overseas.
Might be, but that's how you end up in a situation where all the technical skill is outside the US and the products inside are a marketing layer over technical efforts.
Similar to what ended up happening with china and manufacturing.
I might.
It's not just this specific issue, honestly. Throwing wrench on all economies, that my wife and I bet on is what's horrible. Research fund cuts on premium institutes, the wonky arrests etc.
Even yesterday, I had to make a case for why all of this certainty might be worth it. And it was not easy. At this point though, I certainly agree that the US is not in a trajectory for appreciating external contributions.
And the requirements for O-1 aren't even that difficult. I know people who are frankly not exceptional (not mediocre either, though, of course), but have worked with lawyers to systematically fulfill the requirements of the O-1 visa. It does take time to do, and I assume the legal assistance isn't cheap, but I think a lot of people on H-1Bs who don't even consider it, could do it.
No, you become exceptional after coming here. The majority of our unicorns are first generation immigrant founded.
You don't have to live in a country to be hired as a contractor by a company. The only difference is that the contractor will pay taxes in the country of residence, so ultimately it's a bad deal for the US.
My mega corp employer has started an office in Mexico staffed with mostly contractors from India. Makes sense to have in the same timezone and much cheaper than our other low cost office in Texas that has mostly h1bs.
This is really smart. Plus you can truck freight across the border, you don't have to fly stuff. There are whole manufacturing cities setup on the border for these kind of setups.
These are IT workers doing programming and support for the US company.
While the stated intention is to prevent abuse by consultancies, I think this effectively kills the H1B program. Who will be able to afford this?
Not startups. 100k is like 75% of base comp in most bay area startups
Among BigTech, maybe like ~20 companies will be willing to pay this per employee.
So startups often bring in H1B employees? What prevents them from hiring the same great people remotely?
Time zones are probably the biggest limiting factor, followed by remoteness. In my experience, it's really hard and pretty slow to onboard a remote worker if you haven't already worked with that person in the past. And at a startup, you don't usually have the luxury of time on your side.
Basically all of South America is in US-friendly timezones. I worked with a few quite bright folks from Argentina, for instance.
I suspect that flying someone from Buenos Aires to SF or NYC for onboarding and then and back would cost significantly less than $100k.
Remote work from Europe is harder in this regard, and from India... would be night shifts only.
> Remote work from Europe is harder in this regard, and from India... would be night shifts only.
I do not mind working all day until I pass out, and I do not mind adjusting my life to a different timezone as long as I get paid enough, and considering that USD > HUF, it is probably a no-brainer.
So yeah, hire me for full remote! Unfortunately traveling is out of the question due to disability.
If you put a means of contact into your profile, people here will be able to follow up with you.
If you hire someone in say Australia you would be subject to its fair work act, and its courts. You'd need to sus out the tax situation too.
What if they are a contractor? Well usually the law treats these things like ducks and asks if they quack. If it quacks like employment it is subject to that law.
I find that Employers of Record (EoR) make this a non-issue.
I work for an American startup, remotely from S. America. I'm hired according to the (extensive, and expensive) local labor laws, while my startup likely knows absolutely nothing about the intricacies of how my countries' labor laws work, the EoR just handles everything and sends the employer a bill every month.
It's not a bad thing if FAANG gets every single H1B visa. There has long been a complaint that FAANG is willing to pay 300k+/head in salaries but instead Cognizant gets the visa and pays 60k/head. If we have a limited visa pool it makes no sense to give visas to low paying employers until FAANG is completely saturated.
Do startups often hire H-1Bs? I've only worked for a few, but they didn't start hiring H-1Bs until they we're fairly sizeable and had taken on a couple rounds of funding.
Certainly the $100k fee is going to make the application much more expensive (though you can amortize it across 3 or 6 years, right?), but it was already not exactly cheap to deal with the legal costs around H-1B employees.
> Among BigTech, maybe like ~20 companies will be willing to pay this per employee.
I think that's a vast, vast underestimation. Most companies, even not-so-big ones, will continue to pay it. Maybe they'll think twice a bit more for future hires, and try harder to find someone local, which I don't think is a bad thing. Or, of course, this could just represent another factor in downward wage pressure across the board, which is bad.
It’s 100k per year not per application. So you won’t be able to amortize across 3-6 years
> Not startups. 100k is like 75%
I dont know of a single person here on a visa making less than 150k salary. They get the same stock, bonus and benefits that every one else gets.... it's well over 300k to have that staff member when all is said and done.
You're not adding on 100k a year, you're adding on 100k for a 3-6 year employee.
Even if that works out to 20k a year, it's pocket change in the grand scheme of things.
> I dont know of a single person here on a visa making less than 150k salary
Don't have data on this but anecdotally the base salary range for most YC startup jobs advertised here is around 150k-200k based on what I see.
You are right that it does amortize if the employee stays long enough.
> it does amortize if the employee stays long enough.
And I expect workers on H-1B change jobs much less frequently than citizens & green card holders (and holders of "safer" visas), since changing jobs on an H-1B involves more risk that can end up with you being required to leave the US.
I don't think there is any reasonable evidence to suggest that most workers here on H1-B visas make more than 150k median salary, much less that they are awarded similar options as other employees.
I'm glad to hear this has been the environment you've worked in, but I don't believe it reflects the majority of skilled workers in the US on H1-B.
H1-B visas go to more jobs than just software engineers. I totally believe H1Bs in the tech industry (startups, faang) make 150k median.
Even inside the tech industry, H1-B positions are often paid much lower than others within the company (even before benefits are considered).
$150,000 median yearly salary would mean H1-B positions are taking home 10k a month. I've worked with too many people in these positions to believe they're being paid reasonable wages - unless you have an extremely in-demand skillset, H1-B holders are often treated like indentured servants by huge companies/teams.
The H1b salaries are public. And the L4 prevailing wage for software engineers in the Seattle area is $200k.
H1b also only takes into account the actual salary, it completely ignores stock bonuses.
If this is public information, I'd love to know what the median salary is rather than taking your word for it on a specific area I am not familiar with.
https://h1bgrader.com/h1b-prevailing-wage/area/seattle-tacom... - filter by "Software". Level 4 is $212202, Level 1 is $117749.
The USCIS uses the BLS data for the prevailing wage. You can also check it on the BLS website if you want.
Level 4 is also described as "This is the fully competent wage level. It is for anyone who have sufficient experience to plan and do work that requires judgement and do independent evaluation, selection, modification and skills. Usually these roles would have management or supervisory responsibilities."
Do you think that the median "Software" developer being brought over on a H1-B is Level 4? Even if you think a large number of them are L4, do you see the issue with trying to exceed a median salary at 150k if the L1 is 117k and the L4 (management or supervisory) is only 212k ... and we're using data from one of the most expensive corners of the US?
If you listen to the interview Trump & team gave, it's $100k per employee per year.
If it’s pocket change then why not also pay the domestic employees $20k more a year?
Why would they, if they don't have to? What a strange question...
Because the person they are importing is probably brighter than you. If you're talented and smart you come to the US and likely the Bay Area (or west coast) to work in tech. Why? For the same reason that baseball players all end up in the US and Soccer players end up in Europe: they all want to play against, and with the best in the big show.
All the H1B's I have worked with are whip smart, hard working, and in general amazing people. I cant say the same for all my localy sourced colleges. The tragedy of the economics in most of these cases was that they were making the same amount of money as their peers and not more...
In a lot of cases companies are getting a Steff Curry or a Lionel Messi and paying them the average of the rest of the team...
>All the H1B's I have worked with are whip smart, hard working, and in general amazing people. I cant say the same for all my localy sourced colleges.
Anecdotally myself, I've worked with great ones yes, but the majority aren't incredible.
In the tech arms of banks you can see a lot of what I would describe as at best regular software engineers, nothing special.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-h1b-visa-middlemen-c...
> All the H1B's I have worked with are whip smart, hard working, and in general amazing people.
That's surprising; for me, H-1Bs have run the gamut, with a range of talent and ambition that's pretty similar to the range of talent and ambition I see with US-born workers. And I think this is perhaps the problem: your experience should be the norm, if the H-1 visa program is functioning properly, but I don't think that's the case.
Among my friends who have been on H-1Bs, they tend to be high performers, but that's just selection bias at work.
If you paid $20k more, you would have the more talented locals applying.
India, China, both home to a billion people.
Mathematically if we collected all the brightest people from both these nations, say the top 5 percent of their population thats 100 million people in that pool to pick from.
The entire population of the US is 350million.
Comp sci went from something people did cause they enjoyed to something they did cause they thought it was a pay day: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/ocpf0g/oc_...
We ran out of talented, passionate people a long time ago.
There is also a cultural problem in America, one that buisness and staff are afflicted with.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/no-inventions-no-inno...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At3256ASxlA (pay attention to Noyce in Japan and the article he wrote... think about intel today, compare it to the above article).
I don't think Noyce's take as a business owner is far removed from the above take from the prospective of staff.
>I think this effectively kills the H1B program.
That exactly is Trump’s intention, no?
No, his campaign pledges stated: 6. Ensure Our Legal Immigration System Puts American Workers First Republicans will prioritize Merit-based immigration, ensuring those admitted to our Country contribute positively to our Society and Economy, and never become a drain on Public Resources. We will end Chain Migration, and put American Workers first! https://rncplatform.donaldjtrump.com/?_gl=1*18i1due*_gcl_au*...
He has been pretty good at sticking to his campaign promises.
I don't see how nearly killing the H1B program goes against that pledge. If anything it sounds like something that they could spin as following this pledge.
> He has been pretty good at sticking to his campaign promises.
I wouldn't be too surprised if you genuinely believe that Ukraine war has been over since Jan 20 and that grocery prices are at all time low.
Bit ridiculous that this article leaves as a footnote that this rule change is illegal and likely to be struck down by the first lawsuit.
I think it is kind of a footnote. Many things this administration has done are illegal and struck down by the first lawsuit but later let stand by a friendly Supreme Court.
And should be added, let stand by the Supreme Court without given a reasoning on why it stands. Just all shadow dockets.
Corruption by another name. The canary is already dead.
How is a president winning the election and then packing the SC corruption? It's not like people didn't have a choice, they did vote for the guy. Twice!
Can you give an example?
https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/emergency/emergency-do...
That's true on administrative state issues (Trump being allowed to fire people in the exec. branch). It's not clear this is a 100% guarantee for everything beyond that. (Maybe a 65% guarantee).
Apologies if this comes across as pedantic, but it isn’t a footnote. It’s part of the actual article, just included near the end in the “Looking Ahead” section. If they omitted it entirely or put it in an actual footnote, then yes I agree that would be a noteworthy omission. But it feels extreme to call it ridiculous when it’s right there in the article.
The other thing I’ll say is that even if this is struck down by the courts (which is not certain give the Supreme Court’s recent support for the president), that can take a while and this could still have a real impact on people. Many people thought the president imposing tariffs was unconstitutional, but as right now those tariffs are actually in effect. Companies that employ H-1B workers (and the workers themselves) will need to start planning for this immediately regardless of whether or not it is eventually struck down.
The last thing I’m wondering is when you say it’s ridiculous, do you just mean sloppy reporting? Or are you implying that the author has some ulterior motive? And if the latter, what do you think that ulterior motive is?
The trump administration has not complied with any unfavorable court ruling about immigration why would they care about this one?
The one ruling they arguably didn’t comply with was overturned by the Supreme Court, who held the district court didn’t even have jurisdiction in the first place.
They've complied with a number of unfavorable court rulings about immigration, but precisely because that's what they're supposed to do it goes much less viral.
"Yeah they're breaking laws, but why aren't you talking about the ones they are following?"
I do! This dynamic drives it as well. A lot of people on social media are passionately convinced that "Trump can do whatever he wants" is the anti-Trump position and "Trump's power is still limited in many ways" is therefore a pro-Trump position. I never know how to engage with that perspective other than to say it doesn't sound right to me. If you're an anti-Trump person trying to figure out how to stop him from doing bad things, it seems pretty important to know that lawsuits are a useful component.
Not likely. It appears this rather awkward method is actually built to keep this well within the president's power
Interesting. Does this also require a law to be passed?
Boy, that's going to be a popular rule. I'll bet K Street is getting their engines gassed and greased for this.
I'm deeply unhappy about H1B abuse. I've watched it happen, in front of me. It's definitely a real thing. But I also worry about the legit folks, that want to take advantage of it.
Yeah, this is one of those things where the abuses have real negative consequences for our country.
However, when used by people that we (theoretical, rational economic actors) actually want here… those truly exceptional people who may not look exceptional on paper… Well, getting those people here has been one of the magical things about the United States of America, so far.
Messing with that is dangerous. It needs to be done, but it needs to be done very surgically.
They are, unless you have the ear of our current President God-King and can get an exception.
"The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States. "
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1nlgzzu/trump_signs_p...
May I interest you in some Trump Coin?
I have seen an endless stream of unqualified people scamming and abusing H-1B, O-1, EB-1, and EB-2 programs — you name it. I can understand why the average American might come to resent these programs.
On the other hand, I know many highly talented immigrants in the USA whose contributions to society would be missed if they just couldn’t focus entirely on their work - let alone if they were kept out of the country altogether.
My point: They have identified the right problem (H-1B abuse), but the proposed fix is too drastic and undermines sustainable trust between immigrants and the country. I’d like to be proven wrong, though.
The Executive Order has now been published:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
If you don't want to read the pre-amble, you can skip straight to the second "Accordingly" to see the details.
Its a proclamation, not an executive order. This is important to keep in mind because Congress granted explicit statutory authorization to the President in the Immigration and Nationality Act 212(f) and is unlikely to be cut down by the courts for this reason:
"Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."
Also interestingly, it seems to only explicitly impose restrictions on entry into the US. But most visa holders are already in the country, and atleast according to this proclamation, they'd be unaffected.
People seem to be missing the part where DHS reserves the right to allow exceptions for any company they desire. Now they have another way to play favorites.
I and I hope a lot of other people will be demanding that the CEOs of all companies on that exception list go to prison in 2029.
Another way to solicit donations, let's say
Donations you say?
One thing that really pisses me off about the whole populist anti-immigration stance is how thankless, hypocritical and selfish the whole thing is:
People want to avoid negative effects from immigration (cultural/language/crimerate)- fine.
But are those people acknowledging how much economical growth was driven by migrant labor over the last half century? Hell no. Would the average alt-righter be willing to sacrifice any fraction of all those compounded gains? Absolutely not- every dollar of tax is too much, even to pay a fraction of the damage that is and will be caused by them (=> energy price/co2 taxation).
As a self-identifying moderate patriot, selfish complainers of that ilk seem a worse plague on their nation than the immigrants they keep whining about.
This is an oversimplification and a pretty extreme case of over-categorizing people into groups. People who have problems with immigration aren't automatically alt-right. People who have problems with immigration understand that immigration has also historically provided economic growth - those aren't mutually exclusive things.
If you're worried that people might be mixing you up with the virulent xenophobes, perhaps its time to do something about those virulent xenophobes because there are a lot of them and they exert a disproportionate amount of political power while relying on arguments that are frequently specious or outright dishonest.
Now, you likely feel 'but I'm not like that, so why is it my problem?' and the answer is twofold. One, unless you actively push back on those people they're going to drag you down with them into a moral and legal pit, and two, because (unlike immigrants) you can vote and donate and lobby. There's a lot of weird stuff going on in the country right now, as I'm sure you're aware. It'd be nice to just look at policy in the abstract and deal with things compartmentaly, but there are times you have to step back and look at the bigger picture.
> if you're worried...
> you likely feel...
Thank you for the advice, but I don't worry about that, and I do not have that feeling at all. I don't experience any conflation with xenophobes in my real life. I find them repugnant, and vote against them and speak against them, except where we incidentally align. I am 90% liberal leaning (US liberal).
The fact of experiencing negative things that happen to be related to immigration (or employment/contracting) policy does not make you a xenophobe, generally speaking. Cultures can sometimes clash and economics have concrete effects on the American Dream - it's an unfortunate reality, but it is reality.
Then why were you complaining about people being sorted into groups and distinguishing yourself from the alt-right?
I find them repugnant, and vote against them and speak against them, except where we incidentally align.
O_O
> Cultures can sometimes clash
I wanna tug on that little nugget so badly. Please tell us more I'm sure it would dispel any notion of xenophobia...
I'm not saying that everyone critical of immigration is a selfish hypocrite, but "mainstream" alt-right (even/especially european flavors) appears that way to me.
I never had a big problem with immigration until it ate literally everything in sight!
Won’t this mean that companies will move jobs to India, China or even Canada?
I had a former employer with an Indian subsidiary for this very purpose. The problem is that there is no loyalty to the company and it becomes a revolving door of inexperienced people who couldn't get into H-1B. Always fun when they lie you about testing a feature that you haven't implemented yet. Incidentally, they also introduced ransomware into the entire corporate network (domestic IT was also barely competent).
Most companies, even fairly small ones, already have a substantial number of contract tech employees in India, Eastern Europe, or South America.
Why did they not do that before, if it was feasible?
They do that already, lots of US tech companies have SWEs outside of the US. With the new policy, it will add incentive to do it even more. Companies will have to either lower the hiring bar or hiring offshore.
It didn’t save them 100k/worker per year at the time. That is a lot of motivation.
Hiring non-H1B visa workers would also save them 100k/worker.
If you believe the reason the program was started, the US doesn’t have enough workers in those fields.
I don't believe it... I think companies just aren't hiring people (or maybe they aren't offering enough pay), not that qualified domestic candidates don't exist. But I could be wrong.
Having interviewed hundreds of software engineers, I’m not convinced that the talent is out there but just hiding. Nor do I believe talent is fungible.
Pulling in smart people from all over the world is good for America.
I’m sure there are US citizens who would have been better candidates if we had a better education system or grew talent. Maybe this will encourage that, but it’s going to take a long time.
But if they're hiding, you wouldn't have interviewed them in the first place, right? I don't see how this is comparable.
All the smart engineers that I know absolutely struggle to find jobs. There are regularly job threads here on HN or freelance subreddits and other places, that are chocked full of great people desperate for work.
But maybe that's really just a small fraction of the people, I can't know for sure.
you don't believe it why ? you look at American education system and you think it produces multitudes of talented engineers? is it so inconceivable that we need a lot of smart people and we don't produce enough of them locally ?
So let's have a thought experiment. We can agree, even if the US primary education system is crap, that the university system is world class. After all, people wouldn't come from other countries to study abroad in the US if it were not competitive.
So our CS graduates take the same courses, study the same material, and pass on the same grading scales as these international students from countries like China, India, etc that have come to attend American universities. Therefore it seems unlikely that they are categorically incompetent due to a flaw in their education, even if we make some allowance for them not studying as rigorously as their international peers for whatever reason.
However, if the news can be believed, we're now seeing a significant number of CS graduates who are unable to find employment. This is coming on the tail end of a bunch of highly publicized layoffs.
The notion that there "Aren't Americans to do these jobs" just doesn't track. I'm sure that there are lots of corporate executives who are saying that there aren't enough qualified Americans to do these jobs, but they're saying that because it's in their best economic interest to say that, not because it's actually true.
there are too many CS grads without experience who are not very good. We have world class universities, by no means that implies that every new CS graduate is world class. A median CS graduate most likely cannot pass a basic interview in CS
US is #2 on this list so I think it's safe to say they produce more engineers than most countries, other than Russia.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-...
What is this chart and why isn’t China on it?
H1B hires are already expensive. Most large tech companies spend quite a lot on legal services.
The assumption that a lot of people make, apparently including Trump, is that companies are hiring H1B for no good reason. Or maybe because they think it's cheaper? It's not. In virtually all cases, H1B hires are because there simply aren't any suitable American applicants with the necessary skills.
> In virtually all cases, H1B hires are because there simply aren't any suitable American applicants with the necessary skills.
I don’t believe that at all. I believe the opposite, in fact. How do we decide who is right?
I suppose we are about to find out.
Infosys, Tata, and Deloitte are hiring basic programmers. There’s no shortage of American applicants with those skills.
I’m sure people will make the argument about FAANG but there’s plenty of Americans for that too.
Go look at the experience people are having right now with this job market. There were mass layoffs and new grads every year on top of that.
Yeah, I don't understand how people can be arguing that there aren't enough Americans to do this work when we've just gotten off a round of mass layoffs all throughout the tech sector and there are stories about CS grads being unable to find work now.
It's transparently obvious that the draw of these employees isn't skill, it's cost. The bottom/middle rung in this field is being hollowed out when it comes to domestic hiring because companies don't care who fills the position so long as they can keep the salary low and the employee locked in, and H-1Bs are the perfect fit for that.
In my experience it is actually largely because H1B holders are locked in to their employers, so the balance of power is incredibly favorable for employers.
There are plenty of American citizens and permanent residents with the necessary skills, just not the willingness to put up with bullshit from B-tier employers.
Saved them more than 100k/year/worker
I could be wrong but OP might be implying that hiring foreign workers in their own country might have always been much cheaper.
Would you rather pay your devs a living wage for India, or for the US?
Because H-1B workers had the ability to demand higher compensation via sponsorship and relocation to the US. Employers could say "no we won't sponsor you" but these workers are in demand due to their technical skills and could counter with "then I'll join another company that will".
If you remove the option for sponsorship then these workers will still be working their jobs because they're talented and in demand, they'll just be doing it from their home country instead for lower compensation.
Clearly companies place a dollar amount on how much they value having people work in country, otherwise they wouldn’t bring people over.
I think this move makes it likely companies will hire more expensive domestic workers.
That's a misguided assumption that doesn’t hold up in practice because it assumes H-1B workers were "brought over" based on employer need for a domestic worker. The need isn't for a domestic worker, its for a skilled worker and the skilled workers want to work in the US because it yields higher compensation and opportunity.
Many H-1B workers request sponsorship from employers despite having the ability to work from local offices because they have in-demand skills that give the leverage to ask for it knowing that it will result in better opportunities.
Tech companies are extremely motivated to have people working in person in their Bay Area offices. That's why you see the extraordinary numbers that you do on levels.fyi along with the insistence on RTO. But no matter how high they get, these numbers will never meet highly capable Americans' lifestyle demands, because the Bay Area doesn't have and will never build the housing or commuting infrastructure to support them in that quantity. Wage gains go straight into real estate.
The question is, if tech companies can't have their Bay Area offices filled with the caliber of people they want (who will accept being forever-renters or super-commuters), will they relent on US remote / small sites, or will they instead try to shift their trillion-dollar Bay Area office cultures to their Bangalore sites? My money's on the latter.
Because doing business in India isn’t that great.
Silicon Valley's big H1B employers also have international engineering sites. US teams tend to pull in their favorites from the international sites, and the international sites can use the possibility of relocation as an incentive.
before there was no $100k/year cost to H1Bs, see post title.
They do already. British Columbia is a really good place to open up shop because it's on the same time zone as Silicon Valley. Many companies have done so. I'm surprised there haven't been more tbh, but maybe now with this change we'll see an acceleration.
Of course it depends on the nature of the business but push that too far and you can lock yourself out of projects that require work to be performed on US soil.
I work for a very small company and we've seen by that stipulation a couple of times on anything _remotely_ close to defense/MIC/security.
And the administration can tighten those screws further if it desires.
(I am the only H1B in the history of the company, now a citizen. It would have been impossible to have taken this path with this alleged financial burden)
Yes, see: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2024/09/16/the-micros...
Nope, it means the people that would have gone to US will to to Canada instead.
Canada has reduced immigration a lot recently though.
Canada is going through a bit of a moment in scaling back relatively unskilled immigration as it became clear a there were heaps of scam colleges bringing in folks to get useless "hotel management" degrees etc, but IMO there will be sustained interest in Canada in continuing to have eased immigration pathways for real engineering talent.
Brazil and Canada will absorb a lot of big tech headcount. Google et al are already moving lots of headcount to both countries. This will accelerate it, even if it’s struck down
this news is tied with the tax code corrections... All R&D work in a foreign country is to be depreciated over 15 years, it can immediately be depreciated for an American worker.
The cost of hiring in the US versus elsewhere is already greater than $100k for the type of tech firm that can just open an international office. I took the base salaries of Google SWEs on levels.fyi for NYC, London, Bengaluru, and Toronto, multiplied them by the standard 1.4 for overhead, and realized the US is already significantly more expensive than most developed countries, let alone the Global South. Companies clearly value employing in America despite the cost.
the PE who bought the company I work for already have a large Indian subsidiary and effectively require a 1:1 ratio
They've already had the option to do this all along...
I would much rather they move to India than to move India to us.
This is going to kill H1B and immigration from countries like India, China and others for skilled workers. Even though $100K isn't a lot considering the overall investment that goes into hiring a full time employee, employers wouldn't risk that kind of money apart from all the document processing they have to. Maybe big tech will hire a few hundred every year but others won't even bother.
> Maybe big tech will hire a few hundred every year ...
A few hundred? All of the tech companies I've worked for are > 50% Indians in the US. Especially in big tech. I could be wrong, but my understanding is there there is not enough software developers in the US, hence the temp workers. Is there expectation that the demand will drop?
Well for starters, maybe my new grad SWE buddy with 2 YOE will finally find a job after being laid off for nearly a year.
There isn’t a shortage, they’re just trying to drive down wages.
It is, however, a great opportunity for Canada and Western Europe to snatch all those people who now aren't able to come to the United States.
I know for a fact that multinational companies are expanding in exactly those areas (plus India) for exactly the reason that it's become very difficult to hire and move people to the US.
Those workers aren't paying taxes in the United States, and obviously the companies hiring people outside of the US aren't going to hire people for those positions in the United States.
You think immigration in Western Europe is easy? It depends where, for one thing. It's getting more onerous and there are pressures to make it more so. How good is your French? More importantly, how might a 60K Euro/yr salary feel when you're paying 2-2500 a month in rent to be near work ?
Canadian salaries are also notoriously low in tech.
US is the outlier. Canadian tech salaries are much higher than European, and when working remotely for a US company the compensation overlaps the US salary bands very substantially.
However the ceiling in the US is so much higher that it still makes sense for many to tolerate the chaos and uncertainty of moving here for work.
Exactly. It's an adventure of sorts, and if you're in tech you're in a small percentage of the world population that can gain some degree of wealth. A lot in some cases. It's a risk that's attracted people to the US for centuries. Many people, and I'll admit to being one of them, hope to get some savings, and then move to one of those low wage European countries with a better quality of life!
Yeah it's even worse than that. These big cos will be incentivized to move whole teams out of the US since it will be easier to hire from other countries for offices in Paris / Zurich / Warsaw / etc.
Isn't that already the case, though? Offshoring has been a thing for decades, but companies clearly prefer to have employees on site, in the US, if possible.
Yes, this new fee will make that more expensive to do, but I'm not convinced it will no longer be worth it for most companies.
Right. The current problem with H-1B is that we end up with a wide range of talent, ambition, and work ethic among the people brought in on that visa. In my experience, the total mix is not much different from the range you'd find in US-born workers. But we should be granting visas to the best and the brightest to come here.
I wouldn't mind a new policy that would raise the median "quality" of the H-1B visa holder, even if that meant the total number is lower. Sure, Canada and Western Europe can take the mediocre people we'd no longer be granting visas to, but so what.
But this $100k policy is not going to increase the median quality of candidates. I actually don't think it's going to have a huge affect on things; it's just a token effort to "do something" that Trump's base will eat up, and he'll declare it a success even if there's no improvement or it makes things worse.
100k/yr.
I don't see it as a negative. If they're exceptionally good, they can get an O-1 visa.
Everyone is discussing the merits and downsides of this, but I'm yet to see the obvious be pointed out: it's extortion.
It's interesting to read all the analysis in the comments, but I think people are giving far too much credit to the admin in terms of having considered the impacts, the effects, some kind of desired direction for things to move, etc.
It's really much simpler than that: the mob boss has to get a cut of the action. One clue is the "fee" being annual, not one-time. Another tell is that there are no details as to what the collected money will go towards.
It hasn't happened yet. All the big money in America says that it will either never happen or won't last longer than a few weeks.
I'm not saying that I don't agree with the apparent logic, but the same argument was made about tariffs, yet here they are and there they staid.
> the same argument was made about tariffs
By all accounts those arguments were pretty correct, no? The tariff rollout was delayed multiple times, changed multiple times. What we have now doesn't very much look like what Trump announced back in March/April.
And the tariffs may disappear soon, depending on SCOTUS. Not that I depend on SCOTUS doing the right thing anymore, but I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised on this one.
Huh? What we have now looks almost exactly like what Trump announced back in April, except for the (admittedly important) USMCA exemption. What other differences do you perceive?
The TACO president doesn't just back away from a bad idea without announcing he got something in return. He'll declare exemptions or delays for companies or industries that kowtow to him in some way - maybe he'll demand these companies make contributions to "non-woke" engineering universities or remove "DEI hires" from their boards, who knows.
Unrelated, but I don't get the "taco" thing. I'm Mexican— it's a head-scratcher that people use the name of our food as an insult to Trump. He doesn't look like a taco, and the acronym is a sentence, not an adjective/phrase, so it doesn't make much sense spelled out in most contexts.
RINO republicans don't look like rhinoceros. That the word makes no sense by itself means that you'd have to ask what they meant by it. If the acronym were "DUMB" or "CLOWN" or whatever then I don't think it'd stand out as much.
Also, you're right that it's often used in a way that wouldn't make sense grammatically if it were written out, but that's true for most acronyms I think; e.g. JPEG or GIF.
"Look at this funny Graphics Interchange Format I just sent you!"
> He doesn't look like a taco
Now that you say, I can see some similarities with Al Pastor.
You should hear the long form of the acronym!
TACOBELL
- Trump Always Chickens Out Before Eventually Losing Loudly
Surprised I'm getting downvoted by this.
taco is an acronym that stands for the phrase trump always chickens out, it was coined or popularized earlier this year when Trump backed off of The Liberation Day tariff stuff when the bond market got nervous.
It has a lot of memetic value as a callback to a widely discussed Cinco de Mayo tweet he made in 2016 (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/72829758741824716...).
Eh, Trump's administration is so cravenly corrupt and incompetent in every facet and manner that I think it will happen, purely because it's one of those "throw 'em a bone" tactics for the commoners. It's the same reason the aggressive ICE actions have redoubled.
And FWIW, I think the H1B program, like the TFW program in Canada, is outrageously corrupt and has zero legitimacy, and the laughable foundations that people use to justify it -- namely a completely unsubstantiated labour shortage -- is such a ridiculous lie that it deserves to be obliterated. It is a way for the ultra-rich to stomp on worker rights and compensation.
> I think the H1B program [...] has zero legitimacy
That's demonstrably false, even just by my own experience with people, so not sure I can take what you're saying seriously.
Yes, there's corruption and abuse, but I've also worked with some fantastic, excellent, smart, ambitious, hard-working people on H-1B visas. They would not have been in the US without it.
I've also worked with some mediocre fools who were on H-1B visas. That's the problem we should be focusing on, and there's no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I think there's a lot of visible frustration (and sometimes racism) in tech discussions online, due to the bad economic climate. This is visible across different platforms. In the past year, I've seen massive rise in people making outlandish claims like this. I expect the trend will grow and soon they'll find a new scapegoat.
Anyone who has been paying attention to anything could tell you the same thing.
As a side effect, this could reduce the pipeline of foreign students coming in on F1 with plans to transition to a work visa over time.
F1 -> OPT -> H1 bridge is way more expensive now.
Universities are bound to lose a ton of money due to this. Those outside of the top 50 will likely get hammered.
I'm a little bit confused by the text of the proclamation. It says people outside the country have to pay a $100k fee. Isn't an F1 student on OPT inside the country and not subject to the fee? Or are they required to leave the country to apply and are subject to it.
The proclamation gives me the impression that foreign students are exempt from the fee.
They are not directly affected when applying for h1b but think about it what this means to both employers and students. It's a signal that immigration policy can change on a whim. For employers, hiring foreigners has always been cumbersome and now it's even worse due to the uncertainty. For students who starts working on h1b, you are in "immigration jail" in the US for years
Anyone on H1B who is working in US or is arriving into US for work will have to pay. F1 on OPT is F1 Visa and not on H1B. If they choose to get a H1B at the same time, if they use it to work then they have to pay.
I guess you didnt read the proclamation... 100k payment is only enforced at entry. F1 students when they are ready to apply for h1b are already inside the US
This is a bit like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Yes, it brings in more income for the government at the expense of universities.
It’s a great way to remove h1b fraud and abuse but you do burn down a bit of your garage in the process of getting rid of the rat.
Just like tariffs and the tax cuts
Is it really at expense of universities? From what I understand, most are getting Master Degrees but very few are doing research. I've seen plenty of H-1B coworkers with Master Degrees but very few did research, it was just extra computer science courses.
Majority of CS/EE/MBA type grad programs across all universities are heavily enrolled by foreign students. Most of them end up paying out of state fee.
This is a significant chunk of revenue for many colleges to keep their budget in shape.
Even in conservative states, lots of colleges are reliant on this stream of income. A loss of this stream is going to put a strain on them to balance their budget, or seek more help from govt.
"At the expense of universities" may not be the plan for this one, but to the current administration, it's certainly a bonus.
Yes, 100%. Also, many universities will find it impossible to recruit new faculty as most Ph.D. students are international students who end up working in American universities.
American Universities are exempt from H1B fees. Anyone receiving an H1B to work at a US University is exempt from the fee and exempt from the lottery.
IMO I think we need to fast-track H1Bs -> Green Card -> Citizens. Make skilled immigration easier, not harder.
Otherwise, if its too onerous, we're just training another countries workforce.
This is already the case with Indians and possibly Chinese. The waiting time for h1b to green card for Indians is several decades right now and maybe 5-10 years for Chinese. Things might get better if the climate discourages future immigration from these countries but there's already a big backlog in place.
H1B isn't skilled immigration. Or at least it wasn't before this change. Thanks Trump!
> India was the largest beneficiary of H-1B visas last year, accounting for 71% of approved beneficiaries
Having worked with the recent generation of Indians, I can safely say this can be a good thing. Baseline morality and work ethics for many (not all, but many) in the recent generation of Indians are so low. It’s a generational shift that I can tell. Get rich quick, wannabe try too hard to fit in and have fun with wild Wild West mindset that just has a completely different tone from earlier generations of hard working Indians who helped build some of the major products we use today.
That’s applies to the USA and rest of world not just India or China.
That is an intellectually dishonest argument. You are invoking whataboutism knowing full well it doesn’t serve anyone well.
These kids that come from often wealthy or upper middle class families with faith and cultural grounding would be far better off in their life trajectory (and country as a whole with brain drain) if they stayed back, led innovation in their own country, and pushed their corrupt bureaucratic government ecosystem to change. Instead of opting for a mediocre hedonistic lifestyle in the west where they know they have no lasting stability (mind you it is 100+ years wait time for many in the current immigration process to get green card), often get stuck working in the same company and not able to move, can’t start things on their own again because of visa rules.
No one wins in this in the long run. Except maybe some corporations.
Yeah, "those others are less ethical than us Americans" doesn't pass muster in 2025. Reminds me of the anti-immigration arguments from the days bygone, that the immigrants coming from the corrupt authoritarian countries will vote against democracy in the US. While it might be even true(!) voting against democracy certainly came from the natives first, fast and furious.
Relations between the US and India have been strained recently because India refuses to implement sanctions on Russia for the war in Ukraine. I wonder if there is a geopolitical motive behind the timing of this decision.
It's downright scary working with indians in a highly regulated industry. "Can we pretty please (with a cherry on top) [do something that bends or breaks federal regulations on national security or public safety]?" No, we fucking can't. Couple that with the occasional browbeating or hierarchical scolding.
The executive order says that companies will be exempted based on discretion of executive branch. So it won't apply to any company that kisses the ring.
Instead of a flat fee, they should just auction off the visas, highest salaries win.
This has been proposed before and I don't really see any downsides. If your company really needs them, just pay them what they're actually worth.
I believe there is upcoming legislation along those lines and that the adjustments announced today are those within the executive branches purview.
This insures that tech and finance get all the visas. A lot of things like rural medicine gets staffing through h1b sponsored physicians and likewise for post-docs and researchers. If this gets implemented across the board, a lot of science is going to disappear and a lot of medical care (especially outside of cities) is going to get a lot worse.
Don't worry all those rural hospitals are about to shut down anyway.
I like the idea of an auction, but why would we not charge a significant application fee? It ensures the company is serious about the position, and it raises money citizens won't have to pay. A high fee/tax seems like a win-win
Wow, I really like this.
This may boost remote jobs.
I have worked for many US based startups, all remotely. Timezone difference (I am in India) is a big issue unless the company is very well structured to work asynchronously.
Companies hiring top talent may still hire with a $100K additional charge but even at $250K - 400K salaries, this is a lot of additional cost.
Perfect number to make H1Bs a tool that is out of reach for startups but still meaningful for large entrenched corporations. Nailed it. Maybe they can even waive the fee if you give the US government 10% of your company.
University hiring is basically rekt. Throwing out baby with the bath water per usual with this admin...
How much does university hiring depend on H-1B? I would expect much of that comes through O-1 or EB-1/2/3, no?
H-1B is the default visa for international faculty hires. You can get it in a few months with relatively little effort. O-1 is more expensive, takes longer to get, and requires more effort from the applicant. Then there is the subjective approval process that involves a degree of risk, and in the end, you get a slightly inferior visa.
Green cards are almost useless for hiring, as the processing times are too long. "We would like to offer you this position, but conditionally. We still need a year or two to handle the bureaucracy, and we can't say for sure if we are actually allowed to hire you. Please don't accept another position meanwhile."
No, pretty much all professors who used to be international students or postdocs are on H1B.
So... Now those spots will have to go to American students and grads?
Some will.
Most won't be filled at all.
+1 This will also reduce demand for these programs from international students - make tuition more expensive for locals. Asking to consider 2nd/3rd order effect seems like a bit too much for a median hn poster though
my understanding is post docs are virtually all on J1 visas, which is a meaningful part of uni hiring
> used to be
lots of immigrant kids are in uni now. all my cousins are doing cs now. look at latest batch of yc founders.
An equity minimum would deal with this.
Good, but this still doesn't fix the flood of OPT workers (baby h1b's) that are crowding out Americans from getting jobs. I know, my company put out reqs for full stack devs, got hundreds of OPT candidates and are hiring them instead of domestic workers. You can't even discriminate against them as that'd be illegal. Good job America. They all have advanced US degrees, paying little for undergrad in India, while Americans are bankrupt from their undergrad. Unable to compete. The fact that they'll accept lower wages so they can upgrade to h1b's later is icing on the cake.
This will only drive jobs offshore and reduce the H1B population. It doesn’t solve any problems.
This is literally the dumbest administration this country has ever seen. Between tariffs and immigration and now this, it’s like they don’t even know what the consequences of their actions are.
>This will only drive jobs offshore
This was true before and after today.
Put another way, if all the H-1B jobs really can be offshored quickly and easily the way so many Indians and anti-Trump people here and elsewhere confidently predict, *that would have happened already*.
Are trumpers/those who like trumps policies really this stupid, even those on tech forums? You seem to have immense difficulty understanding that previously it didn't have this artificial cost of 100k. Previously they had a smoother path with h1bs, now that it has been made artificially difficult onshoring is much more attractive.
The H1B path has always been harder than hiring remotely/offshoring
And now making it even harder will encourage more of the latter. Which of course you can try tariffing.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/excisetax.asp
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tariff.asp
There’s a fundamental difference in talent. H1b talent is often upper class scions from India or China. Offshore talent has always been leveraged for support or staff aug.
It’s entirely possible some H1b’s would happily pay the $100k if they had a guaranteed visa for 5-10+ years, but the vast majority will simply go home and work remotely.
But I believe the effect of this extortion will be a brain drain on U.S. fortune 1000 companies and that will push those same companies to build off shore offices, completely avoiding the administration’s goofiness.
There's a ton of abuse, feigned work and loopholes, and rules that undermine the law and also make foreign workers a 2nd class.
Amongst other elements that should be fixed:
* Taxation without representation (i'm suggesting adding the latter, not removing the former)
* The H1B worker must be paid at or above the higher of the median rate at the company for the role or at the employee's request by an independent valuation for the role, this ensures workers are not being paid less
* The fee should be prorated, monthly, over the 6 year span of the H1B, allowing the company to spread it over time and manage cashflow
* The H1B worker should only be contractually required to stay for the average tenure of the role in the industry (which afaik is 18mo right now)
* The H1B worker should be able to easily port their H1B over to another employer. The new employer must pay the fee, prorated, on the H1B, the prior employer will be reimbursed prorated unused fees
They will never allow you to port your h1b to another employer. The companies love h1b because it nails your feet to the floor.
That's the L1 though. With an H1B you can get another employer, but the problem is that it has to be done in a narrow period of time, and the other employer has to be willing to sponsor the H1B.
> Taxation without representation (i'm suggesting adding the latter, not removing the former)
Happens to permanent residents too, not only employment visas.
I think this is great news for countries like Canada and UK.
It is incredible to me that there are hundreds of US-centric comments and yours is the only one I saw who recognized the benefit for basically every other country people want to live and work in.
> Canada
It's not doing really well though, COL is sky high, and wages are low.
And I've talked to a few Canadians, despite the Liberal party winning, there is real push for Canada to severely restrict immigration and that is currently happening.
As far as I can tell, the push against immigration in Canada is mainly around unskilled workers (which a lot of TFW are) and asylum seekers, but we will see how this pans out.
The push back against immigration is against the way it was exploited by scammers to exploit people and make money from them.
The sort of high educated immigrants of the sort that would work in software engineering will not face remarkable headwinds.
They're just turning the knob down a little bit because it was pretty high last few years and caused some supply side issues in housing and healthcare.
I'm sure Canada will gladly accept highly skilled engineers.
Not for tech workers from these countries though.
If more jobs are created in these countries, it doesn't mean the local tech workers will be replaced.
it doesn't mean the local tech workers will be replaced.
You're right because that totally didn't happen to varying degrees in various industries in the US...
Without foreign workers, there may not even be big US tech companies as we know them. I really wish we could have these talents in Europe to boost our economy. This would create more jobs and more wealth ultimately.
We have the talent in Europe, they are just paid peanuts. If moving to the US was not an option, the balance on the labour market would be even worse (for the said talent).
UK is insanely hard to immigrate to. Canada is getting more and more difficult by the day.
This insanity seems collective.
UK is not hard to immigrate to. You just need to pay a heft sum for the visa and NHS surcharge.
> Canada is getting more difficult
How so?
They already pay 50%-70% less there than in America. Not much juice left to squeeze.
Hardly, the Indian government weaponises their diaspora in the same way China does.
Seriously as someone with no interest in moving to the USA this is fantastic news.
Open up studios in British Columbia and hire the relatively cheaper labour. It's on the same time zone as Silicon Valley. It's a no brainer.
Oh no, Canada, don't take my low-paid, equally-skilled and desperate-to-stay-at-one-company competition from me! /s
haha so true
Seems to me the salient part of this is not being discussed:
“The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.”
More command economy, more opportunity for graft.
I think one important distinction that I haven’t seen mentioned here much is that there is a big difference between handing out h1bs to cognizant employees vs students who did masters programs in the US and are working as direct hires in faang companies. In the latter case, these workers have already invested tens if not hundreds of thousands into the US as well as many years before even making a dime. This cohort is much more incentivized to stay in the US and contribute over the long term. They are also not ‘abusing’ the h1b program at all, because they are getting paid the exact wages as their US counterparts, unlike those at BigTechConsulting.
Smarter policy would be to looking into targeting the actual exploitation, where it actually exists (if it’s deemed that the externalities are truly negative), like the outsourcing to cognizant. Of course, we are living under the rule of probably the most inept president in any of our lifetimes; so he doesn’t act methodically, only reflexively to once again reduce US competitiveness over the long term.
And not to belabor this point, but he’s doing such one-dimensional math here by thinking of the immigration scenario as zero sum. Trump has clearly lost the plot. What he is failing to consider is that the US is in a long term ideological war with our biggest enemy China, and our best hand in this game is stealing their best and brightest to live in the west and have them to learn and love western values; which they will use to influence their friends, families, and social media circles back at home.
I’ve seen this happen with just about every friend of mine who has immigrated from China to the US and the effect that it has on their immediate network carries significant weight at shifting their perspective. Xi is not popular at home, and the west should be doing what it can to increase domestic Chinese instability in the same way they’re doing to us (very successfully). Rather, he is hell bent on unifying them to hate America.
There’s an ideological war happening and our president is not only too stupid to play ball but he’s also interested in giving up the hand of cards we already have. He is a true and utter moron and it’s hard to understate my level of disgust.
The actual proclamation [1] is very narrow: a $100k surcharge on new H-1B petitions for workers outside the US. It’s a one-time hit tied to the petition. It does not say “annual.” It does not drag in renewals or transfers for people already in status.
Boundless is technically right that a $100k fee exists, but the piece glosses over the narrow scope and leans into speculation. It frames the fee like an ongoing tax on every H-1B, which just isn’t what the proclamation says. The difference matters: a one-time petition fee is brutal enough, but calling it annual misstates the policy and inflates the impact.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
AP is reporting the amount as an annual fee
https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-trump-immigration-8d3969...
Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/trump-mulls-a...
You may want to read the section on enforcement:
> Section 1. Restriction on Entry. (a) Pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000 — subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (c) of this section. This restriction shall expire, absent extension, 12 months after the effective date of this proclamation, which shall be 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2025.
I don't see your point, the section describes a restriction on "entry into the United States". Most H1b visa holders are already in the US so this doesn't apply to them.
Except lots of people travel outside of the US for tourism, business, to see family, due to family emergencies, or - critically for H1Bs - to renew their visa.
Any idea what is considered a petition? New h1b? Transfer? Extension?
It's not just for new petitions, it's a requirement for _entry_ into the US. So, someone on an _existing_ H1, just traveling out of the country means you need to pay $100K to re-enter the US.
With how inconsistent and on and off this administration has been I expect this will probably never happen, or there will be exemptions to this for every company that this was most abused for and just sucks up to the president.
Until anything actually happens there's no reason to take this president at his word.
>Until anything actually happens there's no reason to take this president at his word.
Why? Trump was known for "telling it as it is" so shouldn't the assumption be that it will happen?
> Trump was known for "telling it as it is"
AFAICT, the people that promoted him that way often had mutually incompatible interpretations of what he was saying that happened to fit their own biases coming in, which they felt like Trump was agreeing with.
And as the rubber of vague, contradictory, and incoherent statements hit the road of substantive action, that impression became a lot less common.
There's been tons of silly statements from Trump that never got implemented.
This might be one of the smarter things this administration has done/is doing. It will cut down on fraud, and ensure the position they're hiring for isn't just some mid-level engineer. H1B applications should be a source of tax revenue, beyond standard taxes.
I sort of wish it had been done 15 years ago but better late then never.
I personally think it will be abused to bring in highly undesirable people , because it will turn into a $100k ticket for criminals.
Of course, that's pretty much how the current administration thinks, see also the "Gold card visa" (1).
Specifically, the thinking "Money coming to us is desirable, therefor people who give us lots of money are by definition not undesirable people".
Well, at least dollars are more easily quantified than ethics.
1)
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/19/trump-gold-card-vis...
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/the-...
I keep hearing how reduction of the H-1(b) cap will keep singular talent from coming to the US. If you're genuinely hiring the best in the world for a critical role in a billion dollar project, $100k is a rounding error.
Judging from the reaction, it's almost like what the program really gets used for is to replace domestic workers with desperate, barely-qualified foreigners.
Ohhh no, how will we afford our sub-standard DBA cough I mean world class 1% talent?
Is the white house planning to do this for all the temporary visas in hospitality too?
I know a few companies that were relying on those heavily and it sure would help if those jobs went to Americans.
https://www.npr.org/2017/07/20/538387033/trumps-private-club...
A 100k fee is well within the territory of killing job prospects for skilled foreign students graduating from US universities.
What percentage of the AI labs are staffed by either foreign workers or second/third generation immigrants? Look at the composition of high achieving high school students- almost certainly of Asian or Indian descent, certainly many belonging to families of recent immigrants. The pipeline this EO disrupts is immense.
$25K annual fee per H1B worker as opposed to $100K one-time would have made more sense. It would have made even more sense to have employers compete (within their own sector, such as tech, aerospace, etc.) such that whoever offers the highest salary will get the H1B worker.
This isn't about what makes sense. This is about finding a punchy number that sounds big and makes Trump's base happy. "$100k fee (that covers 3/6 years)" sounds more impressive than "$33k per year" or "$17k per year", so that's what they went with.
Ultimately this isn't going to do anything to reform the H-1B program; this is just trump "doing something", which he'll claim as a success (and his base will eat up), even if it does nothing or makes things worse.
It's 100k per person per year. And I am ecstatic.
>$25K annual fee per H1B worker as opposed to $100K one-time
It's $100K per employee per year.
I think it's actually per visa. I know the linked article says per year, but other sources I'm glancing at seem to indicate it's an application/renewal fee. Actually, it's not even clear that you have to pay again to renew after 3 years; it might just be the initial fee.
Based on the language in the executive order:
"the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000"
It sounds like it applies every time you leave and enter, provided you are a nonimmigrant alien on H1B (which they all are).
No, it is every time you petition. So every time you apply for the visa.
Why within a sector? make everyone compete, and we'll find if any local workers want the high paying jobs. The H1B count can be increased to cover jobs that locals don't want even at high salaries.
Because there are some H1B workers that come over as translators or other non-tech professions. Like if you need a translator that speaks Swahili for some NGO it's way easier to hire a native Swahili speaker than possibly finding a qualified American that also speaks Swahili.
I do find it interesting that these trillion dollar companies can't find domestic workers, at their level of wealth they should simply be forced to pay for the education of Americans to create a funnel of workers rather than exporting this societal need to other nations.
There are a bunch of H1Bs working as teachers in my medium sized midwestern city, making around $50k. Then there are a bunch in the healthcare sectors making from $50k to $500k. I actually feel like they are legitimate reasons they are there, very difficult to get good healthcare workers in the midwest since no one good wants to go there.
Mayo and Cleveland Clinic are literally in the Midwest what are you talking about?
You think a few dozen buildings is enough to account for multiple states? Did teleportation become a thing and I missed out?
There are lots of places that are hours to days drive away from those two. Midwest is a big place, so what are you talking about? I guess you could say the talent is concentrated in a few places, but lots of places in the midwest with terrible hospitals.
This is no different than anywhere else in the US. It’s says nothing about the Midwest.
There is a big problem with ethnic nepotism and ghost jobs. I have been struggling to get younger people in my network hired anywhere despite solid resumes. Continuing to issue H1Bs in the current job market was bananas.
Why would locals not want high paying jobs? The question is whether qualified people can be found locally or not.
It's a severely under-reported aspect of this issue that a troubling amount of times, the issue isn't that Americans want too much money or just don't want to work, the issue is there are no Americans qualified to do the work you need to do who are looking for a job.
The Hyundai factory exposed this. The VISA'd employees (or non-VISA'd? I don't remember the details offhand) were only there in the first place overseeing the project because they literally could not find anyone qualified to do the fucking job in Georgia.
If there literally are no Americans (instead of just, no Americans at the price point you are willing to pay), then $100k is a small price to pay to enable your business.
Last I checked, Software Developers did not have a 0% unemployment statistic, so clearly there are American software developers that could be employed in those jobs, but FAANG still hires an H1B. Gee, I wonder why.
Maybe it's because H1Bs are cheaper than an American. Maybe it's because H1Bs cannot say no without risking being deported.
This claim that "No no no, every H1B was fine and totally could not even possibly be replaced by American labor" flies in the face of the actual reality of the tech industry. Microsoft can't find an American to write code? Bullshit, they just fired tons of them.
The fact that it is less abused in other industries should not be used to paper over the games the tech industry play. FAANG have been found multiple times to be collaborating to suppress tech industry wages. This is just another way they do that.
>could not find anyone qualified to do the fucking job in Georgia.
There was not a single American anywhere in the entire united states that could do things to build a car factory? Really? They couldn't fly someone out from Texas, or Michigan? Am I supposed to believe we don't have any human beings in the entire united states that know how to build part of a factory?
it's effective nearly immediately too, and applies to all entries, not just applications
> the effective date of this proclamation, which shall be 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2025
anyone on a visa who happens to currently out of the country has ~24 hours to get back without a $100,000 bill
if you're in the states, you won't be removed, but you cannot leave and re-enter without paying up
Wow. Tech companies must b pissed. After donating millions (even 24k gold apple totems!) the orange man turns around and punches them in the pocket book! At least he didnt put a tax on options vesting
Just learned that there are about 15k doctors on h1b and if a good chunk of them leave it’s going to be disastrous for the fly over states. Hospitals are already shutting down and much will only increase once the Medicaid cuts take effect. And on top of that the visa issue will absolutely dent healthcare
I would think the hospital industry would get an exemption from this as it is critical to the US.
This will end what is essentially legal human trafficking by medium and large corporations.
Which is clearly a good thing, but I fear it signals deteriorating relationships with other countries.
Do other countries really want the US taking their top talent? I am not sure this is bad for foreign relations.
Legal human trafficking was good for capitalism (not for the trafficked or for US workers). Good for the capitalists' economy.
This just made it a little bit harder for american capitalists. No doubt there are nationalist concerns but also national security concerns behind this decision.
H1B's are a invaluable part of our communities and America's immense capital and soft power. However there is also a ~7% unemployment rate of new CS/CE grads. (Not including underemployment). This is after tech firms begging schools to reallocate vast amounts of public money into teeing up young tech employees. With the vast availability of a global workforce, there is little incentive to train junior workers.
Of course much of this could be solved by narrowing the gap between the lowest earnings and highest earnings workers so that the tech career path wasn't so high of stakes. Anybody working should have the opportunity to launch into a dignified adult life. There must be a conversation ultimately about where the vast profits of tech firms should sit within our economy.
Throw away the H1B, introduce streamlined high skill immigration to the US. Top 1% of talent from all over the world should be able to move in under 2 weeks.
The first country that cracks this will have streets paved with gold.
Quite a think to crack. My company takes 2 months to decide on whether to hire the top 1% of a very specific profession.
> Top 1% of talent
How do you determine that?
You pay an H1-B hiring consultant $500K to forge resumes for everyone you're hiring.
Looks like a great opportunity for other nations to hoover these brains up on the cheap
The keyword to search for is prevailing wage. https://flag.dol.gov/programs/prevailingwages is apparently under maintenance Also it's mot just a number, it depends on the jobs location, type and level.
If visa rules prove too onerous, companies pivot north to Vancouver, BC. [1]
Canada is rejoicing for the new boost to its economy.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2024/09/16/the-micros...
Defund universities, kick out high skilled foreigners... This guy's doing everything in his power to turn the US into a bigoted impoverished backwater wasteland
This debate is always discussed from an immigration angle, but if companies truly have an issue with "finding skilled workers", another organic solution should be to try to "skill the workers", i.e. making education more affordable. Maybe that's something these 100k fees could be put towards?
As a european I welcome this change and hope european countries are able to respond by lowering the barriers for talented people to come here.
Come to europe! The taxes are higher, and you have to pick your country wisely depending on what your goals are, but the politics are nicer and you often get healthcare
The issue is race, not immigration, as it was with the Jews pre-WW2. Europe would probably be even worse than the US in the long run, given that nativism would run even stronger.
The issues are philosophical ultimately, and the theorists of Liberalism simply haven't stepped up to the challenge.
I have a hard time parsing what you're trying to say
Hard to say what net effect would be in my industry most positions are shifted to offices in countries other than US as is.
I ran into a guy making double six figures for like the last 7 years at a known public tech company. He was literally doing the most basic DevOps (Terraform). Nothing fancy. Zero ability to program. No willingness or desire to learn programming. He was an H1B. That blew me away. How is it possible that you have a guy in the US for 10 years who never bothered learning to code doing a 200K / year job. The abuse of H1B is crazy. He told me he had "tried to find a job" but "they all require programming." I am not even a tech background and I have learned to program. Completely insane imo. This was stuff you could teach a highschool student, no degree required.
as a long-time programmer, sysadmin/sre/devops is a whole different mindset and skillset. i would be neither willing nor able to do that guy's job; i don't fault him for not wanting to do mine. clearly since he keeps being paid his $200k/year he is delivering a lot more than $200k worth of stability and uptime to the company, no coding required.
How exactly is the system being abused by this guy being paid $200k?
I think the premise the OP is pointing at is that this could be a position for a US citizen.
That doesn't explain why it's abuse, though. How does the company benefit by paying this foreigner $200k + benefits + immigration fees/legal bills compared to hiring a US citizen? Abuse is e.g. bringing in cheap foreign labor at below US market rate. This is not that.
He's kinda smart though. Automating yourself out of a job is a mug's game, and not everyone wants to or should go into management.
fwiw, which is nothing. If I saw one of my employees write lazy slacker nonsense like this, I'd fire them. I read some of your other posts in this thread, perhaps the issues with the world are closer to you than you realize?
That seems needlessly antagonistic on your part. I'm not advocating for his way of doing things, but the person described has clearly decided it's more in his economic interest to maintain a comfortable fiefdom than to engineer himself out of it. Having automated myself out of a few jobs in the past without much of a reward, I can't say his actions are irrational.
This should increase political donations, cryptocurrency bribe purchases, and social compliance among tech companies dependent on H1B, whether it becomes policy or not. For that reason, you can expect no resolution before the mid-term elections, and a corresponding race to secure H1B’s before any policy change.
It’s too bad policy won’t actually track economic needs or fairness; it’s mainly to drive the expansion of the political franchise.
Check out this Q&A session hosted by Manifest’s principal immigration attorney happening on Monday! Incredible resource to help prepare https://luma.com/xc2wbio7?from=embed
So, essentially, startups will never be able to hire fresh graduate students again (masters/phd). This means that the best and brightest individuals who have made it to the top US institutions after winning numerous rounds of global talent filtering will be deported.
I like how the assumption here is that there are no domestic graduate students anymore.
In 1996 I was at a top US university getting a master's and was the only white dude in most of the classes. There was a probability class that could have been taught in Mandarin if it hadn't been for me.
Not none, but very few in the stem fields (less than 40% from my estimates).
Why would you pursue a PhD with a 25k/year stipend when you can just start a near 6-figure job and start paying off your student debt?
Only the ones with financial freedom or commitment to research take the PhD pill. Or when you go through a recession and you want to delay the entry to the job searching market.
This is exactly the problem with the system. If there are tons of foreigners willing to get grad degrees and work for a small salary increase over a bachelor’s, US students are not sufficiently incentivized to do graduate studies.
My compsci classes were 80% foreigners. Why? I'd guess because they pay full tuition and the schools love the money.
I'd be curious to know the stats. My personal experience: I interviewed tons of candidates in the past few years for a big tech company, a small fraction are US citizens (at least from what I can tell from their resume).
If they're the best and the brightest individuals in the world, then surely they are worth absolutely enormous sums of money.
Sorry, is this legal? Like is the fee something that can be changed with an EO, or is it set by congress?
The original Bloomberg article doesn't state: https://archive.is/tpuut
Some research (okay, okay, I used Claude) indicates that "In summary, while Congress provides the statutory authority and mandates certain specific fees, the specific amounts for most H1B fees are set through the regulatory process by DHS/USCIS based on cost recovery principles and activity-based costing analysis."
Further, "The core authority comes from the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) section 286(m), 8 U.S.C. 1356(m), which authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security to set fees for adjudication services "at a level that will ensure recovery of the full costs of providing all such services".
From the legislation ( https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2024-title8/pdf/U... ):
That fees for providing adjudication and naturalization services may be set at a level that will ensure recovery of the full costs of providing all such services, includ- ing the costs of similar services provided with- out charge to asylum applicants or other immi- grants. Such fees may also be set at a level that will recover any additional costs associated with the administration of the fees collected.
Ya gotta admit, $100,000 per person will definitely ensure recovery of the full costs of providing all such services.
I imagine there's a very good argument that the fee is intentionally excessive, and I also imagine that the Supreme Court will decide after a lengthy court battle that the President is due extensive deference in this.
Congress has largely written itself out of immigration policy. It's paid for by fees set by the executive, which means Congress does not have the power of the purse.
yes it's legal. New admin is doing more background, investigations and immigration enforcement, which costs more. Taxes and fees are the price you pay for civilization!
Recovery costs is set by the USCIS, which is under the executive branch and subject to "rule" changes.
They have already torn up the constitution, this would be small potatoes.
The white collar version of ICE enforcement.
This is going to exacerbate the already kicked off reverse brain drain. University applications have fallen off the cliff this year and now with this there is no incentive for folks to come to the US. All this talent going back will cause enormous opportunity for wealth creation in India and other countries.
To be fair, these generally are used to skirt hiring Americans at market price. I've personally written a few explanations on how "no American could ever fill this role" for a very standard product engineering role.
I think most people could agree that H1Bs allocated to Wipro, Infosys, and TATA are wasted. This reform doesn't seem like the right way to address that and retain positive aspects of the program, like the foreign student pipeline.
$100k filing fee cannot be legally viable. But I support the direction in general. There is virtually no gate control, causing the visa category to be flooded by fraudulent applications (including unqualified hires, duplicate lottery shots). H1B visas are initially designed for economic efficiency, so using monetary means to control it is justifiable.
There’s no gatekeeping on any tech job, and it’s on purpose so big corps can abuse the system and lower the wages, while they make billions. It should be regulated to prevent abuse, that’s hurting everyone except corps.
It depends how this is implemented but I think that only “rich” people including criminals will use this as a way to bring undesirable people in. Again it spends on implementation but when you’re “paying” for someone to enter , is there extra leeway on the approval ? How strict will the entry requirements be ?
This is likely a bargaining chip that is meant to bring India back to the negotiating table for one topic or another.
“I believe the shortage of U.S. talent, and the U.S.’s unwillingness to let companies bring in more global talent, has been a huge factor in why U.S. technology companies are increasing their Canadian footprint.”
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-ama...
I've always felt that h1b grants should use second price auctions paid for by the company in question, instead of through lottery. This has all of the benefits of high skill immigration with virtually none of the downsides of hurting the middle class or depressing wages
The way I see it is that US companies cannot simultaneously compete with foreign workers who are as good or better than US workers but are willing to work harder for less money, and also retain a high QoL for US workers. If US companies want to compete on actual merit and cost, they have to let US QoL take a hit. If they want to retain US QoL, they can't compete.
Something's gotta give, and the endless dancing with partial offshoring and H1Bs is band-aiding over two options: a bloodbath for American workers where competing for their jobs is actually opened up to the globe, or a massive, nationalist set of labor protections to stop other countries from bidding on work asked for by the US markets. Making H1Bs more costly is a little stronger than a Band-Aids, but not by much.
I think this is an upfront cost, not an annual cost.
From CNN:
"Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters on a call Friday evening that the administration came to the fee of $100,000 per year, plus vetting costs, after talking with companies.
He noted that the payment structure is still under discussion with the Department of Homeland Security, in terms of “whether we’re going to charge the $300,000 up front or $100,000 a year for the three years.”
It’ll be struck down in court within a year. The question is: who’ll be brave and bring the case?
I will be demanding that my company do so, and I think quite a lot of the people reading this should do the same.
But one alternative is for your company or industry to arrange an exception.
CEOs who go that route should face criminal bribery charges in 2029, so I hope my company chooses more wisely.
It is an annual cost. This will dramatically shake up the US tech industry. I expect to see engineering budgets increase, and less Americans struggling to get interviews and ultimately jobs at companies HQ'ed here.
The originally stated purpose of the H1-B program was to import top-tier elite talent but anyone who watched it evolve saw that it became terribly exploitative. I've watched as companies that I've worked for have given 1/4 market rate or worse to H1-B hires. They got addicted to cheap talent. It stopped being about talent on the hiring side and more about increasing head-count at a major discount.
Bring in top talent, but pay them what they're worth if you do. A top-talent elite hire should easily be worth double what a native-born top-talent elite hire would be worth if this program can just do what it was designed to do.
I hope this is the outcome. Can anyone convince me that these companies won’t just hire more Indians in India (or outsource to Indian companies)?
Because they would have done it already. Why go through the hassle of bringing over an h1b if you could just hire them overseas now? The use case for h1b is different from outsourcing. If the requirements need to have someone in their US branch then you use h1b.
My hope is that this unleashes American tech workers and the US market again. There is almost no reason to apply for H1B anymore except for the original purpose of hiring workers with very unique skill sets that cannot be found in the US. This could be the most monumental thing this Admin does for tech workers as long as there is not some monkey paw aspect to this
>as there is not some monkey paw aspect to this
Has there been anything that hasn't had a monkey paw aspect? These guys have ZERO credibility left and its only eight months in.
There's obviously a monkey's paw aspect! Big US tech companies are going to immediately freeze their hiring budgets until they get clarity on whether this fee is permitted and how they should pay it for existing employees. Hope you're not an American tech worker looking for a job right now!
Good point, TACO all the way. Believe in TACO, TACO is life.
annual cost and they raised the minimum pay to 150k so now its a minimum of 250k to hire an h1B. Or they can hire a new american grad, pay them 80k and train them
T-minus 48 hours until some judge somewhere deems this outside presidential powers. Because nothing apparently is within presidential powers.
The US has 340m people. There is absolutely no way they need people from other countries to fill their entry-level roles.
How are startups supposed to afford this? How are talented H-1B workers supposed to start companies? And no, the answer is not always an O-1. I know plenty of foreign founders contributing meaningfully to the US economy, now slapped with a 100k fee.
Hire Americans.
Ever live somewhere that isn't a city, but has access to talent from a local university? No one is sticking around to be hired for $70k a year when they can make $120k a year in a city. Yet, there are plenty of hires due to a local migrant population, which commonly has generational support. This disrupts that. It hurts more than migrants. It hurts communities.
they're not, it's a moat
Great, let's punish early stage startups instead of rewarding the successful ones.
Great news as Indian living outside US. More FAANG hiring in EU and India. More pay. Thanks Trump. Even plus don't have to relocate to US and can avoid this lunies.
The pendulum swung really hard back to in-person office work a couple years ago. I wonder if this will swing it back and make more positions remote-friendly.
Remote if you live outside US. You get a COL indexed salary.
I initially loved remote work and was doing 2/5ths of my week remove before 2020. Once I became fully remote for years, the horror sunk in--it's career suicide.
Here's hoping
This only incentivizes opening a GCC in Eastern Europe or India. I can't justify hiring a remote worker in the US and paying them $150k-200k when I can hire 2-3 people in Warsaw, Prague, Tel Aviv, or Hyderabad for $60k-90k.
Seems like a reasonable policy. Given that the most talented tech workers, the ones the H1-B visas are designed to make it easier bring to the U.S., are getting $100M+ signing bonuses right now, a $100k/yr fee seems pretty trivial in comparison.
The number of people at that compensation level is very very small, and they will probably go for a O1 type visa instead of a H1B.
That’s true in AI field. Even if you are an elite researcher in some other field like biosciences, physics you can’t demand those salaries. So people in those other fields are essentially screwed.
I work for a big tech company that was already hiring a ton in Canada, I have to imagine this is going to add massive amounts of fuel to the flames. Are they just going to accept that offshoring is the next best alternative? And by offshoring, I mean, immigrants moving to Canada and working for American companies because their work visas are better
This will just encourage companies to off-shore more.
It's already 70%-80% cheaper to hire offshore. How much more juice is left to squeeze?
That's just insane, do you honestly think they will just allow that? They are American companies, vulnerable to the power of the government.
Then it's time to start seizing these companies assets. American corporations exist to benefit the US and US people.
the tax code was recently adjusted. All foreign R&D needs to be depreciated over 15 years, you can depreciate immediately for US based R&D.
US-based companies that depend on H-1Bs may:
- stomach the cost increase,
- reduce the number of H-1Bs they hire,
- move (the company) out of the US (i.e. to less imposing jurisdictions).
If companies choose the latter, the irony is the resulting reduction in US tax revenue from companies moving out could outweigh the gains in revenue from the $100k H-1B tax, thus resulting in lower US government tax revenues due to the change.
You missed one:
Hire Americans.
It's probably not even worth asking these days, but is there a reason to believe that the President has such an authority?
H1B should be banned completely as Americans wanted. Which also helps other countries to build their own big tech.
At that price point, it's cheaper for companies to risk investing in foreign branches and building up work centers outside of the US. You want to keep the price high enough to stop the bodyshops from gaming the system but you want it low enough so that all of the work doesn't get set out of the US.
100k is a bargain for such highly skilled foreign workers you desperately can't find here.
Curious what this will do for faculty. Common to use H1B as a bridge for a few months before green card. New CS faculty salaries cap out at 180K at the high end.
Are they going to reinvest these funds into educations so our country can fill these roles or just waste it on weapons and unwinnable wars?
I would be totally fine with this if it was the former, but I would bet that it won't be...
Not much empathy in this thread being given towards the thousands of H-1B workers whose lifes will be upended by this.
Here's a thought. Why not pin the H1B tech acceptance rate, forget high fees, to some measures around tech unemployment rates? A recent reading I read showed a higher unemployment in tech than non-tech jobs. I wish I could find the article that mentioned it (most likely Bloomberg or WSJ in the last two weeks). Doesn't that put the stats where the mouth is?
This prices startups out of hiring visa holders
It looks like any H-1B holders currently traveling abroad need to return within 24 hours:
https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3l...
https://www.youtube.com/live/KcZEcDe1Hys?feature=shared
This was a live a few hours ago on H1B news.
Love it.
If H-1B workers are too expensive to hire, tech employers have two options:
1. Hire more American workers (pay more, maybe they don't exist so don't hire)
2. Move their offices overseas (already happening, we should see an acceleration)
Ok, I guess AI could also start replacing more roles, but we won't see that productivity for a year or two.
If companies choose 2 over 1, it will mean fewer jobs overall in the USA (including support and service jobs).
This is happening in tandem with work to tax offshoring ("No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act")
Companies could already hire offshore for 50% of what they pay in America, so I don't expect a dramatic change there.
https://thefactcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/No-T...
Yep - I expect to see a lot more job postings for overseas. Not the time to encourage offshoring.
What about just hiring remote contractors?
Logistics and vetting mostly. The Indian body shops have a business model that already does this, actually: you hire the body shop, they send over one or two more senior engineers who then act as liaisons that farm out work back in India where most of the body shop is still located. My guess is that you'll just see more of that going on, although the R&D tax rules are getting weird with respect to amortization and out sourced labor.
My experience with those kinds of places is that they send their "dream team" for the first couple of months but then bait and switch the client with less experienced staff who subsequently f*ck everything up.
I would assume tech companies can easily launch research centers in India, no?
Also announced today is the Trumpcard, a visa for super wealthy individuals. HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45308778 but is wrongly flagged. Politico is carrying the Trumpcard: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/19/trump-gold-card-vis... and says that it's $1 million for individuals and $2 million for corporations. The Trumpcard website is https://trumpcard.gov/ and is a terrible parody of itself.
There is also something geopolitically playing here. Trump administration recently threatened India with tariffs and when it didn’t budge, many of its key MAGA voices (Bannon and as such) tweeted asking for the exact same thing he just did.
Recently Trump also met with Indias arch enemy Pakistan’s de facto leader (military chief) in Washington and shortly following that you had Saudi-Pakistan NATO like alliance announced (of course US is major allies for both of those countries). It is interesting because pre-election Trump touted many Indians and even had Modi joining him in one of the largest Indian gatherings. But I guess Trump admin being the wild card it has always been policy wise had a shift. What that leads to is still to be seen.
Recent SCO summit where India and China had some shared alliance pledges can give some hints what’s to come but it’s interesting he didn’t so far do so with Chinese students and had in fact a U turn on allowing 600000 students with their visas as part of the trade negotiations.
So they'll just hire in India instead but now the taxes won't be paid here. Marvelous.
Unless Trump bullies companies to close their foreign offices. I'm pretty concerned with that as that would impact me. That being said, I don't see how FAANG could operate only with US citizens.
News flash at 11, i.t. body shops to impose $100k indentured servitude debt on h1b seekers.
So is this requiring the $100k fee payment for all H1B visas including recent college grads or just H1B visa applicants from outside the country?
It says that the payment is for H1B visa applicants who are currently outside the country?
A great idea I didn’t see on that page is replacing the lottery. Instead, H1Bs would be given in order from highest salaries to lowest. (Actually until the quota is exhausted)
people dont realize how lucky US citizens have it just by luck of being born in US
Feels like our luck is running out
Tech companies will just pay the $100k. Over the length of the visa it's still a savings in reduced wages. Never mind that you "lock in" your H1B employees while a US hire will job hop to get a promotion or wage increase since that is the only realistic way to do so these days.
It’s per year.
I saw that a certain reading of this language:
> Section 1. Restriction on Entry. (a) Pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000 — subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (c) of this section. This restriction shall expire, absent extension, 12 months after the effective date of this proclamation, which shall be 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2025.
Could be interpreted to mean that anyone who leaves the country on a _current_ H1B and attempts to return might be blocked if they don't have proof of the payment having been made, despite the fact that no process currently exists to remit said payment.
I'd love to say it's doubtful this administration would do something so callous, asinine, and cruel, but...
That is my interpretation.
Regardless of whether you think imposing a $100k fee on H1Bs is a good idea or not, there is no way that a 2 day deadline makes sense from an implementation perspective. On a weekend too. This is just going to cause panic and confusion at the border.
No, the language clearly limits the restriction to those “aliens … currently outside the United States.” “Entry” in this context means seeking admission (or re-entry) to the U.S. from abroad, under a new petition or visa that starts outside. It is tied to new petitions, and specifically those where the beneficiary is abroad.
“(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall restrict decisions on petitions not accompanied by a $100,000 payment for H-1B specialty occupation workers … who are currently outside the United States …”
Looks like
The international student —> h1-b pipeline is unaffected it seems?
https://archive.is/3ZWh2
"Critics, including many U.S. technology workers, argue that it allows firms to suppress wages and sideline Americans who could do the jobs."
I don't know many tech workers who criticize H1B visas, outside of maybe the way that they empower the employer over employees.
How many American tech workers know anything about h1b? It's not like your employer tells you who is who.
FYI Manifest (startup focused on immigration law) is hosting a free webinar by an experienced immigration attorney on Monday to answer questions related to this:
https://luma.com/xc2wbio7?from=embed
yes! these guys are focused on o1/eb1 as H1B alternatives
This is a net positive action for the following reasons: The chuds have been clamoring for this for a long time. You can see every past thread on HN all the way back to the December blowup on twitter with Elon. At the same time, the economy is lagging and the admin's more direct measures to drum up support from the base such as chaining and deporting Koreans at the Hyundai factory are tanking future prospects for the economy and are causing diplomatic headaches. This current announcement gives the admin a way out by throwing some meat at the base before the midterms while knowing that this won't pass muster as they don't have the authority.
> as they don't have the authority.
Isn't this a change USCIS makes? Or does it have to go through congress?
Congress. This will cause interim disruption though while the lawsuits play out.
A.K.A., the Great Offshoring Incentive Act.
Like tech companies aren't extremely vulnerable to whims of the US government and they'll just allow them to do that.
I wonder if treaty-based non-immigrant-intent work visas like TN and E-3 will be next.
75% or more h1b went to one country for 20+ years even though another large country had way more students here in the past, who had less than 8% h1b. h1b is totally abused illegally for too long, they should be charged.
Come to Canada
My take:
It should be an auction.
The annual salary should match the fee (unless below some minimum).
It's kind of ironic that the party of tax cuts recently tries to solve problems with taxes like tariffs and now this H1B fee.
What stops companies from hiring talent remotely?
We are in 2025!
Decentralisation is important due to the high cost of living in cities. Bring life to less populated areas.
Off the top of my head, the R&D tax code changes...
Will they be targeting outsourcing next?
The process is ! Apply for job, get interview, pass interview! If the guy has h1b reduce 30k in salary and recommend hire and move forward !
the phrase "shutting the barn door after all the horses have run off" comes immediately to mind. It's way too late to save tech in the USA, imho. It's too late for my nephew, who couldn't get a job after graduating with a CS degree in 2022 and who is not currently working in the tech field at all. And it's too late for all the lost wages for all the guys and gals my age whose incomes were artificially held down using the foreign competition, both on and offshore.
Before you downvote and curse me out, please understand that I have trained dozens of H1Bs throughout my career and helped them be better developers while knowing full well what the overall game looked like. I did it wholly without prejudice.
Deep down, I always knew we would hit that inflection point and we did. I don't think it is fixable at this point. Thus, it makes sense for politicians to finally consider addressing the abuse. I currently counsel young people to not become software engineers/developers. Aside from the lack of jobs, there is the awful ageism that strikes right when family is the most expensive (college aged kids). I'm very fortunate in that I saved like a madman and we inherited some wealth, which we INVESTED and didn't just blow on cars, houses, and vacations the way most dipshit Americans do these days. So when the inevitable career abbreviation took place, I was at least prepared. But I'm no less bitter, and that's the truth.
“Reuters was not immediately able to establish details of who the fee would apply to or how it would be administered.”
I’ll wait till I form an opinion on this.
I wonder if this is applied to H1B renewals too?
IIRC technically there's no such thing as a "renewal". It's just a new application that bypasses the lottery. So given the low level of thought that goes into these EOs, the answer is almost certainly "yes"...
Trump answered a reporter's question about this. The fee is $100K per employee per year.
How does a republican raise taxes without raising taxes.
This is how they do it.
What industries are going to get hit hardest? Tech and medicine, two of the largest money makers in the country.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5815043/
Hire Americans and there is no "tax". Problem solved.
I'll replace all your coworkers with random DeVry grads. After all people are interchangeable like parts of an assembly line.
I wonder how much china will benefit from this?
Stopped clock, twice a day, etc. H-1Ba are supposed to be for difficult-to-find specialists, not generic tech workers.
100%
> H-1Ba are supposed to be for difficult-to-find specialists
In my understanding H-1B is supposed to be for generic workers, rather than O1 which is for people with extraordinary ability in their field. That's why there is limit, lottery and high application fees.
H-1B is for difficult-to-find specialists and O-1 is for people with extraordinary ability in their field.
H-2B is for ordinary workers.
The opposite of extraordinary is, well, ordinary - why would they be difficult to find? H-2B seems to be a non-immigrant visa for temporary workers.
It's not "the opposite", it's a spectrum of rarity.
The conditions look like the only requirement is being a professional with college degree.
I am an immigrant (not to US though), so looking from this standpoint. If I wanted to move to the US, H1B would be a pretty straightforward way for me to do so - as it is for many professionals now. With this path cut off - what is left to people who are just good professionals in their field, but maybe not exactly Nobel laureates? There is Green card lottery, but being a lottery, it's not ideal for life planning, and it doesn't account for one's professional achievements.
Big tech CEOs FAFOed. Didn't have to be this way.
ITT: HN goes mask off
Do you honestly think the H-1B visa program is not predominantly used for hiring less expensive workers with fewer choices and negotiating leverage?
The US has had its mask off since 2016-17. The tech industry somewhat more recently.
> H-1B visas are already costly to obtain, ranging from about $1,700 to $4,500
oof, that's a big price increase.
My one concern is that the salary discrepancy minus the $100k might still be worth it for FAANG specifically.
That's the point. If you really deserve it with your skills, then 100k is nothing.
Why is that a concern?
It’s not set in stone and can be reversed like tariffs no?
Do you mean reversed by future executive order answer that question is most likely, however, courts have shown a propensity to limit which executive orders can be undone by future presidents. For example, we saw this during Trump won with DACA.
Friendly reminder the US government is using it's legal authority to compel people to show their social media posts. At some point, hacker news is bound to get on their "to check" list.
Post nothing here you would not mind showing to a border guard.
Like seriously, I get this is very impactful, but don't risk your livelihood to argue with internet strangers.
What a shame. We face a mounting demographic crisis from low birth rates already, mostly from economic pressures and lack of personal decisions in healthcare for women. So many wrong directions.
> ...mostly from economic pressures and lack of personal decisions in healthcare for women
I've got some bad news for you about, well, pretty much all of human history...
I think this is extremely tangential to the article, but is there any evidence that any mounting American demographic crisis has anything to do with abortion being overturned?
Personal decisions in healthcare are about more than just abortion.
For example, if miscarriages are criminalized, and access to birth control is restricted - both real things that have been attempted or have actually happened in the US as a part of anti-choice policies - the only safe choice is to not have sex, ever. Which means you're probably never going to have kids, instead of before where there was a chance you'd get pregnant and then decide whether to have the child or not. Now it's too risky to even have a chance of getting pregnant if you have no autonomy. I certainly would never risk it in a state with anti-choice policies.
The intent of these policies might be to raise the birth rate, but I'm not sure they're going to do that. We'll see, I guess.
IMO the demographic crisis is more likely to be influenced by other factors, like the rising costs of raising children, the increasing constraints and pressures on parents, etc. But those policies don't help.
Statistics show that kids brought up with both parents have much better prospects in life.
The decision to have kids should be a deliberate commitment between the parents, not some kind of lottery where one falls pregnant then decides what to do next.
It's better not to fall pregnant at all otherwise
> It's better not to fall pregnant at all
That’s pretty much the whole point of abortion, by the way.
> low birth rates [...] from economic pressures and lack of personal decisions in Healthcare for women
This is an outlandish and ridiculous hypothesis with zero substance to it. All research points to it being the other way around. They higher the economic pressures and the less freedom people have in reproductive healthcare, the higher the birth rates. The moment Germany introduced the birth control drugs, the birth rate dropped.
If a country develops from the level of Somali to something like Germany and the birth rate tanks to somewhere slightly above 1, increasing the birth rate by maybe 0.1 by enabling more personal decisions has literally zero impact.
Of course I'm still a proponent of decreasing economic pressure on parents and enabling reproductive freedoms like pre-implementation diagnostics. The consequences on birth rate is just something we have to deal with one way or another.
But H-1Bs are for specialized workers... somehow I don't think that is a meaningful contributor to overall low birth rates, but I could be wrong.
What makes this particular ill conceived policy bomb so special that it gets to stay on the front page?
This does not really goes with the employment at will clause. Companies would just stop hiring H1Bs. Even the signon bonus comes with some sort of payback requirements if some one leaves before certain duration.
May be good for remote roles?
I don't get the negative points here to be honest. To me, it seems better than lottery to be honest for all parties involved.
CS new grads from Top10 are finding it tough to get jobs. There is lot of supply of smart CS grads within US. No need to hire H1Bs in the current economic situation which is different from late 90s when H1B program started.
The title on HN conflicts with the truth and the title of the article. It is 100k per application (which gives the visa for 3 years) not 100k per year.
All the comments are missing the bigger picture with this new policy - Trump is sending a message the tech companies will need to pay up (to him) to get this policy to go away.
My guess is this administration will also use this as a leverage in any negotiation with India?
Possible. Trump is in trouble with MAGA over Epstein etc., so he puts out this proposal for a headline and will revert it under certain circumstances.
I was already surprised that he implements one of his campaign promises.
https://www.epi.org/blog/disney-h1b-scandal-in-spotlight-mee...
Companies like Disney, too, have committed abuses with the H1B. It's not just big tech, it's widespread across the United States. I think Americans privileged with different Visa or residency status will benefit.
Flatly illegal. Congress has not authorized imposing such a fee and the current statute would sets the fee based on cost recovery for administrative processing of the application.
Just make it an auction that runs every month.
Not the worst policy from this admin tbh.
Hallelujah!
This apparently goes into effect in 24 hours. And applies to current H1-B holders. Entry isn't permitted until the $100K is paid.
https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3l...
Thank you Trump for answering the forever question on the mind of a techie in Vancouver: Should I move to USA?
Illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, permanent residents, citizens, they’ll come after everyone.
The rest of the headline is "in likely blow to tech", but I disagree. $100k when you're pimping some poor soul out for $40k/yr is too much. But when you're already paying them $500k+? Cost of doing business.
I've been through this immigration system. It's capricious, arbitrary and Kafkaesque.
It is absolutely clear that there is H1B abuse and I'm looking directly at the bodyshops like Infosys and Tata. Here's how it goes:
1. Apply for as many visas as possible. This is done primarily for Indian nationals for reasons which will become clear;
2. As the employer you really don't care which ones are approved or how many because what you're going to do is farm out those employees, whether there's 1000 of them or 10,000 of them;
3. Because there is an annual quota and applications have expanded so much, the chance of success is about 1 in 3 currently in the annual lottery. And a Principal Engineer in AI at Google or Meta has the same chance of success as a junior developer at Tata. There may be other options for the first person such as EB1 or NIW or L1 but that's really beyond the scope;
4. As part of this process you have to "prove" you cannot fill a position with a US resident or citizen. There is a whole process for this to minimize the number of applicants and to reject any who happen to find your newspaper ad and apply. This also applies to the Green card Labor Certification too, to a higher degree. Part of this is to make sure the employee is getting paid enough for their job and area. This is called a prevailing wage determination ("PWD"). This process doens't really work, which I'll get into later;
5. So you, as an Indian national won the H1B lottery and your visa is approved. You come to the US and hope Tata finds you a job where they farm you out at $200-500 per hours while paying you $50 or thereabouts;
6. Now the employer starts doing things they're technically not allowed to do, like if they can't find you a job they stop paying you. You may fall below the PWD because of this;
7. A H1B is valid for 3 years, extendable by another 3 for a total of 6 years, after which you're technically meant to leave the country. But what happens is the employer will file for an employment-based green card for you. If they do this in the first 5 years you can remain while that case is pending;
8. There are annual quotas for how many green cards are issued for each employment category. Additionally no more than 7% each year can be issued to any single country, based entirely on your country of birth, not your actual citizenship. And if you're married and have children under age, they will also count against these quotas.
9. So because H1B applicants are disproportionately Indian natioanals, there is a MASSIVE bottleneck for employment based green cards. As such, there is a HUGE backlog. Currently, USCIS is processing green cards for EB3 applicants from India who have a priority date of August 2013. That means their PERM was approved on or before August 2013;
10. So this is how these bodyshops can abuse Indian nationals. Those nationals really can't leave their job. Not easily anywway. There are laws that if they change jobs they get to keep their priority date but the new employer has to file an entirely new green card applications, including doing the entire PERM process again. Oh and if the employer moves area or their jobs changes significantly, it may invalidate their PERM too.
So these bodyshops can keep essentially indentured servants for 15-20+ years and at any time can fire that person. The power imbalance is so massive. This suppresses wages for everyone.
And these people are in the same cateogry as highly paid engineers in tech companies who have substantially better conditions.
Also, at any point along the way the USCIS can simply decide to take a whole bunch of extra time for literally no reason. They have a policy to randomly audit ~30% of applications. Why? They will never tell you. Their arguemnt is to avoid people "gaming" the system by working out the audit criteria so there's a bunch of random "noise" in there. Literally.
Well that doesn't sound bad right? Extra scrutiny? Except now you've added 1-2 years to the processing for literally no reason. You may get a request for evidence ("RFE") out of it too, which might add another year too. This can go multiple rounds too. I know people who spent 5 years going through audits and RFEs. One in particular is an engineering director at Google now.
While tech companies like Google, Meta, etc are better than the bodyshops they absolutely use this system to suppress wages, again because of the power imbalance.
It doesn't have to be this way. Take Switzerland as an example. I'm rusty on the details but IIRC if you're on a B permit (work permit like an H1B, tied to an employer) for 5 or 10 years (EU citizen is 5, otherwise 10, generally), you automatically get a C permit, which is basically a green card.
All this to say is that I have mixed feelings on this $100k fee. It will absolutely cut demand for H1Bs. It will decimate new graduate H1Bs but there's an argument that US residents and citizens should get priority for entry-level positions anyway, right?
If all this comes with much less paperwork, like skipping the whole LC process, then maybe large employers will pay it because they absolutely do spend a fortune on immigration lawyers.
If anything, the entire immigration system needs an overhaul but there's no political will for that. There are no votes in it. Quite the opposite: any serious attempt can be dismissed as "they're stealing our jobs".
I also think layoffs at large companies should absolutely preclude you from sponsoring H1Bs entirely for 2+ years.
Wow. With the exploitation you describe, a $100k fee will only mildly worsen the ROI on exploiting these people.
If you're concerned about 'brain drain' remember O-1 visas are for the truly exceptional immigrants which remain in effect.
H1B visas are for rank and file employees with just a skill.
This allows employers to indenture servitude employees, depresses American wages, increases unemployment, increases rent prices in areas with high levels of immigration, and hurts American culture.
Most jobs are not that hard and a company should invest in Americans instead of immigrants if it want's to continue to do business here and enjoy the fruits of America.
Note that the fee is triggered by entry.
It sounds like F1 and TN visa holders will be able to acquire H1B visas without triggering the fee (but no international travel afterwards or the fee would be triggered).
I suspect that the o1 and l1 visas will get more use if this actually gets enforced.
I also suspect that the large tech companies don't overly mind since they all have very active offshoring programs.
Except that I (and I believe it will apply to many folks similar to myself) working for US company branches located in the EU for a decade, on the staff/EM positions, with education to qualify also for O1 - will not put my life and my family’s life to be the subject of sudden immigration changes.
What’s stopping them from doing the same for L1/O1 folks and locking them in with days’ notice?
Few of my US colleagues that I know are now abroad, and I cannot fathom how they took the news.
None of us are talking about the important part of this - this new fee can be waived at will by the Secretary of homeland security entirely at their discretion. This isn't about H1b at all, it's about punishing political enemies and rewarding allies. It's one more little toehold of the mafia state.
As authorized by federal law, the department will conduct investigations of employers through Project Firewall to maximize H-1B program compliance. To achieve this goal, the Secretary of Labor will personally certify the initiation of investigations for the first time in the department’s history. This historic action leverages existing authority granted to the Secretary if reasonable cause exists that an H-1B employer not in compliance.
Secretary-certified investigations, as well as other H-1B-related investigations, are important tools the department will use in Project Firewall to hold employers accountable and protect the rights of American workers. Violations may result in the collection of back wages owed to affected workers, the assessment of civil money penalties, and/or debarment from future use of the H-1B program for a prescribed period of time.
Interesting, seems quite steep.
Does the extension also cost 100k?
I don't know the statutory authority under which this is being done, if this is true it will come out in the next few days.
I would have preferred a simple auction, seems like the most reasonable solution.
Later reporting is saying that it will be 100k / year. If so that's quite substantial.
That will make the program non-viable for a large percentage of the people who use it today.
I suspect that the o1 visa would get far more use if this change were enacted.
It seems to high. Again: why not make it an auction?
The latest updates to Windows were just too much for him.
Let me guess...
A 90 day pause is next if the markets crash over this next week.
Either way, this is the sub definition of "AGI". Time for the "AI Agents" to prove their worth as advertised and hyped.
Or else...
Is it proposed by Trump. Why is everyone here assuming it is done and final. It probably won't be approved.
approved by who? The people of the US already elected the president. He pretty much ran on reforming the visa system for the benefit of the US worker. This is a first step in the process. For those who don't understand how he works, this is the opening offer which is of course extreme. It will light a fire under Congress to actually pass some real reform. He did this with all the tariffs and trade deals. Despite what you read in the globalist media, it didn't cause havoc to the economy. He forces people to come to the table, negotiate, and get stuff done.
We need something similar here in Canada, tech job market is abused and exploited by corps.
A lot of the discussion is about foreign workers competing with native ones and dragging salaries and employment down. This is a simplistic view, because it overlooks the fact that an insufficient labor supply keeps companies from growing faster, which in turn keeps them from hiring even more people.
So there is a tension between competition and increased opportunities and wage growth through increased company growth.
But how does this work out in practice? Luckily, there have been a lot of studies about the impact of the H1B program, which you can find on Google Scholar or SSRN. An extremely quick scan shows mixed findings that are hard to summarize, which is understandable because the dynamics are complex. (Contemplating getting Gemini to do a Deep Research report on this.)
So to narrow things down, I looked for empirical studies that focus on the specific counter-factual, "how would native workers fare if there were no H1B?" Interestingly, while I actually found some, even the recent studies (from 2022-2025) rely on empirical data from 2006 - 2008. That was when the H1B moved to a lottery system, creating a natural experiment allowing for comparison between firms that won and lost the lottery. (One study does find that limited data from 2022 corroborates its findings.) Not perfect, but better than hypotheticals.
Here's a government page with a very brief overview of two relevant studies: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12966 (The page doesn't scroll, but the PDF can be downloaded.)
To summarize, the studies find that there was no negative impact on native-born workers in terms of employment, and in terms of wages, some saw increases and others saw decreases in the range of 3-5%, depending on age, tenure and level of education.
But interestingly, the 2025 study also found that winning a lottery also increased the chance by 2.5% that the firm survived. Causation and correlation etc. aside the implications for employment are clear: if a firm does not survive, all employees, native or foreign, lose their jobs. This is an example of the dynamic I mentioned above.
Beyond these studies, I follow a labor economist and it's fascinating to see how these dynamics have been playing out over the last few years in the broader economy. As a relevant example, there is a credible theory that increased immigration was what helped the US manage its inflation crisis:
https://fortune.com/2024/04/12/immigration-inflation-economy...
But this doesn't match reality. The surplus of labor has allowed big tech to be exceedingly picky during the interview process. You will now fail interviews if you're unable to solve two Leetcode Hards in 45 minutes.
If there was insufficient labor pool as you suggest, interviews would become less selective and wages would rise.
Tech interviewing has been dysfunctional for a long time, but yes it is much worse now because the tech job market is terrible. However I have previously commented (along with citations where possible) about how this job market is deliberately depressed. BigTech has achieved this through a few mechanisms, namely a) increasingly offshoring jobs while simultaneously b) freezing headcount in the US, and c) performing significant layoffs triggered by Elon's shenanigans at Twitter. And a highly under-reported aspect of all this is that these layoffs are causing much higher pressure on the remaining employees, which is leading to record levels of burnouts.
I'm letting my cynicism show here, but I think this is a power move by the capital class to show labor their place after an exceptionally strong labor market during ZIRP. This is much more recent and not related to the H1B program.
Does the company still pay the 100k if the applicant loses the lottery?
If you read the article you would see their plan is to apply the fee on entry to the US, after the candidate has been selected by the lottery.
For people saying it will just lead to outsourcing, do you think they won't punish these companies severely if they do that? Come on, think...
Naive question: couldn't companies here start sponsoring under O1 (which is still very low cost) instead of H1B?
Nice!
It's not a bad proposal, though raising the salary requirements would be better. This essentially does that though since a company has to account for it in their hiring costs. IOW it costs the company $100K/year to hire a foreigner vs a local, which offsets the low salary that you might be offering that foreigner in order to "save costs" vs hiring local.
However, the unsolved problem is that this could just lead to more offshoring by these same tech companies who are abusing the program now. Not sure if there's any way to stop that.
Finally, Hooray!
People are debating the merits here, and losing the big picture.
Congress makes laws. The executive implements them.
It could be a fantastic idea. But then make it a law. Give the president the power to do something like this.
Debating the merits without focusing on that first legitimizes this crazy psuedo law making Trump engages in and will enable him to be more arbitrary in other areas.
Pen and a phone. This is not a phenomenon unique to Trump.
This feels like groundhog day, didn't he already do this?
Here's what I propose:
1) All countries are free to come up with as strict or as loose immigration/tourist visa requirements as they like.
2) Companies can source remote labor from anywhere with zero government overhead.
3) Companies cannot source physical labor from abroad.
4) Reform local housing laws so that housing is not used for speculation/tied to employment.
Then communities can finally be communities, work can be work, and tourism can be tourism.
I wish the US would just return to "racial" quotas like pre-WW2 instead of all this huffing and heaving.
MAGA (and most Americans) don't seem to have any issue with immigration -what they have a issue with is the culture/skin-color/ethnicity of who immigrates. Indeed this is where the country quotas come from - Europe with 20 odd countries has 20x the priority than India or China.
If the US had an ounce of honestly they'd just make this explicit instead of beating around the bush. Since people have better opinion of the Chinese and other "white" East-Asians (admittedly the fairer gender only), just restrict it explicitly to "race" of Caucasians and there "Yellow" races.
It'll save Indians and other "suburbans" a lot of trouble not dealing with this farce of "liberalism" going forward. I genuinely mean this - given how things are going, Indians will find themselves in the place of Jews in Nazi Germany quite soon. And much like the useless British-colonial state that governed Israel then, the vestigial British state in India which is as internet upon Anglo-American triumph today, can't and will do jack shit for them.
How little do you know about the experience of Jews in Nazi Germany?
> And much like the useless British-colonial state that governed Israel then, the vestigial British state in India which is as internet upon Anglo-American triumph today, can't and will do jack shit for them.
Are you saying that Indian people wouldn't be allowed to immigrate to India?
Minutes of research say current Indian law allows people of Indian descent but not citizens to get Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) — a special immigration status for foreign nationals of Indian origin.
You're eligible if you are:
1. A former Indian citizen (who gave up Indian citizenship, e.g., to get U.S. or UK citizenship), or
2. A descendant (up to great-grandparent level) of an Indian citizen, or
3. The spouse of an Indian citizen or an OCI cardholder (subject to conditions)
With OCI, you can have:
1. Unlimited stay in India
2. Right to work, own property, and open bank accounts.
India could change it's laws, keep all the non-citizens out (or even citizens, what can't we imagine in this fantasy story). India could deny OCI to most every person that applies for its green card like status. But under current laws in your unlikely story, they seem like they'll do something.
I'd expect they'd fly as many Indian people as they could out of the US like many countries do in times of war. Not that this scenario will ever come to pass.
You're projecting.
Here that sound? It's the GCCs being opened up as a result of this shift.
There's a reason Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others have been expanding offices and raising TC in Eastern Europe and India for years.
The main industries that will be severely hit are chip design, biotech, pharma, and STEM academia.
Good for India though, who needs a "Thousand Talents" program when the targets of a brain drain are to cost prohibitive to hire in the US.
Will my teleoperated humaniform robot be arrested by ICE while I am in Spain - hard at work...
The great and good of the tech industry spent the last year sucking up to Trump and this is how he repays them
Will they learn? I doubt it.
They saw the writing on the wall. I don't think they _like him_ but they need to manage the inevitable. When you have an autocrat, you bend the knee or get destroyed.
> you bend the knee or get destroyed
More like you bend the knee and get destroyed. The better option is to not bend the knee, but weak people will do what gets them further today without thinking about the future.
I think sometimes bending the knee is the smart thing to do. You need to read the room, if you don't like your odds, leave the fight for another day.
I say this not because of cowardice, but because I know the cemeteries are full of brave dead people.
> I think sometimes bending the knee is the smart thing to do.
Sure, if you have no spine, morals, or will to do what is right.
> You need to read the room, if you don't like your odds, leave the fight for another day.
Spoken like someone who enjoys position of privilege.
> I say this not because of cowardice, but because I aknow the cemeteries are full of brave dead people.
Ah yes, I bet those dead people wish they'd just "followed orders" instead.
Keep making excuses for billionaires if you want; I'll resist if I'm given the chance. A cemetery full of people who actually tried is better than the world of non-cowardly room-readers you describe.
just a way to extract further concessions, rinse and repeat
what about postdocs and researcher at universities?
I vehemently disagree with whatever xenophobic nonsense he and Miller will vomit up to defend this move, provided he doesn't TACO out on it. Fuck bigotry, period.
However, H1Bs have been a thorny issue for a while, and this might be the rebalancing sorely needed. If Capital can freely import cheaper labor ad infinitum from abroad (or outsource it), then that deteriorates domestic stability while amplifying a form of Capitalist Imperialism abroad. Thus far, China's been the only country to really take full advantage of this long-term strategy error, and a lot of tech folks have been warning that failing to address known flaws in the visa process will ultimately leave us at a disadvantage in the long run, much like we did with manufacturing.
A high application fee is a start, but the better solution is dispensing with H1Bs entirely in favor of green card sponsorship with associated work contract. If these talented workers are that badly needed, companies would have no compunction sponsoring their permanent residency and, eventually, naturalization. Long-term data suggests none of the tech industry is really doing this, which means these "uniquely talented workers" are just replacing existing American workers at lower wages and higher precarity.
I love my international colleagues, and I want them to be treated with the same dignity and respect I receive. H1Bs do not, and cannot, accomplish this outcome.
Just gonna leave this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koSby3mzX-E
Lets Go!!! Raised the minimum salary to $150k. The 100k application fee is per person per year.
Meaning now companies can either hire an American new grad for 100k a year or pay 250k a year to import someone. It also still allows companies to bring over highly skilled foreign workers for which there are no American equivalents.
Really happy with the approach and I think it will be a massive boon for US tech and knowledge workers
Nothing in the proclamation [1] says it is "per year". What it says is that every existing petition must be supplemented by $100k check, otherwise the employee won't be able to (re-)enter the US.
So, if you already got your visa issued for 3 years, and you didn't have any plans to travel abroad you are good until the end of your current visa term (which might be 2-3 years in future).
Also, apparently Department of State has started a pilot program that allows one to extend their H-1B visa without going abroad to have their passport stamped, so in that case you can get 3 more years in the US without the fee. The biggest limitation of course being that you're stuck in the US for the whole time, unable to leave.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
I bet we see a TACO - he might not give a shit personal liberties but he listens to the billionaire tech bros.
My preferred policy would just be to auction them off by salary offered to the candidate with a reserve set to the 90%tile domestic salary. Also if you layoff any employees your company is banned from the program for three years.
So now just outsource to those countries instead??
Ohio senator introduces 25% tax on companies that outsource jobs overseas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45146528 - September 2025 (68 comments)
OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44469124 - July 2025 (370 comments) [15 year amortization required for international R&D]
This is good news for China: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3318178/tale...
SCMP is owned by Alibaba, which is subject to the purview of the Chinese Central Government [1].
[1]: https://www.cecc.gov/agencies-responsible-for-censorship-in-...
Lol, you really think the h1bs will go to China to work 996?
No, Chinese will stay home instead of immigrating to the US.
China draws mainly on the talents of the best of its billion+ population. But America has had its pick of the best of the world's 8 billion people. If people stop immigrating to the US, then we will surely fall behind technologically, economically and militarily, and soon we will be making t-shirts for Chinese for $5 an hour.
For big tech 100k isn’t too much of a hit to hire the best AI researchers of Chinese descent, so they won’t be impacted.
It will be too much if the worker leaves after a month, or gets hit by a truck.
If an H1B worker "leaves after a month" they get deported. Meanwhile, nothing in the world can prevent the Bus Factor so I don't see how that's even relevant.
don't respond to him, it's just a LLM posting pro-China stuff on HN
Tariffs on offshoring are next.
Wasn’t that already effectively put in place with the changes to the exemptions on how R&D is treated for tax purposes? (I’m not in the US so this may have evolved now, I’m not sure.)
> Tariffs on offshoring are next
Unlikely. America has a massive services export surplus.
Do you think that matters to them? They'll burn it all down if they think it scores a political point.
They could already outsource for cheaper than the cost of an H1B
This is good start but he needs to go further. After all, we're a nation; not an economic zone.
Yes, this is the way to go.
Trump's plan might help with my dream of being able to be paid well in tech without going to the US. This action is another reason to divest from the one tech hub to around temperature works.
Fantastic news, not so much for Mr... Na .. Na... Not ganna work here anymore. Should add a yearly fee as well.
Well I guess this is great for Australia, maybe we'll have our own rival silicon valley soon.
The reason silicon valley works is because it has a giant market that can support products and services before they can go global. Same reason why China has its own tech hubs.
SV companies are mostly selling globally from day 1
" Summary Companies
SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON, Sept 19 (Reuters) - The Trump administration said on Friday it would ask companies to pay $100,000 per year for H-1B worker visas, potentially dealing a big blow to the technology sector that relies heavily on skilled workers from India and China. Since taking office in January, Trump has kicked off a wide-ranging immigration crackdown, including moves to limit some forms of legal immigration. The step to reshape the H-1B visa program represents his administration's most high-profile effort yet to rework temporary employment visas.Read about innovative ideas and the people working on solutions to global crises with the Reuters Beacon newsletter. Sign up here. "If you're going to train somebody, you're going to train one of the recent graduates from one of the great universities across our land. Train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs," U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said."
Absolutely. I've seen so many H1-B's doing run of the mill IT work. In the past, some job adds said "H1-B preferred." That's on top of all the Indian outsourcing.
It looks like Trump is one again making it expensive to use a foreign asset to encourage use or development of local assets. If they're truly talented and rare, then the $100,000 will be worth paying. I could see the A.I. field doing that since they're already doing it. Many will consider hiring or training Americans.
As an american engineer, I love this! Thank you President Trump!
"if H1Bs are supposed to be a means of obtaining labor not available domestically it's curious they're cheaper than domestic labor
an easy way to ensure that they aren't directly substituting for domestic labor would be to add a $100k surcharge per head"
Don't love it yet. $100K surcharge per head for a 3 year visa is just $33K per year which is very absorable, and won't in itself affect visas much.
No, it's 100k per year.
The official announcement says:
> The Proclamation restricts entry for aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in specialty occupations in the H-1B program unless their petition is accompanied by a $100,000 payment.
Nowhere in there does it say that it's annual. Note that the H1B visa is valid for 3 to 6 years, potentially longer, which dilutes the fee to $16K per year which is small money for an employer. Also, a fixed number does not keep up with inflation either.
Gonna be a fast lane visa for companies that cancel liberals or pay fealty to trump.
Lets not act like this is a good faith adjustment of concerns.
Why is it “Trump” specifically ? Is there no government anymore ?
Because he's exerting autocratic control over the entire executive branch. How many times does he have to tell you he's doing so before you can recognize it? He talks about it in interviews and on his social media, and not in vague or nuanced terms, but with clear declarative statements like "I have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the President." (this example from about 3 weeks ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOxw6Pc_KXw)
>Because he's exerting autocratic control over the entire executive branch.
.... As the... head of the executive branch?
Yes. He’s embraced a radical expansion of the “unitary executive” theory which focuses all of the power in the president, even in positions which by law or custom were independent. Think about last year: Biden didn’t call Garland into his office and demand that he lock Trump up or drop charges against his son immediately because the DOJ was never intended to be the President’s personnel fiefdom nor the AG his attorney. The federal reserve was structured to be independent as a deliberate statement by Congress that it was run for the nation, not one man’s political expedience. Past administrations used to honor the wall keeping political appointees out of tax or loan data, now Trump has Pulte rummaging through everything looking for mistakes he can use to prosecute people on his enemies list. Over and over we see the pattern of pretending that executive orders can overrule the law, to the point that SCOTUS is making unprecedented moves to temporarily allow things because even the Roberts Court is hesitant to rule in his favor.
It’s bad enough that he’s doing it, we should at least be honest about what’s going on.
Please don't be obtuse. I'm sure an intelligent person such as yourself is aware of things like the normal federal rulemaking process, the requirements to conform with employment law, and that the job of the executive branch is to faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress even when the President finds some of them disagreeable, not to rule by fiat.
It was a White House announcement of a White House policy relying (apparently) on nothing but executive authority. The attribution is correct.
Obviously there are very serious civic questions here (like under what law the authority to levy that fee was granted! Congress controls taxation, not the president). But so far congress and the courts are uninvolved.
The attribution is colloquial, but correct. It's routine to refer to the executive branch by the president's name.
Great News!
Now Trump needs to go after all the "founders" scamming the US through their O-1 visa. That shit needs to end yesterday.
What's the scam?
It was advertised on HN last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40082864
https://extraordinaryaliens.substack.com/p/o1-visa-hacks-for...
This is the next grift target into the US.
They are inventing new scamming ways !
If this goes through, I will be extremely over-joyed. Kudos to Trump for doing what is right for the average American and bucking his donors.
A broken clock is still right sometimes.
Love this for the VCs (Hi A16Z!) who went all in on Trump
The H-1B Visa Program and Its Impact on the U.S. Economy (Oct 2024 Fact Sheet) - https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/h1b-vi...
According to many economists, the presence of immigrant workers in the United States creates new job opportunities for native-born workers. This occurs in five ways. First, immigrant workers and native-born workers often have different skill sets, meaning that they fill different types of jobs. As a result, they complement each other in the labor market rather than competing for the exact same jobs. Second, immigrant workers spend and invest their wages in the U.S. economy, which increases consumer demand and creates new jobs. Third, businesses respond to the presence of immigrant workers and consumers by expanding their operations in the United States rather than searching for new opportunities overseas. Fourth, immigrants themselves frequently create new businesses, thereby expanding the U.S. labor market. Fifth, the new ideas and innovations developed by immigrants fuel economic growth.
Similarly, a recent study found that, between 2005 and 2018, an increase in the share of workers within a particular occupation who were H-1B visa holders was associated with a decrease in the unemployment rate within that occupation. Another recent study found that restrictions on H-1B visas (such as rising denial rates) motivate U.S.-based multinational corporations to decrease the number of jobs they offer in this country. Instead, the corporations increase employment at their existing foreign affiliates or open new foreign affiliates—particularly in India, China, and Canada. A study conducted in 2019 revealed that higher rates of successful H-1B applications were positively correlated with an increased number of patents filed and patent citations. Moreover, such startups were more inclined to secure venture capital funding and achieve successful IPOs or acquisitions.
The available data also indicate that H-1B workers do not earn low wages or drag down the wages of other workers. In 2021, the median wage of an H-1B worker was $108,000, compared to $45,760 for U.S. workers in general. Moreover, between 2003 and 2021, the median wage of H-1B workers grew by 52 percent. During the same period, the median wage of all U.S. workers increased by 39 percent. In FY 2019, 78 percent of all employers who hired H-1B workers offered wages to H-1B visa holders that were higher than what the Department of Labor had determined to be the “prevailing wage” for a particular kind of job.
$100K per person, or per company? Does Tata just pay $100K once?
The answer to your question is in the first sentence of the article
"Sept 19 (Reuters) - "Reuters was not immediately able to establish details of who the fee would apply to or how it would be administered."
So, details to follow.
[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2025-09-19/trump-...
per application, so per person
Mafia behavior continues… (not my observation, but the Texas senator’s Ted Cruz[1]).
$100k is a big pizzo (protection fee)!
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-19/ted-cruz-...
> “That’s right outta ‘Goodfellas,’ that’s right out of a mafioso going into a bar saying, ‘Nice bar you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it,’” Cruz said, using the iconic New York accent associated with the Mafia.
It does go to the government and not to Trump's personal wallet (like the memecoins and lavish gift), it's just a tax that's just not being called a tax, and frankly it's a good idea. The current abuse of H1B doesn't work out positively for anyone but the companies making a boatload of money on exploiting people.
Oh? And taxes can’t be used to buy influence and votes? How naive… Money is fungible… one pocket into another
Exhibit 1: Tariff revenues to bail out American farmers: https://www.ft.com/content/0267b431-2ec9-4ca4-9d5c-5abf61f2b...