1.) This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition.
2.) Those who already hold H-1B visas and are currently outside of the country right now will NOT be charged $100,000 to re-enter.
H-1B visa holders can leave and re-enter the country to the same extent as they normally would; whatever ability they have to do that is not impacted by yesterday’s proclamation.
3.) This applies only to new visas, not renewals, and not current visa holders.
It will first apply in the next upcoming lottery cycle.
Info from customs agents at airport is aligned with this statement. Specifically that it does NOT apply to current visa holders. How consistent that is, no idea.
A "White House Official" may be saying this now, but it is not what was in the EO that was actually signed. There were no exclusions for current holders, and the start date was explicitly September 21, 2025 (a date that does apply to the "next lottery").
They are more than welcome to roll back this asinine decision, but pretending that everyone else is just mis-interpreting is gaslighting.
Either way, until there is an official, in-writting announcement that can be depended on, no one should be taking the advice of an unnamed White House source.
In any situation, your best bet is to follow the direction and guidance of your own attorney.
I was not aware that she had made this statement as well. All previous reporting from this morning seemed to report back to a Business Insider article that cited only an "unamed White House official who has been granted anonymity to speak on the issue". I missed that it was a reference to a tweet from her specifically (as opposed to one of the countless other accounts copy/pasting this everywhere).
Note that Leavitt's words are any more enforceable though.
The problem here is that the proclamation says otherwise. It doesn't include any exception for current holders
Trump has the legal authority to block anyone from entering for essentially any reason (see Trump v Hawaii)
So it doesn't matter much what the white house says today. They are free to change their minds tomorrow. That's part of the strategy, if immigrants are afraid they will be arbitrarily extorted at the border, then only the ones whose employers have bribed Trump will even bother applying
Who knows what will happen next? Maybe his base will be unhappy with the current format, start a social media campaign and make the WH post even better clarification that explains exactly the opposite.
They flip flopped on the foreign employees in hospitality and food production. The policies are driven by outrage, crypto purchases and early investors like Project2025 apparently. I don't think that there's any guaranties.
Nothing in the executive order says that those who already hold visas will not be charged, or that it will applies to new visas. And one can pretty much be sure that omitting that fact in the initial executive order announcement is intentional, because this administration wants chaos.
UK around Brexit time thought kind of similar: let's keep the "riffraff" immigrants out by applying higher criteria. The narrative also changed this way: we don't want immigrants in general, but you, with your highly paid PhD-requiring job, you can go in, on a 2 year rolling basis. Then everyone's a winner, except for unwanted, unskilled labour.
But a lot of skilled labour left anyway. Partly because the general atmosphere got unpleasant. But also highly paid people have spouses, children, parents and other relatives. Once you are told you barely cleared (very high) criteria, you can be pretty sure your retired parents won't, if ever you need them to move in with you.
So the effect may well be that the kind of people whose productivity and tax bracket makes a 100k fee justifiable simply choose to go elsewhere.
Especially when the administration makes their contempt for any rights they have so obvious.
Immigration exploded after Brexit. While the official line was "Let's keep the riffraff out". the reality was that the Tories used Brexit to bring in plenty of cheap labour from specific countries, and the income requirements are applied very selectively.
Foreign students were also encouraged to study here and remain after studying. Initially even family reunion immigration was encouraged, although that's changed now.
The UK has been playing this game for centuries - bringing in cheap foreign labour on the quiet, then using that as political leverage with "We will protect you from the foreign invasion" messaging.
Rather than being honest with people about the pros (of which there are many) and cons (of which there are some) of migration, the conservative government increased migration while telling people they were reducing it. That is malice, rather than incompetence. And now, here we are, facing the very really really possibility of loathsome grifter Farage as Prime Minister.
Polling in the US has swung in favor of immigration:
> a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.
It’s hard to separate what’s supported by the public and what are random hobby horses of the far right once they get in power.
Because the US has historically been relatively more positive to immigration I am skeptical that we would see the same reaction as in the UK or other countries in the long run (in the short term, it’s all a sht show)
> Polling in the US has swung in favor of immigration
Don't forget to quote the parts that contradict your statement:
> After climbing to 55% in 2024, the percentage of Americans who say immigration should be reduced has dropped by nearly half to 30%. Sentiment is thus back to the level measured in 2021, before the desire for less immigration started to mount. Meanwhile, 38% now want immigration kept at its current level, and 26% say it should be increased.
Overall, this poll paints a picture of moderation from a period of anti-immigrant sentiment, not of a population that has "swung in favor of immigration", as you assert.
(It also has nothing to do with H1B visas specifically. As far as I can tell, it's almost entirely about illegal immigration.)
With polls the questions you ask matter a lot. I don't read this poll as being about illegal immigration but someone else might (e.g. you did). That is worth splitting out as a separate question. But asking that risks getting answers you don't like, e.g. my bet would be most Americans would not support the idea that anyone can just come and stay in the US illegally without going through any process, i.e. an open border policy. My bet would also be that most Americans would support immigration of highly skilled labor or certain other professions given the right processes in place and demand for those. There are probably other ways to slice and dice this question to get a deeper understanding of how people think about this.
It would also be nice if the poll probed as to the reasons for why people hold certain opinions. My guess would be the numbers are changing partly due to political backlash and not due to some economical or social insight.
The good thing about this poll is that the same questions are asked over time. So likely the trends are real. It's just hard to get a more nuanced understanding.
> I don't read this poll as being about illegal immigration but someone else might (e.g. you did).
Almost every question was about illegal immigration. They ask some top-level questions about overall immigration, then ask a series of other questions about illegal immigration, border enforcement, etc.
There are questions about people present in the US illegally but not about people being allowed to come to the US illegally.
When I say illegal immigration I'm mostly thinking of the question of whether people should be allowed to come into a country illegally and generally immigration laws that govern people immigrating to the country. The question of how to deal with people who are present, maybe for a long time, in the country illegally is a different one. But I can see how in the US those are sort of mashed together. There's an obvious relationship, e.g. if you say that someone present in a country illegally should be allowed to stay and become a citizen that basically means new people arriving (let's say as tourists or not entering via official entry points) can just stay and become citizens. But I think in the US it's generally debated as two separate questions, i.e. people that are present (especially for a long time, families, etc.) should have a path to become legal immigrants. I'm not here to really debate this but more to point out those are somewhat different questions.
Let's review everything just to make sure we're not missing anything:
"Thinking now about immigrants — that is, people who come from other countries to live here in the United States — in your view, should immigration be kept at its present level, increased or decreased?" -> legal immigration (presumably, or at least ambiguous)
"On the whole, do you think immigration is a good thing or a bad thing for this country today?" -> legal immigration (again, presumably)
"Please tell me whether you strongly favor, favor, oppose or strongly oppose each of the following proposals. " -> This one is more of a mix but the question of whether people support illegal immigration isn't really addressed. There are questions about how people who are present in the US illegally should be treated and about things like border security which has some tangents to illegal immigration (presumably a border is there to stop illegal immigration, but also to stop smuggling and other reasons, but why not just ask if people want open borders?)
"Figures represent percentages who favor or strongly favor each policy." -> similar to the above, dealing with the question of those present in the US illegally not the question of more people coming into the US and whether that should be via current legal means or "open border everyone is welcome with no process".
"Do you strongly approve, approve, disapprove or strongly disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the immigration issue?" -> not really clear enough but feels like another permutation of the above. dealing with people present illegally and not general immigration policy questions (who should be able to come and who shouldn't).
> But a lot of skilled labour left anyway. Partly because the general atmosphere got unpleasant. But also highly paid people have spouses, children, parents and other relatives. Once you are told you barely cleared (very high) criteria, you can be pretty sure your retired parents won't, if ever you need them to move in with you.
Chain migration is an anti-immigration argument in the US - even if some particular immigrant is highly-skilled and would benefit the US from being a legal resident, that immigrant's family is probably not as impressive. Nonetheless, once the government gives legal residency to the highly-skilled immigrant, they will be highly motivated to try to get the rest of their family to the US as well. So the US should be careful about granting legal residency even to prospective immigrants whose credentials make them individually look good.
Yep, skilled people have options. When you are treating them as circus animals that constantly need to prove that they are worth the cage they will be put in and the food they will be fed, they just leave the circus.
Smart professional people desire non-hostile space where they can build a life. When a Russian scientist or Iranian doctor left their countries for London or Paris, they were't calculating for a net income increase, they were running away from an environment that didn't show a promise to allow them realize themselves. Lot's of white collar people are paid well below what they will make if they learn a JS library or do construction work because of their desire to fulfill themselves in a peaceful live and be respected. It is kind of similar to game devs being paid very little in respect to the complexity of the programming they do. If you break that magic, they aren't going to stay.
It wasn’t that similar though, because there was a long long period of transition, not “we are doing this on two days time and if you’ve not got £100k hard luck!”
It should be the most obvious thing in the world that whether you take a fundamentally welcoming and positive mindset towards people vs. a negative and unwelcoming mindset, the effects of either will propagate and magnify themselves over time.
But when you're insecure the feelings you get from the latter are more comforting in the short term.
I can assure you the decorum isn’t exactly being maintained and downvotes don’t exactly do much when there’s a consensus that a certain thing is okay to do.
This is probably a good thing for nations providing the bulk of high skilled labor, namely India and China. Their best and brightest will tend to leave less.
Much has been said about Trump, but his main quality is this: he's a foot-gun artist.
And I think it is significant to note that the foot-guns are intentionally foot-guns. Plausible, yet subtly and catastrophically bad solutions to real and imagined problems. Downward spirals for everyone! ...to create favorable conditions for further exploitation.
The UK has had a "brain drain", but it's as much UK citizens as migrants. Economic migrants migrate.
> But also highly paid people have spouses, children, parents and other relatives. Once you are told you barely cleared (very high) criteria, you can be pretty sure your retired parents won't, if ever you need them to move in with you.
Skilled immigration is sold in almost all of the West as a necessary demographic cure. The classic "we're getting older and there is a labour shortage of working age people". The retired parents were never a part of the deal, and are of no interest to almost any Western country. Obvious given that it completely annihilates the justification for bringing people in in the first place.
So if these skilled workers aren't moving to the UK because they can't bring their retired parents, then presumably they aren't also choosing the US, Canada, Germany, etc., given the same situation.
Canada does have a family reunification program but it is not only spectacularly unpopular among the Canadian public and likely to fade away, it allows for a tiny number per year.
US allows unlimited chain migration for parents with short waiting period. Everyone brings their parents/siblings and put them on Medicaid/Obamacare, Section 8, etc right away. Technically sponsor is supposed to cover those benefits (and signs paper about that) but practically gov never tried to recover benefits (literally never).
There are not "high criteria" to immigrate to the UK post-Brexit. The minimum salary threshold is £26k, barely higher than minimum wage. The list of eligible occupations is a joke and includes such desperately understaffed occupations as "homeopaths" and "reiki healers". The skilled worker visa only requires B1 English, at which level you'll struggle to communicate in many professional settings. Net immigration (legal and illegal) exploded after Brexit and is still higher today than it was in 2016 when we had the vote.
This, so much. Not the UK, but another western-European country that has slowly succumbed to right-wing rhetoric and fear-mongering. There, legal immigration has continuously been a boon to the economy, but each politician having had to "one-up" the previous one in terms of "tightening immigration" and "looking tough" has only made legal immigration increasingly miserable, and put off skilled/high-earning global workers whose presence was desired.
Of course, nothing has changed for the illegal ones: they haven't (and won't) see the increased burden of legal migration of which they are oblivious. Overall things are only getting worse, and I hate that there's no attempt to having a honest and transparent debate and discourse on the matter.
> you can be pretty sure your retired parents won't, if ever you need them to move in with you
The immigration system should be designed to block retired parents from moving country to live with their working age adult children who have migrated.
One reason to have immigration is to improve a country's dependency ratio: the ratio of working age population to children and retirees.
The ideal immigrants are young well-educated parents that can stay in the workforce for 40+ years with healthy children that are just about to enter the school system.
That way the receiving country didn't need to invest in educating the parents originally, don't need to pay the healthcare costs of very young infants, and it provides the best possible addition to the the receiving country's demographic structure so the host country benefits from a whole working life of tax payments and all the value created by their work output.
The economic case for even skilled immigration is far less compelling for a receiving nation without such restrictions on immigrating retirees.
Your ideal immigrants are young parents with healthy children, who are apparently willing to abandon their own parents? And somehow this is a good thing?
Should the country receiving the immigrants let elderly grandparents be cared for by their own country's pension and aged-care and healthcare industry, instead of burdening the receiving countries?
Absolutely unequivocally yes.
The grandparents can always come visit on tourist visas and the immigrants can visit their original country too.
What if, as a condition of the visa [0], the sponsoring high-performing immigrant guarantees that the relative won’t become a public charge, and becomes legally bound to reimburse the public purse if that happens?
I seem to recall the notion that elderly people are normally isolated, atomized wards of the “aged-care industry” as a relatively recent innovation, no? Versus people seeking to bring elderly relatives to reproduce the sort of multigenerational households that more traditionally handled aging care, and that do that today in other parts of the world?
The final years of healthcare for the elderly is unaffordabily expensive.
Nations are able to afford it with a healthy dependency ratio, but with the Baby Boom generation leaving the workforce, it will no longer be possible.
A young family who have recently migrated are saving for a house and college, to make them pay for a decade of end-to-life treatment (cancer treatment, dialysis) at United States price ranges is unaffordable even for very high income earners.
Remember the two parents have four grandparents, and two children (the receiving country would love for them to have a third).
That said, I am open to a special visa with a million dollar escrowed deposit per elderly parent to cover their healthcare. Without extreme restrictions they are bound to become a healthcare burden on the system.
Don’t the elderly people in question—where they or their sponsors can’t cover the cost—1) have their visa applications denied on public charge grounds, or 2) not receive those treatments?
I was of the impression that, in the US at least, such immigrants might be allowed to purchase Medicare if they’d been here for a long time and worked/paid payroll taxes for many years—but that they certainly wouldn’t qualify to get it for free in the way native-born people do. Native-born people with 10 years of formal employment, anyway.
Not sure how that works with Medicaid—it sounds like [1] some states have chosen to implement that in ways immigrants can access if they come in on green cards and spend their working lives in the US, paying in to the system—but that seems to me more like a local policy choice than a primary feature of the immigration system.
For that matter, in your formulation, should the working-age immigrants themselves, who permanently resettle and work their whole life in the US, be denied access to old-age benefits when the time comes?
Those rules are not enforced, every state has free (or almost free) healthcare that fresh immigrants are eligible for but sometimes they need to jump thru a few hoops. Many states have free “healthcare navigators” that will guide you how to jump thru those hoops.
> have their visa applications denied on public charge grounds
Oh, I wasn't familiar with the 'public charge' requirement of the US immigration system. That's excellent in principle, and wonderful if enforced adequately.
> Not sure how that works with Medicaid—it sounds like [1] some states have chosen to implement that in ways immigrants can access if they come in on green cards and spend their working lives in the US, paying in to the system—but that seems to me more like a local policy choice than a primary feature of the immigration system.
Yes, agree that's not a feature of the immigration itself but a local policy choice. Some states are very lax with Medicaid qualification rules eg, California recently expanding coverage to illegal immigrants with loosened criteria that legal immigrants won't qualify. I recall changes were made in response to federal tightening of rules. It's still a bad policy, but a local one.
> For that matter, in your formulation, should the working-age immigrants themselves, who permanently resettle and work their whole life in the US, be denied access to old-age benefits when the time comes?
No, one principle is they have paid into the system for a long period of time then they should of course be able to access benefits.
The other principle is by that time they are ready to retire they will certainly permanent residents but hopefully citizens, so not seen differently than other citizens.
Can you explain why "move to another country with your family, leaving your elderly parents to fend for themselves" is not abandoning ones parents? Most of the world doesn't believe that old people having a roof over their heads and access to healthcare is all it takes for them to not be considered abandoned.
Even moreso with arbitrary rule changes with zero deadlines meaning they can't even necessarily fly back in emergencies without risking losing their status in the US?
Generally speaking, those parents wouldn’t have the work history to qualify for SS benefits in the US. AND IIRC, they’d need some form of permanent residency to qualify for Medicare/Medicaid.
> Initially? People looking for gold, silver, fur.
For the most part it was companies looking for gold, furs etc, with the support of their governments. Companies founded the colonies and trading posts for the benefit of the stockholders and the governments. The consideration of colonists was a distant third. When the supply of easy marks dried up they turned to indentured labour and then slavery.
Can't pick and choose. Would you be ok with people escaping persecution or spreading their religion coming in the country if they don't bring their parents?
What point do you think you’re responding to exactly?
GP mentioned “abandoning your parents” when you immigrate as if that’s absurd. In reality it’s the most normal thing imaginable.
I know hundreds of people who live outside their home country and I can’t thing of a single one of them who took their parents with them. When does that ever happen?
Having non-working grand parents that can help with watching kids is a nice way to ensure you actually get more kids in the first place. No sane parents will make lots of babies if there is no one who can help them with babysitting. And no, just kindergarten is not sufficient.
It was nighttime in Singapore when the ruling was announced. My husband and I scrambled to find a flight back. The best we could find, at any price, lands 25mins after the deadline.
I'd rather just have waited until an injunction or something next week. The guidance from my company is either make it back before the deadline, or stay where you are until further notice.
I feel for you. I just wonder, at this point why would someone look to go back to the US "At any price", given how bad are they being treated? From what I can see, it seems most of us non-US people are "persona non grata" in the US.
I myself am and live in a so called "shithole country ". But specially because of my Technical skills, I've got plenty of opportunities over here. I would never think on living in the USA. Even though I easily could via TN visa. But it's clear US people dont want me living there.
And even if you decide it's time to leave, you'd still want to come back and settle your affairs and plan a proper move. You wouldn't want to leave everything behind, especially if you only brought enough for a brief trip.
That's an increasing consideration for people thinking about moving to the US or those who aren't settled there yet. But, of course, people who already have family and belongings there will want to get back in to at least sort those things out before leaving for good.
I did move away from the US because of these reasons, and it's been a good decision in retrospect. But no one likes uprooting their entire life and it takes years to build a new one somewhere else.
The calculus on immigrating to the US today is clearly negative, but many people immigrated 5/10/20+ years ago before all this shit and have lives there. They did not know any of this would happen.
Via what mechanism? Will they be ready to accept the payments a few hours from now? Ready to process the re-entry with procedures that aren’t even developed yet?
Getting into the country before the deadline is the only safe way to avoid the uncertainty and ensure you don’t get stranded out of the country or in an airport for days or weeks while the process is developed.
This hastily constructed and implemented executive order is a terrible way to run a country
The expected value for immigrants is rapidly shifting into it being more favorable to be an illegal, because ICE/CBP is mostly going after low hanging fruit of easy to catch people that they know about with homes and salary jobs / university and a visa. People that are off paper and 100 miles past the border are as good as gone. So basically what we get is the exact opposite of what we want.
I think a lot of people arguing about the H1B visa are talking past each other.
- There is no doubt a large volume of abuse by tech consulting companies. It's likely even worse than it looks, because the H1Bs in the U.S. are to support even larger teams offshore. I don't understand why we can't just blacklist these companies.
- Some of medium-skill hires, e.g., did a 2 year MS degree from random university in the U.S., are also a bit sus, in my opinion.
- I'll bet several of Zuck's recent $10M Superintelligence Team hires were at least briefly on an H1B before getting their EB-1A Green Cards.
- Same for a lot of faculty in computer science -- you can get an EB-1B Green Card quickly, but you have to spend some time on an H1B. You cannot convert directly from a student visa. The O-1 exists, but is not on most people's radars in academia. I think likely because the legal fees are prohibitively expensive. (I have heard $40K+)
To add lot of people don't seem to have read the full announcement. It says Secretary of Homeland Security can grant exception. That means companies like Tesla are more likely to get a pass - because manufacturing jobs and what not.
Also, HN is hyper focused on tech consulting. H1Bs are used by doctors too especially in rural America. Doctors apply for J1 waiver and then get H1B for work. From what I have heard some places the only available doctor is an immigrant on H1B. This is going to devastate medical teams.
I'm pretty happy that my continued existence isn't subject to selective enforcement by some US bureaucrat. After all, given the last six months that sounds like a pretty stress inducing thing to have to be subjected to. They seem to err on the side of maximum harm, rather than caution.
Yes, it's a shakedown. If you're a good little poodle and grease the right palms you get a carve out. If you rock the boat or are too small to matter - well, I'm sorry, that's the law now, and no one is going to change it for you, etc.
> - There is no doubt a large volume of abuse by tech consulting companies. It's likely even worse than it looks, because the H1Bs in the U.S. are to support even larger teams offshore. I don't understand why we can't just blacklist these companies.
I wish we could ban offshore IT consultancies dumping "talent". Unfortunately politicians will not support such ban, because those consultancies help corporate donors keep the wages down. If the government banned suppliers who use offshore consultancies from bidding for government contracts those outfits would disappear overnight.
Skimming the articles I don't see the source of the 15 hour urgency. Seems like the fee is on new visas - what's promoting Microsoft to send this notice to existing people?
"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."
So it applies to all H1Bs. Subsection c is limited (but will be interesting to see how it plays out) so I don't bother sharing.
Reading a thread on r/immigration involving multiple immigration lawyers and corporate lawyers※, the Executive Order wording is apparently unclear and leaves CBP agents with discretion (which can obviously cause confusion and not apply the same rules to everyone).
Much easier for the companies to recommend/insist on folks fly back before the deadline to avoid issues.
Surely the poster is allowed to be Republican and an immigrant? They didn't even say they voted for Trump. Eg, if they're fiscally conservative and strongly anti-abortion, they may find that they are best aligned with the Republican party, despite being an immigrant.
I think I agree with your political views, and that makes me sad. It would be easier to believe in "my" party if this sort of stupidity wasn't so blatant.
I mean either you hate other immigrants or one of the other marginalized groups that unify Republicans in their bigotry, or you're cool with it for some other reason.
So which is it, are you a bigot, or a fool? Because in my mind, those are the only qualities of Republican voters today.
Came here legally, speak English, embrace American culture, appreciate the police keeping my neighborhood safe, support faith, etc. There's nearly hundred percent alignment with my values. Surprised this is so surprising. Like I said there's millions of people like me.
Perhaps the idea is the post must be false, since nobody would support a party so opposed to their own interests. Otoh that's how left wing politics has worked since the 70s..
Immigration is great when it's done at the right pace. The pace of the last 10 years has been jarring. It's counterproductive at this point just because of the extra cognitive load alone. Can we take a 20 year break then start it back up slowly?
And, economically, I think it'll be fine. Won't it be great for the rest of the world to share in the economic success of the US? I'm looking forward to a day when most nations have their own bay area.
Surely there is a way to implement a "taking a break" policy without purposely squalid concentration camps, extradition to random gulags, sudden capricious fees, legions of masked shock troops, and the like?
Is this satire or just solely based on feelings? The rate of legal immigration hasn't changed significantly since 1990 (35 years ago) when it had a huge spike (during Bush1); it then spiked again during Bush 2.
Honestly, I agree quite a bit. The US and other countries have the same dynamic that FAANG does with startups, we put up the money to have anything worthwhile come in-house, which kills competition.
Please India/China/Europe, build tech empires to rival ours. We will all benefit.
The WASP, country club types love the appearance of attacking minorities and other opponents but haven't considered the consequences of their footgunnery.
Trump has a ~85%+ approval amongst republicans. This has been the case for every poll which shows Trump’s approval rating dropping. Its only dropping amongst non republicans.
This is not the part of America that is meant to be great. This is the part of America that needs to be brought in line to whatever storyline Fox and the media sphere on the right is playing.
I mean, why ELSE would the President make such a decree? Obviously because something is wrong. Taking action when it counts.
Quote: 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.
> … the effective date of this proclamation, which shall be 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2025.
That doesn’t leave much time. I would have expected that current visa holders wouldn’t fall under this rule. Shouldn’t it be a legal standard not to apply new rules retroactively?
No one is going take a chance on that if they don't have to. I'm expecting chaos at the ports of entry tomorrow unless there is some clarification / guidance provided today by the white house.
There are a lot of bad angles to this, here is another one: What happens to people's social security they've build for the years they've been on H1B? (Or J1, etc. before that)? It's technically gone...
Not an expert but I think citizens of most countries still get benefits post retirement if they've crossed the 40 point / 10 year threshold, even if they're not in the US.
At least for now, who knows if that'll change down the road.
This is correct. You’d get your social security if you worked for 10 years (you need 40 credits but can only earn 4 max per year, 1 credit for every $1810 of social security taxes you paid). I think most visa workers who worked 10 years on H1B will meet this criteria
Some further googling led me to "totalization agreements" and then it's per country.
It looks like India (for example) may not have such an agreement, but say Austriallia has it. That to be said, it's all news to me, so might be completely wrong here
Anecdotally, although I'm sure it's happening to more people.
I'm Brazilian, I work in the US on H1-B. I'm on vacations in Brazil with my wife and kids, one in school age.
I also came to renew my visa stamp, as I had my extension approved not long ago.
My visa is valid from September 21st, so, same day as this proclamation takes effect. And I can't go back before that because my visa is not valid.
My flight was scheduled for tomorrow, and I would land in US by Sep 22nd. Of course, I rescheduled that to not lose my ticket.
I left food in the freezer, car in the garage, and my son is missing classes. And all my family's stuff in the house. Now, I have no idea what will happen, I can't go in to get my things. At least the company is giving support, and I couldn't be more thankful.
But the thing that makes me sadder is the blatant racism towards my Indian friends, reddit and x was swarmed by an army of people that was enabled to call them... whatever they want... It's a good time to be offline now.
The H1-B program has its problems, and I understand the whole frustration with the job market, but this is not they way to solve anything.
"On vacation" makes it sounds like workers were just off "having fun" (which of course is their right), but as your story illustrates, many immigrants are required to leave the US for their visa renewals. To be forced to leave the country and then be barred from return by an sudden change in the rules is the most unjust cruelty.
As an American, I'm deeply ashamed by this. I hope you and your family are able to return home soon. Thank you for sharing your story.
With immigration are unquestionably tough decisions, tradeoffs, philosophies on the issue, and demographics in general. It gets heated, fast.
I know I'm biased, but I wish trust had not degraded to such an extent you could believe people could deal with these topics in good faith.
But how can anyone support this kind of craven policymaking where uncertainty and cruelty are features and not bugs?
Just shock and awe and deafening silence.
That's what's so dishearterning. Is that who we are now, or is this just a timely excuse to be who we always have?
The President’s very first speech as a candidate denigrated Mexicans. Xenophobia is his signature issue even more so than tax cuts. 62 million Americans approved this platform in 2016 outvoting 65 million Americans who chose the other candidate.
i did not know until today there is this much anti-immigrant and especially anti-indian sentiment in tech. idk, it was very eye opening and very sad to read those. i am telling myself that people who were posting those things are small in numbers.
It's not surprising really. There needs to be an enemy group, one that some portion of the supporting population has some grievance against. First it's hispanics (illegal immigrants taking your jobs), then trans (men in womens washrooms), then Indians (taking your tech jobs), then it'll be some other group.
That would be the best case and unless somoone seeking refuge, I am sure they aren't hated in their country but who know. Sometimes it takes a little more time to relocate as people build their lives in a different country over time.
Doesn’t seem fair to the companies that employ these people. It’s obviously a hidden tax on large tech companies like x and Tesla that hire a lot of global talent.
I think a bigger tax on small companies. I worked on one where the co-founder was an h1b. That company grew to employ about a thousand people. It's job creation.. that would not have happened when the company was young with this tax.
Meanwhile, big tech is sitting on piles of money. I think startups and scale ups will suffer a lot here.
I hope your next potential employer rescinds the job offer 2 days before your start date, maybe that will make it clear to you why some of us think this is unfair.
Relevant to immigration bans, this clause is what seems to give the president very broad authority on immigration (see also Muslim ban).
> 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.
Congress shouldn’t be writing this sort of broad language into its laws. Congress has delegated a ton of power to the executive and now Trump is going to pressure test it. The current Supreme Court will decide this clause is wide enough to drive an iceberg through.
They come up with these rules on a Saturday morning. If you’re a visa holder outside the country and you don’t return to the US by Sunday, you’ll be asked to pay a $100k ransom to re-enter the country where your life and work and children are.
Amazing level of contempt for ordinary foreigners who came into the country legally.
Microsoft can also just pay the fee right? My understanding is that it’s on the employer to pay, not the individual. Given that these are incredibly skilled folks this would certainly be annoying if you’re Microsoft (like any other tax or fee) but given the value they get from each employee it seems like $100,000 isn’t much.
Which online portal do they go to? What bank account do they wire a check to over the weekend? What reason do they give for the payment? What USCIS code do they enter? What USCIS forms do they fill that USCIS will then snail mail (because they’re still living in the 90s) an I-797A to the employee that they will present at the border for evidence of payment. What address will USCIS mail the document to (which will be a U.S. address) and how does the employee who is currently abroad get that document from their U.S. mailing address to their current location abroad?
When are they gonna write the code for the lookup that the border agents can use to confirm the validity of this form and payment?
Also, how does all this happen over a Saturday and Sunday?
And even if there are answers to these questions where are those answers posted?
So if you want your employees to be able to go back from vacation and back to their belongings, you have to pay a large fee. And to pay that fee, you have to talk to the president personally, otherwise you're screwed.
That's so dumb I can't believe you're suggesting it. In a rule-of-law country, lobbying the president should never be a solution to anything, much less routine bureaucracy.
Yea yea I get it - but you’re also drumming up a hypothetical scenario about Microsoft suggesting they have no way to pay the fee - I’m just suggesting a solution, not suggesting the path forward or that the abruptness of this policy change is a good idea. Satya has a direct line to the president’s office and can utilize that to help solve this acute concern if there is, as you are very confidently asserting, “no way to pay” the appropriate federal agency.
Net income per employee at MS is $440K so if H-1B are so important then they can afford it. I worked at MS on a visa and it definitely felt like I was a second class citizen that managers could freely abuse without recourse, it didn’t help that corporate politics had become tribal. So while having a visa was beneficial to me personally I felt it lead to the degradation of the employment market, now a market for lemons, and this hurt Americans. High prices are a signal and people make career choices based on prospective income, many of America's smartest got the memo that Software Engineering was going to be taken over by H-1B Indians and they should pick a different career like law, finance, or medicine. So the program created the problem it was purporting to solve, the fact that the problem exists even though we’ve had H1-Bs for decades. The irony is that without the H-1Bs the US market might be attractive enough for me to return, sadly I’d need the visa. I’m content knowing the market isn’t being destroyed for Americans even if it means I can’t partake in it.
That said I wonder if it’s more of a power grab with the discretion to grant exemptions being used to strong arm corporations to clamping down on criticism of Israel.
That they can afford it does not mean they should afford it, given the degradation of their flagship monopoly product I’m not sure if the H-1Bs are really helping all that much. My time there was absolutely dominated by bureaucracy, so much so that we spent 12 weeks planning a feature I knew I could do in 30 minutes, so I called a meeting and did it in front of them during the meeting, apparently that wasn’t respecting the process so I was punished for it.
I’m sorry, but what? What part of your statement is relevant to the rapid and cruel enactment of the policy? Leaving aside whether or not it is unreasonable, the immediate applicability, over a weekend, of this policy, is that this thread is discussing. Not your smug satisfaction at the validity of the policy.
Point 1 H-1B is a horrible program that has to go, the manner in which this is done is unfortunate. Like many things it should have been done nicer and sooner but apparently that wasn’t an option.
Point 2 I’m certain exemptions will be granted that will mean in reality the H-1B gets to continue being a horrible problem for everyday Americans and the software industry in general. I don’t want to work in a lemon market and that’s what it has become. And I see this as more of an attack on free speech than an attack on H-1Bs but that shoe has yet to drop. In the meantime they need people to believe the threat is real so the companies will yield to power. The chaos is part of making it believable. If I was on a H-1B and I was too far away to make it in time I probably wouldn’t be too stressed about it but I’d understand why other people are.
Incredibly skilled? More like incredibly low paid. H1Bs are mostly used now to save money not to fill high skilled jobs. I know US citizens who have 10+ years of experience as software engineers and have been out of work for a year now. The $100k will try to take that advantage away from employers.
Why can't they set a salary cutoff for visas at something like 1.5x of median salary in the same industry? That's what EU does. No lottery, no degree requirement even -- if the company wants you to pay above the market, they can, otherwise, nah.
This of course creates another problem -- highly paid foreigners price locals out of the housing market, but hej, we can always blame that on refugees, right.
But the people claiming that there is no salary cutoff and that H1B visa holders are incredibly lowly paid are simply lying.
Like any other rule or law there are people who break the rules and laws. Usually the way they prove the salary is not being met is by pointing to the tiny fraction of people breaking the law.
It’s like saying we should get rid of anti murder laws because murderers exist.
10 YoE means nothing. Let's not pretend there isn't a massive skill gap in software engineering. I've interviewed and worked with 10+ YoE people in my company that I wouldn't trust with junior work on my team.
I also know people with 10 yoe. But when I dig into it almost always those people have a massive list of requirements for the job they want (remote/short commute/no overtime ever/etcetc)
Though it is reasonable to ask whatever you want you must understand there are always someone more desperate (and often with higher skills) that will take that job.
So the fact that 10yoe can’t find a job doesn’t mean anything. Usually this is either too many demands from seeker or skill issue.
Or they don’t eant to take lower salary.
If a company was willing to pay 70k for a developer you must be delusional to think they will suddenly decide to pay 100k+ for local talent.
While you're making a point in response to a specific post (and the OP), and so you're making a point strictly about Microsoft, an implicit premise that's supposed to strengthen your argument is that only the deep-pocketed Microsoft or its equals are subject to penalties. What about other companies for which this is a less manageable expense?
And is it respectable and okay to switch up the law over the weekend if, and just because, the ones who are affected are large companies? Realistically, what's the rush to have the "law" (Congress?) come into effect two days after its announcement, beside making it a shakedown? Remember that policymakers anticipate, or should anticipate, second-order effects. Either Microsoft forks out $100k per employee, or the cost of coping with the new policy is pushed onto the regular Joe. In any case, this produces a sense of crisis and urgency that you'd criticize if it happened at a measly, inexperienced startup you happened to work at.
The law changes three months ahead? Looks like I'll have to cancel my December plans. But when I'm on a holiday? Sure, let me pack my bags, get back to the nearest airport and take the first transcontinental flight. Or maybe Microsoft is flexible enough to have me shoulder the $100K to stay until the end of my holiday?
I'm not sure how openly the measure was discussed beforehand (and on that point: the employees already have visas; why must they return, unless their visa is about to expire?), but it was promulgated _yesterday_.
I agree with you with respect to timing, but I don't think it's too much of one thing or another, and just chalk it up to typical Trump Administration "move fast and make things dumb" approach to various policies. I guess it's possible they chose this weekend to enact the highest shakedown possible on H1B visa holders outside the United States, but I'm reluctant to give them that much credit. I think they just said here is the policy, go now and the inconveniences be damned.
Depends on your perspective. How callous and poorly implemented was the withdrawal from Afghanistan? I know Trump signed the deal, but Biden was responsible for the execution at the time.
It’s helpful to not be dogmatic about these things, and even more helpful if you abandon partisanship.
Have you ever worked for a large corporation? Do you think there’s an intranet website where you can just go click on the “Send $100k Wire Now” button?
It’s going to take a long time while Microsoft figures out if they will actually pay these fees and which budget it should come out of.
Meanwhile, if you didn’t return by Sunday, you’re locked out of the country and unable to show up for work which will result in your termination fairly soon.
> Meanwhile, if you didn’t return by Sunday, you’re locked out of the country and unable to show up for work which will result in your termination fairly soon.
I’m actually curious, have you worked at a large corporation before?
It would be atypical for the scenario you are describing to occur given that there has been a US government policy change that’s of no fault of the employee who is still eligible to work in the United States.
Folks aren’t going to be sitting around on Monday morning saying jeez Billy on the H1B visa didn’t show up to work today and we have no clue why, guess he is fired!
Within business units at this scale there are small, dedicated teams that manage contractors, vendor contracts and licenses, keep track of employees on visas, report that information for compliance purposes, etc, and they are almost certainly communicating with their employees who are currently out of the country to provide arrangements and additional details as things progress.
The issue is "my kids are at home in the US and I can't get home to take care of them because of this sudden policy that nobody knows how to navigate."
>Folks aren’t going to be sitting around on Monday morning saying jeez Billy on the H1B visa didn’t show up to work today and we have no clue why, guess he is fired!
I deeply suspect it will go both ways -- one Billy would be paid for, while the other will be fired for not being able to show up. Not every Billy is on the same good standing with the corp.
Employers have said these workers are critical and they can’t find any workers already in America to do these roles.
FAANG are by far the largest users of H1-B. They also have billions of dollars and access to excellent lawyers. They can pay up for this; an excellent employee is certainly worth more than $100k per year to them. Think of this more as a tax levied on some of America’s wealthiest businesses.
The data is publicly available. Microsoft is the largest US employer of H1-B with about 5,000 H1-B workers. So we’re only talking about $500m. They could probably find that stashed in the basement of one of their offices.
> Meanwhile, if you didn’t return by Sunday, you’re locked out of the country and unable to show up for work which will result in your termination fairly soon.
Remember too that this coincides with an RTO order for Puget Sound that kicks in roughly the same time.
i have never heard of this and nothing i've read has indicated this; it's always been tech companies large fortune 500's. I did some googling and am not finding anything to support this claim, either. If you've got sources i'd love to see them.
I just saw that some people on 4chan are organizing a mass booking of high-traffic route flights from India to stop some Indians from coming back. It feels like the visa process is politically weaponised for propagating racism.
Judging by Google Flights, the tickets start from five hundred or so each, so I don't really see anyone putting a real dent in this. Unless it's actually Elon Musk who could literally book all the flights full, should he so desire.
That's not how it works. The idea is that the sites will hold your spot for X minutes before they release the seat, so what they're doing is booking the flight, choosing seats (or not), getting to the payment page, and sitting there while the timer counts down. I believe that once it gets to 5 minutes or so there's an alert that asks if you're still there, and if you say yes, they'll either reset the timer or add some additional time on.
They ran out of illegal immigrants with prior criminal records almost immediately and their political strategy depends on the generation of new "others" to demonize. MAGA basically hates everyone, including themselves, so they will keep expanding their targets.
Get your relatives and family out of this shithole and start a new life somewhere else.
Why paying taxes for fat crooks?
Why working your ass off for major companiel that dont pay taxes?
I more and more understand people leaving their home country.
Like I said when they put workers in chains two weeks ago, shitting on foreign workers and all the cheerleaders here and probably on less liberal outlets are presenting an image of the US individualist culture that I now have to acknowledge.
Having to say to 'UPR' and other anti-atlantist militants 'you were absolutely right' was difficult I will admit.
Regardless of the merits of such visas, they were legal, and companies now depend on them.
Business uncertainty is off the charts when any administration can change existing policy at a whim and on short notice, for any kind of sunk costs.
The whim makes it uncertain, the short notice makes it unmanageable, and the sunk-cost makes it unavoidable.
It's this uncertainty that fuels government corruption, by creating an undifferentiated need to make nice and comply.
At each step, it will be cheaper for companies to join than to resist, and companies that resist will get oversized responses as a warning to others. That makes joining corruption an economic necessity.
This is how Putin organized and subjugated Russian oligarchs and the elites.
Guam and other US territories in the Pacific like American Samoa have their own immigration systems that are not identical to the mainland. I'm not sure how this intersects with H-1B validity, but it would be an expensive gamble to find out.
It's worse than that. Demanding that the job creators and company growers be taxed or stay out. If a team is half H1Bs, it is not because there were Americans waiting for those jobs. These are irreplaceable people (if they could be replaced to not deal with H1B nightmares, companies would readily do so). So, the big irony is these people are job creators.
This is terrible lack of planning. I understand the need for the US to be strict about people entering the country. They have a right to choose but this is so mismanaged.
There are so many active H-1B visa holders, now everyone is just anxious. The rules can start for new visa applications. For existing holders, there should be a time period where people can figure out if the employer is even able to pay.
If this stays in effect for existing visa holders and the employers cannot pay in time or wants to change the contract, the individuals and their families are stuck. Plus, employees probably lose their job if employer cannot pay the fees.
The strength of a theory lies in its predictive capacity. I used to think people who said “the cruelty is the point” were hyperbolic, but the predictive capacity of that theory is doing pretty well these days.
This is such bad policy making. Its like using a cannon to kill a mosquito. And for a party which idolizes the founding fathers these people seem to have forgotten the lesson from Benjamin Franklin. They went from letting 100 criminals go than make 1 person suffer to punishing 100 criminals to full extent of the law and then justify the action if 1 innocent is presented. End justify the means.
And for anyone who is supporting this - Sorry to burst your bubble but just like everything done by this admin so far it is not going to tide over the American job problem.
First, Secretary of Homeland Security has a discretion. It means companies can graft/lobby him to get exception. Maybe shops like Infosys might not get one but Tesla can get one under the garb of supporting American manufacturing.
Second, companies are going to find ways to get that exception. Consulting shops can always open a subsidiary with all American front and lobby for exception.
Third, consulting shops can always bill their customers - maybe partial amounts - that is American companies. Or they can encourage to offshore even more. "You can now save $X + 100k if you offshore".
So and so forth. You need a thoughtful policy not a blunt instrument like this.
I'm going to keep banging on this website, of definitions of fascism. And also, for the time being, is also hanging in short form at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.
Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
Labor Power is Suppressed
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
These are all elements of fascism, and is directly on display. We are living in a country being invaded by fascists from within the republican party.
And to my knowledge, no fascist government willingly cedes power. All have required extreme violence (aka war) to oust them. And most also have done so with Communist and Socialist allies (see Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, et merde).
In a way, it might be safer for the H1B's abroad to stay away. Wish I had an exit plan as well.
'15 hours to return or you're fucked' is not the kind of policy to reform H1B status.
Disassociating the employee with special skills from the sponsoring company would do a load better. Right now, the current H1B sponsorship creates a form of indentured servitude, which is horrific.
Now, sure, H1B should be gated similarly to Green Card status, as in there is a need for people of those skills. Right now, H1B serves as a way to depress wages for the rest of us. If anything, H1B should be significantly higher to show "these skills are highly in need", but instead, average H1B wages are 100k/yr.
Reforms are completely needed. But slapping a 17 hour 'show up or you'll be sorry' is NOT it.
President Donald Trump’s new $100,000 fee for high-skill visa holders only applies to new applicants — not current visa holders who may be on travel outside of the U.S. — according to a U.S. official granted anonymity to speak about the policy. Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/20/donald-trump-h1b-vi...
These new restrictions are uniquely capricious and gleefully harmful to people, but they are really only an extension of behaviors that have gone on for some time. I'd like to share a related story from the previous Trump administration:
My roommate in 2018 was an Indian here on an H1-B. He was working for a large consulting firm. (You've heard of it.) I don't recall his title but it was sort of an SRE/infrastructure position. He was a relatively conservative guy himself, in terms of his views, and a huge fan of America. He delighted in being here. He bought a brand new Mustang because it was the iconic American car. We weren't particularly close friends, but we got along okay.
In the spring of 2018, he went back to India for the first time in several years, for about a month. His return flight date came and went and I didn't hear from him until the next day: He was back in India. He'd landed in Chicago, and CBP had pulled him aside. They said his documents were flawed and he was to be deported. They said he had lied about where he was moving for his job. When he pointed out that he hadn't, they said, well, your employer didn't tell us everything they were supposed to when you moved.
He asked to see documents he had with him, or call his managers. They said no. He asked for time to go online and get his employment details. They said no. The only options he were given was: 1) Admit he'd lied, and be deported but not banned from the US, or, 2) deny he'd lied, and be deported and banned for five years. Indignant, he refused to "admit" to anything. He was deported. His entire life in the US was summarily destroyed. I spent a great deal of time helping him get his possessions either sold or shipped to him, and on the phone, I had to explain to him that he likely hadn't done anything wrong - it wasn't his fault. This was how our system had been set up to work.
About two years later, a judge concluded that there had not, in fact, been any issues with his employer or him that were material. The deportation was ruled to have been illegitimate. But by that point, he'd been back in India for years, and it was now COVID. He's probably never coming back to the US. We lost our chance to have him, because a couple of individual CBP agents in Chicago made a bad call one day in 2018 and wouldn't take no for an answer.
Even if you believe in controlling and limiting immigration, even if you think that we should only bring the best and brightest and then only in limited numbers, even if you think everyone who crosses the border illegally is a criminal, there is nothing just in what happened in this case. If you are such a person, and you think the people in power are on your side, I urge you to look at what they're actually doing over what they say they're doing. There's no justice in what happened in this case; if even legal immigrants have such limited due process and can have their lives so utterly destroyed, what rights do any of us imagine we have?
San Francisco's airport still owes me a pair of boots that they confiscated. Try finding shoes at 5 am after arriving on a red eye because the border guard fancies your boots. The cab driver thought it was a funny story, he knew many that were far worse. I think that's the last time I visited the USA.
I am so glad I left the States. It is horrible to live in a country where on a whim of a deranged leader your whole life can be upended. No country is perfect, but the way US now behaves towards people on visas is not tolerable. (And it was similar situation during COVID)
Most of Europe, Central and South America, Canada, Australia, Japan, India, South Korea - the majority of the world that could not already be described as authoritarian
People describe all of these countries as authoritarian for various reasons. Multiple Indian immigrants I have worked with in the US have expressed displeasure at authoritarianism in India today, which I find difficult to distinguish from just not liking Modi.
Few people actually know what "authoritarian" means, and are mostly just repeating things they've heard and intend to mean as "leaders doing things I don't personally like."
A strict definition of "authoritarian" [1] doesn't fit the current US administration at all in many ways, since they've focused their attention on tearing down government, not building it up. In some ways they demand stricter enforcement of (pre-existing!) rules, but in many others they have acted to undermine government authority (e.g. with respect to environmental regulations). Generally the people who decry authoritarianism in the domain of immigration enforcement will turn around and decry loosening of regulations about things that they prefer to be regulated by the government.
[1] "favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom." per Google's definition.
If enough people pretend the meaning of “authoritarian” is sufficiently narrow that every use of the term is hyperbole, then it no longer matters what it means. The semantic nihilists win again.
Your definition says nothing about regulation or deregulation, so I wonder why you’re trying to pin others to it. One doesn’t need laws (or a bureaucracy, for that matter) to “enforce strict obedience to authority.”
If you’re hunting for a contradiction this ain’t it.
> They are filling every power vacuum they create with direct executive power. Pure authoritarianism.
I just gave you a correct definition of authoritarianism, and that isn't it. It's also untrue -- this administration has rather aggressively moved to deregulate a number of areas that prior administrations had regulated. For example, not even a week ago, people here were complaining about the administration's move to deregulate PFAS:
Say what you will about the wisdom of the change, they aren't replacing that power vacuum with direct executive power. This administration is not canonically left, nor right, and it certainly isn't "authoritarian" by any traditional definition.
What does 'a correct' mean to you?
Wikipedia says:
> Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law.
As an outsider from Europe, it seems that is pretty much spot on to me. In Europe this probably applies to Hungary as well.
First of all, Wikipedia is useless for definitions of words that are in the middle of active political debate. You completely ignored the definition I gave you (which is from an impartial source [1]) in favor of one you prefer, from a wiki.
Setting that aside, you will see the that the citation for that definition [2] basically underscores the ambiguity of the term:
> Political scientists have outlined elaborated typologies of authoritarianism, from which it is not easy to draw a generally accepted definition; it seems that its main features are the non-acceptance of conflict and plurality as normal elements of politics, the will to preserve the status quo and prevent change by keeping all political dynamics under close control by a strong central power, and lastly, the erosion of the rule of law, the division of powers, and democratic voting procedures.
I challenge you to defend the proposition that the current administration is attempting to "prevent change by keeping all political dynamics under close control by a strong central power", while simultaneously clearly acting to undermine many parts of said authority. There are actions by every administration that appear to be "authoritarian" when taken in isolation.
The parts about erosion of rule of law, etc. are clearly also applied to the current administration, but again, are mostly debatable -- these EOs are either within the power of the executive under current law, or they're overturned by the courts. I openly grant that our legislative branch has been on a 50+ year mission to abdicate responsibility to the executive, but that's neither exclusive to the current administration, nor is it "authoritarianism" to use the authorities granted to you under the law, and again, it's not unique for US administrations to overstep the law and be pulled back by the judicial.
a quick google search for "modi authoritarian" would have given you tons of hits talking about it, with documented incidents and policies to back them up. calling it "just not liking modi" does the people justifiably alarmed about what he is doing to the country a great disservice.
That's precisely my point - people will call any country doing something that they dislike "authoritarian". There's no way for me to verify that without spending a bunch of time learning about what specifically Modi is doing that previous Indian political leaders weren't, and evaluate that in the context of Indian politics in general. This is a difficult enough problem when it comes to evaluating what political pundits are saying around your own country and society, and I am well aware that I don't have more than a cursory, outsider's understanding of anything at all that is actually going on in India.
Absolute bollocks, do you actually know anything about India and what's happening in the last 10 years. Easy being a keyboard warrior when you don't have to provide any justification.
What part is bollocks? Please enlighten me on what radical transformation has happened in the last 10 years to make India less authoritarian, I can only see it increasing in the last 10 years. And yes I am very aware of what is happening, having seen the ground reality in tons of different places both urban and rural.
Europe is generally hurtling towards fascism. Some examples:
- The UK government is busy outlawing free speech, protest and dissent. Because someone threw paint at a plane, you can now be jailed as a terrorist for saying "maybe we shouldn't drop bombs on babies in Gaza". The Labor government is an accident of the right-wing vote being split between the Conservatives and the even anti-migrant even-more-hard-right Reform party that absolutely won't be repeated in the next election;
- France is teetering on the edge of fasicsm as the "centrist" president Macron openly courts the neo-Nazi National Front rather than deal with Melenchon despite his alliance getting the most votes in the last election. It's worth adding that National Front was founded by actual collaborators with the occupying Nazi party in Vichy France;
- Germany has its own Islamophobic anti-immigrant neo-Nazi party that is hurtling towards attaining power: AfD;
- Hungary is already an authoritarian right-wing state.
And literally nobody is working to defuse this bomb by addressing the underlying causes: increasing wealth inequality and declining material conditions, even in otherwise relatively progressive countries like Ireland and Spain.
So what you see and object to in the US is nothing more than Europe's future in 5-10 years if nothing changes.
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, using HN primarily for political/ideological battle, and ignoring our request to stop. Not cool.
You’re using the term “democracy” in an Orwellian way. The people voted for the guy who promised mass deportations. There were signs and everything. Multiple surveys have found that, if everyone had voted, he would have won by an even larger margin. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec...
A non-functioning democracy would be if the people voted this way and mass deportations didn’t happen. Like how immigration went up in the UK after Brexit.
Democracy isn't supposed to be two wolves and a sheep voting on who to eat for dinner. There are supposed to be checks and balances.
One reason we are in the current situation is because we have discarded these checks and balances, allowing for the president to behave more like an autocratic monarch. If the other branches of government were performing their constitutional function, and if the executive observed the norms it's supposed to that's when you would have a democracy not just in letter but in spirit.
(Ironically I myself am an immigrant and a naturalized citizen, yet I find I know more about American civics than most US-born.)
No, democracy is supposed to be two wolves and a sheep voting on who to eat for dinner. What you’re talking about are the anti-democratic measures the founders put in place because they didn’t trust democracy.
Look, it’s hardly settled that “democracy” is a good thing. The founders didn’t think it was—they restricted the franchise to property owners, and provided for indirect election of the president and appointment of senators by stage legislatures. Just be candid about what you’re arguing, because these distinctions matter. Jacksonian Democracy has a theory of how decisions are legitimized—by the support of the masses. If you believe that the government should sometimes do something different than what the masses want, then you need to articulate a theory for who should make those decisions and what confers legitimacy on those decisions.
> No, democracy is supposed to be two wolves and a sheep voting on who to eat for dinner.
The senate is exactly the sheep. That the senate is now controlled by the sheep is also wild. The senate is what gives a person in Wyoming has 4x the voting power of someone in California. The senate was designed so that the less populous states (the sheep) don't get rolled. That the senate is majority minority is wild.
The Senate is orthogonal to our discussion. It implements the federalist structure of our government, representing the states themselves. That’s why the state legislatures originally appointed Senators. We have muddled up the system through direct election of senators and should probably repeal the 17th amendment.
You seem to be under the mistaken belief that democracy means deciding policy based on opinion polls. This is not how democracies work in practice, and opinion polls often show that most people don't want policy dictated solely by opinion polls.
Democracy is a governmental system where political power is vested in the people. It is characterized by competitive elections and the safeguarding of human rights[1].
It is by definition undemocratic for two wolves and a sheep to vote for who to eat for dinner. It is undemocratic to have gerrymandering. It is undemocratic to have uncompetitive primary elections. It is undemocratic for the police to quell protests. It is undemocratic to have state-backed propaganda, censorship, and misinformation.
Maintaining a democracy necessitates maintaining its institutions. An authoritarian one-party state does not magically become democratic just because it has an election or manufactures support for its project. Elections are an insufficient condition for democracy.
Which is also why it is a Republic and not a democracy. I wonder why people continue to call it a democracy even when they know that it isn’t. I guess it is just a sticky name
That is exactly what Democracy is. The only difference is people that are now complaining have, up until recently, actually been "the wolves", and now that they're outnumbered on certain topics and country-wide decisions they complain about the concept itself.
How do you think the people on the other side have felt till now?
The checks and balances only acted as a way to hide the true nature of government.
No, I'm using democracy in the regular way that ordinary people use it: representation through a voting process, non violent transfer of power because it is better than the altneratives. That means that you expect your government to take care to some degree of the interests of all subjects, not just of those that happen to be 'on top' in this cycle.
Your endless efforts at pretending that this kind of cruelty is what 'America' wants - rather than that it is just a reflection of what you want - are painting the majority of the country with a color of paint they do not deserve.
You speak for yourself, and as such you have - repeatedly, incessantly - shown yourself to be roughly HN's resident Ali Alexander. I refuse to believe that the majority of the United States voted consciously for 'mass deportations', and everybody that is cheering this one should think carefully at which point they will find themselves on the receiving end of the cruelty.
I suspect that you will continue to dig in on this until the very moment that you become personally affected, and maybe, just maybe then you'll have the guts to admit that you were wrong all along.
You're using "Orwellian" in an Orwellian way. What do mass deportations have to do with this bizarre sudden policy change that leaves people scrambling with a 15 hour window? You're claiming this is exactly what people had in mind when they voted?
Anyone who had paid attention to Trump’s track record should have expected chaos. Along with the ability to pay Trump to be spared from the chaos. Temporarily, at least.
Democracy is broken because here's a candidate whose entire premise (that America somehow isn't great and needs to be made great again) is made-up, and a significant proportion of the population just believe it.
When 51% of the eligible voters voters cast their votes to genocide the remaining 49% percent of eligible voters (which is not what happened of course), it doesn't matter whether genocide actually happens or not to determine that it's not in fact a functioning democracy.
It sounds like a contradiction, but it's not, because the critique of a democratic society doesn't have to be limited to a decision process that leads to certain behavior, but both to the problem that triggered it and the solution that the system had produced.
Democracy is little more than a mechanism for non-violent transfer of power among elites.
We rely on things other than democracy to protect minorities. Institutions, laws, restraints on power; things the committed democrat believes are unjust constraints on the Will of the People.
That describes a perceived problem with democracy that’s addressed through various anti-democratic institutions.
That’s a fine position to have. But be candid that you’re arguing for anti-democratic institutions. It’s the same reasoning why, at the time of the founding, states restricted the franchise to property owners.
I propose a new form of government. I call it "liberal democracy". The gist is that when liberals are in power they make sure that fascist never get in power again. (So it's not a democracy, only in name.) E.g. they can make fascism illegal, and don't allow them to run for seats. This has the following advantages:
Over democracy: no danger for it to swing into fascism or autocracy.
Over autocracy: bad governments can be replaced.
Additionally, in practice, it should feel the same that we were having for ages when liberal parties were on power. (Proof?)
Probably this is the mythical "better than democracy" form of government that we are all waiting for?
I'll bite. Do they get to decide what "fascism" means and change it to mean whatever they want on a whim? It might be simpler to just say that they can make whomever they don't like today illegal and don't allow them to run for seats.
Exactly. "fascist" is just another insulting word these days, like "motherfucker". Let's make motherfuckers illegal, and don't allow them to run for seats.
Unless you mean the electoral college overriding popular vote nonsense, and disproportionate Senate power, which was there since the beginning, I don't know what you mean.
The voters apparently wanted more of this per the Nov 2024 elections, when we still had a credible election process.
I don't believe the average American cares about the concerns raised in this thread. Most of them don't have the slightest understanding of how their immigration system works.
I do think that no one would accept this kind of mismanagement if it were to affect them.
Let's say by executive order they make tax day Feb 1st on January 30th. And everyone who's late will pay a hefty fine.
See how that would go....
This is no way to make policy, no matter the form of government
"Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" has been sedition that has been let to spread and rot at our foundations for decades now, growing only stronger. There is absolute bedlam and insanity pushed to American voters, completely made up fictionalized reality, blasted out by Fox News and worse. People live in the most absurd hyperreal simulation, built entirely around hating government, disbelief of the state, and disdain for civil society civil rights and decency.
The extremeification of American politics by the right has totally crippled the state. Business can sometimes come in an extract wins for itself, but everyone else loses. The political gamesmanship begat by Hastert rule, where wins must never be bipartisan wins, has decayed the government, betrayed the nation.
I'm so so tired of such loud utterly decoupled unhinged sedition, against the state against reality.
My favorite recurring threads these days is a simple one: society that wants to keep functioning has to disincentivize baldfaced lying, especially by authorities
Aren't the left the ones making the claim posed by your opening sentence these days? Could you clarify whether it's seditious only when one side is making that claim or is the seditiousness of the claim group-independent?
>More than 89 percent of counties in the United States shifted in favor of former President Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election, according to a New York Times analysis of election results.
Possible but a simple software update can also do the trick. That's just a fact and the reason why no one should trust a democracy based on voting machines. Experts have been warning against voting machines for decades.
Do all the jurisdictions use the same software? It would surprise me if we are at that level of centralization, plus no discrepancies appeared between audited paper ballots and the software counts?
Lets be clear - the election was won on inflation. While a lot was said about 47th's previous record it was often brushed aside with - Sure, this was said last time too and he didn't do any of this. Its the same thing all over again, people crying wolf etc. There was even consternation about Project 2025 and many well minded people didn't believe it would be enacted.
Now the approval rating on handling of economy continues to fall day by day. Immigration was the strongest suit at +10 is now under water at -4.5.
That means while voters might have wanted something to be done about immigration but they might not wanted more of this. This will become clear only during the midterm elections. With all the efforts being made to gerrymander and gain as many seats as possible, it is good guess to say GOP also realize that people didn't want more of this - and the only way now is to hold on to power by any means necessary.
So, that it allows others to say - This government was elected in Nov 2024 and if they are doing this terrible thing then surely people have voted for this.
I don’t give voters that much benefit of the doubt.
They saw a man (and party) make baseless accusations to overturn an election, openly support a terrorist attack on the government, and campaign on freeing those terrorists and punishing those who went after the terrorists.
And they decided this man was better than a woman, especially a black woman. Because he was a man. I’ve been told this even by a few older women, that a woman leader didn’t sit right with them. And they were non white immigrants!
This is all ignoring the myriad sex crimes, fraud, and general lack of integrity of the man.
I don't think this is a bill, just part of a series of proclamations he sprays around to get tied up in courts and then revoked by the next adult in the office. Legislation takes serious time and work and discipline, but it can be lasting in a way this isn't. This is a failed marshmallow test.
Do Americans even want functioning bureaucracy? I'm starting to doubt they realize just how complex a modern democracy is, and how many moving parts need to work _just right_ for there to be jobs, money, media, law and order, free speech etc.
A presidential candidate should be able to campaign on "normal foreign relations", "independent authorities", "functioning government", "decorum in politics", "balanced budget", etc. shouldn't they? Maybe 10 years ago that would seem like obvious things you wouldn't mention. But now you should be able to win an election on _only_ that.
Cold war Reagan who stood up to Russia/China, generally represented American interests, and led - regardless of many disagreeing with him politically? No, this is that party having gone insane from stewing in reactionary talk radio for decades in a cycle of getting angrier while being repeatedly suckered into supporting more specious policies that leave them worse off.
The Republican party had been farming this hate in its talk radio cage, and only extracting its energy to support the status quo. Social media came along and opened the door to the cage, while Trump led it out with open arms. The spiral of harmful policy <-> more blind anger is now moving faster and faster.
Notice how these policies are focused on making pain for the individual visa holders, not the companies employing them. This $100k/H1B thing was the very first bit I've seen from this Trump term that I thought sounded halfway reasonable. But then rather than an announcement ahead of time with a clear implementation date, allowances for current H1B residents to either find amenable companies or prepare to leave, etc - it's just pure immediate pain for the individuals. Including making them more indentured as I'm sure many employers will tell employees that they're not going to pay the $100k fee so their employment effectively ends if they leave the country for any reason. (and also at this point who doesn't expect the policy to be relaxed in 3-12 months for politically-favored bigcos?)
It's just like the LG factory raid - attacking the individual workers in a show of performative cruelty, rather than focusing on the company. Trump has already been talking about creating programs to allow illegal labor to continue in "critical" industries such as landscaping, construction, farming, etc. Because when the rubber meets the road those are his own interests, even if his primary business has moved on to taking bribes in shitcoins.
Sure, but there was more to Reagan than that, right? Actual constructive things meant to help at least some interests of this country, even if his definition of country left out a lot of people.
The point is that the only thing left in this mob is the racism/xenophobia with desire for cruelty. None of these policies fix our economy or help our country, especially with how they're capriciously implemented.
The same people that spent twenty years shipping our industry to China have now pivoted to closing the door and saying don't come back. And the gullible revanchist patsies are right back to cheering them on as long as they see the "right" people getting hurt.
It certainly felt as if behind the Republican party of yesteryear, there were some real values and ideals that benefited the nominally American status quo power structure. Maybe I've just fallen for the whitewashing.
H1Bs are slave labor and the program is used primarily by sweat shop consultancies who pay them less than Americans. This will be incredible for Americans looking for work. They don't have to compete with artificially cheap workers.
> This will be incredible for Americans looking for work.
No, it won’t, jobs (especially local jobs) aren’t a fixed commodity that are going to get filled. This will kill jobs overall, and result in more of the jobs (including jobs that didn't take H-1Bs to fill but were associated with businesses that had such positions) that remain being outside of the US as a direct result, and those direct US job losses will knock-on effects that will kill even more US jobs.
There is not a single company where US citizens that are identically leveled peers are paid $300k where H1bs are paid $120k. Places where citizens get paid $300k, H1Bs are making the same money because it’s illegal to to discriminate based on nationality or visa status when it comes to pay.
And, corollary: the places that pay their H1Bs crap also pay everyone else crap, because they are run by greedy people who try to tilt the entire business in their favor.
while its true that at hiring time, companies have to pay the same, any visa is friction to changing job, so the h1 salaries will lag behind citizen and greencard holders' pay
Nah. The “friction” is overstated. H1Bs face the same labor conditions as rest of the folks. When the market is great, you can shop around and make a lot of money. When the market is bad and you stay put, most of the other employees are doing the same. The caveat: I’m not talking about the consultancies that abuse the system, which we can all agree are bad and their employees usually will have a hard time finding other roles.
If you get fired or laid off, you only have 60 days to find a new job or be deported. Also depending on where you are in the green card process, you can lose your place.
This creates an incentive for H-1B workers to tolerate working conditions that American workers wouldn't.
Again, if you have terrible work conditions, you as an H1B have the same options as US citizens. You look for a different job and maybe suck it up for a couple of months, just like a US citizen would.
And while yes, if have an ongoing green card process which takes 12-18 months, you may have an incentive to stick around to see it to completion, anyone who has their I-140, does not actually “lose their place” in the green card process. They can file for a new I140 and retain their place in the queue by retaining the priority date from the previous application.
If you think US citizens don’t stick around for a bit in a shitty job for a variety of reasons, then you’d be lying. People (including US citizens) don’t just quit jobs whenever they want without a plan like you’re making it sound. At least not ones that carry a reasonable wage, health insurance and other benefits. Again, all with the caveat of me not talking about consulting firms, which obviously don’t exactly have the best workplace environments.
As I posted in another thread people seem to be stuck on this point.
Lets agree - some H1B was exploited by sweat shop consultancies who pay less than Americans. And this might be incredible for Americans looking for work.
But in what world does this kind of policy implementation is justified? How is this a functioning bureaucracy in a functioning democracy where people can suffer like this?
Exactly. At this point, I think American businesses need to be forced back toward hiring Americans at legal gunpoint, with the exception of extremely high-skill immigrants (we still need to attract brains). But of course there was never a chance in hell this administration could implement such a complex thing without glaring holes, incompetence, and cruelty.
When I think of slavery I usually think of working for free, not H1B tech worker salaries which are insanely high on a global scale. It's also something people actively sign up for.
To echo a sibling comment: freedom, not salary, is under question. Agreement should not be given one time at sign up, it needs to be given continuously. High cost associated with being compelled to leave the country upon quitting, low mobility between employers, etc. reduce that freedom.
Quick googling (could be wrong), thousands bought freedom, approx 4 million were enslaved. It would have been uncommon, ballpark 0.1% (which still seems high to me. The issue is a very large denominator)
This has very strong "cruelty is the point" vibes.
There are a fair bit of international flights in the 10-12 hour range. Add some time to pack, get to airport, baggage check, get through security & how the flight times line up and this seems calculated in a way that is precisely not doable. Never mind people not perpetually online and only seeing this a couple hours later
Meanwhile there is to my knowledge no reason why this couldn't have been 48 hours. Still fast, but doable for anyone suitably determined.
This should be a bill introduced in Congress, discussed in committee, voted on, and enacted with a date months in the future when it goes into effect, so that people, companies and government agencies can prepare and plan ... you know like an country with laws and procedures.
Yes, no way that any of this isn't finely calibrated to cause maximum misery. I was on the wrong side of the border when 9/11 happened, for months a whole chunk of my life was in limbo. Thanks to giving my bookkeeper emergency power of attorney in just such an eventuality we managed to squeak through but if not for that bit of foresight I'm not sure if we would have.
Wild. I flew domestically about a week after 9/11 and forgot that I had my leatherman in my pocket until I got to security... and the xray operator didn't see it in my backpack.
Oh that could have ended quite differently. I've had stuff that looked on second thought very much like explosive devices (little black boxes with a bunch of wires sticking out, internal pouch batteries) in my luggage on more than one occasion. I never so much as got a peep out of anything like that. But for some reason my elderly laptop is a real magnet for official attention and there is absolutely nothing non-stock about that one.
They always do this because they know their EOs are legal overreaches and will be heavily challenged, but want to set the status quo to enforcing and normalizing the new policy as early as possible. They don't want to give their opponents any advance notice to organize or petition against their actions. Same story with deporting Kilmar Garcia in a hurry. I don't think the cruelty is the point exactly, but it's certainly a bonus for them.
I’m also confused as to why this is Microsoft-only advice. It keeps sounding like the proclamation involves adjusting an administrative fee for new visas (which, I guess, must be how it bypasses normal rulemaking procedures?).
How does that result in a fee for re-entering on a valid existing visa? Is this less about formal policy and more about Microsoft hedging against the possibility of chaotic and arbitrary enforcement? Which seems not-unlikely when a large bureaucracy has a rule change dropped on it with 24 hours to implement…
I am firmly convinced this came from Stephen Miller (current homeland security advisor). Unnecessary cruelty to legal immigrants is his trademark style.
> This has very strong "cruelty is the point" vibes.
Hanlon's razor. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Regardless of what you think about the wisdom of the policy itself, implementing it rapidly is...probably not the best decision. But it's also par for the course for this administration.
It's not clear to me that this is an intended consequence of the policy change, or just Microsoft's attorneys being conservative in the face of chaos. A plain-text reading of the EO does not support the interpretation that people with existing H1B visas would be subject to the restrictions, but rather, seems like an ambiguity in the wording that a conservative lawyer could interpret in that manner:
> 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.
Unfortunately I think there is enough track record that the administration no longer has benefit of doubt from Hanlon's razor. e.g.
>“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains."
So basically, you don't know, and you're violating Hanlon's razor because you think its wrong this time.
The fact that this administration routinely implements policies of all types in this way suggests that rambunctious implementation is the default explanation for any particular outcome.
Hanlon's razor is a good baseline when you have no information pointing to either option.
But when you have an administration that climbs onto a podium and announces they want to traumatize people, that's a pretty direct admission of malice in my books. You're free to conclude we're just seeing a string of repeated stupidity, but frankly I think it's incredibly naive to still given them the benefit of doubt.
> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
How is this adequately explained by stupidity? Sincerely, I truly cannot imagine anyone in the US government is stupid enough to think "15 hours is enough time". This is like, 3rd grade levels of thought.
You're confusing facts with the opinions of others.
Read the EO. There's literally nothing in the EO stating that pre-existing visa holders are subject to the new rules. Someone else is interpreting the EO, and you're assuming that their opinion is the correct interpretation.
The language of the EO isn't clear, that's the point. Unless the administration comes out with clarification and guidance on what and who is in scope, then one can only assume either maliciousness or incompetence.
In the plain text manner. To me the more relevant portion is this:
> ...except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000
Again, just doing a plain text reading, this seems to be intended to apply to new applicants, but they didn't explicitly spell it out. It's the sort of thing that would be debated endlessly in the rounds of legal review that accompany a...more traditional...change to law, but when done quickly via EO tends to get overlooked.
I see, you're saying the stupidity here is that they didn't clarify whether it applies to existing holders. Given that possible explanation-via-stupidity, it's unlikely that it was pure malice. I actually think you make a good point. I think the proposed method-via-stupidity is important for understanding your initial claim, I doubt many people have read the EO (indeed many will not even read the linked article)
Yeah, exactly. Given the text of the EO plus the public statements about it from the administration, it sounds like an ambiguous drafting, coupled with lawyers doing what they do best (i.e. the most conservative possible interpretation of any ambiguity).
It was never not visible, but it did set off the flamewar detector, which downweighted it off the front page. We eventually turned that penalty off.
Btw, I've changed the HN title to reflect the article's title now. Submitted title was "Visa holders on vacation have 15 hours to return to US or pay $100k fee". I don't know if the article said that when you submitted it (news outlets sometimes update article titles as more information emerges), or if you rewrote the title, but if it was the latter, please don't do that—it's against HN's guidelines. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
It does make one wonder why the democrats insist on putting women and racial minorities forward as presidential candidates. Yes, it shouldn’t matter but it apparently really does and was that the hill we wanted to die on? Handing the presidency to Trump?
A reminder that just because we may feel sorry for these H1B people caught up in this administration’s shenanigans, it does not mean we have to be overly supportive of the H1B program in general.
If it ends, it ends. There’s plenty of American CS graduates desperate for jobs here at home too. Tired of hearing stories about people who have been unable to land any kind of CS job due to low hiring and AI making them irrelevant. We need to support these people and H1B programs absolutely don’t help. I hope the foreigners will understand, and not take it too personally.
edit: but also, if you’re an H1B who gamed the system through consulting agencies to beat the lottery, screw you. Your fraud has taken opportunities from both, Americans and legit H1B applicants.
>Some employers have exploited the program to hold down wages, disadvantaging U.S. workers,
Change "Some" to "All major employers". I worked at a fortune 500 company in IT and all they hired were H1B employees over the past 15/20 years. The last raise we got that was above inflation and health insurance increases was before 2000. I left 2 years ago and after I left they fired almost everyone in the IT Dept I was in and replaced them with H1B.
So I hope this sticks. Plus remember, H1B people should make a fair wage too, all too often their salary is set by their contracting firm and is far far lower then what we got.
As someone who previously worked in US with H1Bs who were making well over half a million, I doubt your statement. I have moved out of the US a few years back though.
But regardless, I sincerely hope this policy sticks without any loopholes. This policy will only incentivise companies to move more of their operations to other countries and only keep the bare minimum in US to keep their US business thriving.
As someone who worked with mulitple H-1Bs making less than their peers, I believe his statement.
This visa is very two faced. One hand, it's been used to import some really smart people into the United States who have gone on to do incredible things. Other hand, it's been used for job replacement by "native" workers who can do the job but were "too expensive".
I've worked with and hired people on H1B. At least from my experience they're treated (from a job offer perspective) just like any other candidate. Some get bigger offers because they negotiate well, are in high demand positions etc and some don't. There was no lowballing candidates because they're on H1B or need sponsorship.
Then that's your experience. I've worked with H-1B where their salary was lowballed or job title was. Not to mention the difficulty in switching jobs and 5 years in, they were severely underpaid.
My original comment about being two faced I still stand by.
It is absolutely not all major employers. I'm on a visa and have worked for two major tech companies in the US over the last 10 years. I have never been a contractor. I've also compared salaries and know I am doing comparable or better. The majority of my team have always been naturalized citizens.
I guess it's safe to say there won't need to be an H1B lottery next year.
I do think we need a visa category for people who have completed an education in the US. Yes, there's OPT for certain fields for F1 visa holders but it's not enough.
But all that's a part of broader immigration reform that simply won't happen, particularly in this political climate.
As horrible as this all is for those affected, particularly for people who have been waiting patiently in line for 10-20 years, it's also true that:
1. There absolutely is H1B visa abuse, specifically by the bodyshops like Infosys and Tata;
2. H1Bs are used to suppress wages for the entire workforce; and
3. In an era of permanent layoffs and high unemployment in the tech sector, preference should absolutely be given to existing US permanent residents and citizens. That's the declared intent of the H1B program but the reality hasn't really worked that way.
The employers have brought this on themselves and ordinary people will suffer because of it. I do think that if you layoff more than 2% of your staff in any given year, you should be unable to sponsor any visa for a period of 2+ years.
This isn't a big deal for the larger tech companies other than a short term pain in the ass.
This is a large net negative for 3 sectors that I can currently think of:
- American (software) tech workers
- Healthcare
- Research / Postgrad
Medicine and Research are fairly self explanatory, however, why the American software tech worker?
Let's say you're Microsoft, you have large offices all over the world - instead of hiring in the US and making those departments in US offices bigger, you're going to instead hire in probably the following places:
- UK
- Australia
- South Asia
It means less focus in the US which eventually will just become sales and marketing only with perhaps some smaller department sized tech jobs.
Another great Trump strategy that appears to be helping the poor whites but actually shafts them.
Even better than this actually is a one time relocation cost, you retain the domain knowledge of the employee and send someone elsewhere where they can keep working.
I think the focus should be first and foremost on the damage to personal relationships rather than their ability to keep working, even if that will become more important soon after. You can't just drop crap like this on people without warning, this whole governing by proclamation is idiotic.
This is absolutely a mean AF law. This is pure Trump in his element with no depth of thought. However Big Tech does not care about your feelings, there are two realistic options.
To send you back where you came from (severance).
To send you somewhere where you have the ability to keep doing what your doing.
Some may fork out the fee for a year for exceptional staff, thats about it.
Anyway, forget the tech sector. The impact to the health care sector is even worse.
Yes, from the US economy's point of view this is a massive own goal. But I'm far more concerned with the people affected than with the US economy or the companies. Having to re-schedule your life on a 48 hour notice is a very hard problem in logistics, finances and various paper tigers. I'd focus on personal safety first and sort out the details bit-by-bit, the one thing I would not do is to try to get back in to the USA in a situation where I would expose my family to ICE and their penchant for cruelty. Anything better than that.
Can you elaborate more on hiring and immigration in the United Kingdom and Australia with respect to similar skilled visa work?
When you say South Asia could you expand on what specific countries you mean? I think South Asia could mean a few things to a few different people which is why I ask.
> It means less focus in the US which eventually will just become sales and marketing only with perhaps some smaller department sized tech jobs.
As an American I'm curious about this, can you expand on how this will happen or how you think it might happen? If I recall correctly the figure for active H1B visa holders in the United States is under 1 million, so are you asserting that those visa holders all or mostly leave the United States and then the tech jobs that remain will be small in number are most folks working at companies like Google or Microsoft will just be working in sales and marketing? If that's not what you meant to say could you expand?
> Can you elaborate more on hiring and immigration in the United Kingdom and Australia with respect to similar skilled visa work?
> When you say South Asia could you expand on what specific countries you mean? I think South Asia could mean a few things to a few different people which is why I ask.
I was in the process of moving one engineer from Dubai to Manchester, probably all in the process is £20,000-£30,000 overall, spread over several years.
South Asia is India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Predominantly this is India and Pakistan though.
> As an American I'm curious about this, can you expand on how this will happen or how you think it might happen?
Best guess, those software engineering departments with predominantly South Asian engineers will cease to exist, they'll buy real estate in London/Sydney which is a much better long term investment because London prices always go up.
Severance is also REALLY easy in the US compared to countries where actual labour laws exist.
Sales and Marketing will stay, they probably need that American presence, they don't need that in software engineering because the Internet exists.
Speaking purely from the UK perspective, London is expensive, however, real estate should not be seen as a cost for a large company, it's an investment. Price increases on office real estate on a year-to-year basis just in London is 5-10% per square metre.
For the UK this is amazing news, it also allows for places like Birmingham and Manchester to get a significant boost.
Coincidentally American tech workers just accompanied Trump to the UK where they promised to setup massive new offices. Even more coincidentally the UK just concluded a trade deal with India that includes easier work related immigration into the UK…
I'm not American, but with how many software engineers having gotten laid off over the last 4 years, reducing foreign workers competing for the same positions should be a given from the perspective of governing a nation.
I'm surprised how divisive such a decision seems to be considering our current reality of a contracting industry (employment wise)
This is anecdote, but majority of the folks that Microsoft has on H1B from India are people who were hired in India in the first place and were allowed to move over because it was “worth it”. Microsoft specifically will be fine with Indian H1Bs even if they don’t want to pay $100k.
Let's be real here, the metric the foreign workers are mainly competing on is price.
The average tech immigrant is not particularly more bright then the average native dev, and the truly outstanding ones can still be given entrance just my paying 100k - which should be entirely neglectable for world class talent.
The H1 system requires the sponsoring company to prove there are no available US citizen candidates. Perhaps the appropriate move would be to look at eliminating fraud in that area. If there are large numbers of available qualified candidates then under the existing system H1-B applications should drop to zero.
Indians would rather import more Indians than hire anybody else (including Indian Americans) domestically. This is well understood by looking at lawsuits against WITCH companies, and by speaking with anyone who has seen what happens when an Indian attains a leadership role in a tech company. That’s why you get downvoted and suspect it’s controversial. It’s not controversial to anyone but Indians.
If the $100k fee was then designated for STEM scholarships for underserved students, this policy would be continued even by the democrats. If the justification of H1B is that the US does not produce enough engineers, let’s financially encourage the domestic supply.
Many of the benefits are degraded or destroyed when the game is shifted immediately and drastically. People fear the game may experience more seismic shifts, so they don't take chances or make major investments.
Even if you like this policy as an end goal, the implementation is pants on head stupid.
It's true they may agree in principle that the program needs reform. But culture war isn't policy. The actual policy implementation would look very different when motivated by good faith vs. hating brown people.
A lot of aggrieved comments blaming US leadership, but nary a word about the leadership of countries which create conditions that people have to emigrate from.
Populations of most countries offshore the blame for the lack of economic opportunity or social conditions where they live. I don’t blame the common folk, it’s the leaders and elite of such places who are responsible for their countries relative success or failure.
> but nary a word about the leadership of countries which create conditions that people have to emigrate from.
Because we in the US largely care about making our country better. And pulling the best and brightest out of other countries has historically been considered a good deal for us or even an explicit 'Brain Drain the Soviets' strategy.
This admin and the people in charge today have forgotten about this and now we are left with our multi decade system getting wrecked.
Except the U.S. right now is nothing like what the USSR was under the Soviets, at least not for people who are in the U.S. via proper and lawful immigration protocols. The bent towards Christian nationalism may covert the US into an unviable USSR-like environment for a majority of its population, including whites and Christians. But I don’t think that scenario is likely given the range of leadership available to the U.S. I guess it depends on how the next two years unfold, maybe I’ll stand corrected.
Regarding brain drains, why is it so bad if the best and most productive of another country stay in their home states, or go else where? The fact is that there are a lot of nations which experience relatively low rates of immigration, but are at the forefront of science and tech, such as China or Japan or Singapore. Maybe brain drains are not the main concern here, if anything the idea is a distraction.
Some people just emigrate without lack of economic opportunity or social conditions. I have a German friend living in Japan because he's curious about Japan (he previously lived in the UK).
The US is responsible for the economic problems of many of those countries. To give an example, whether or not you agree with what the US is doing to Venezuela, all the sanctions have caused mass migrations out of that country and into ours.
> The H-1B is a classification of non-immigrant visa in the United States that allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations, as well as fashion models and employees engaged in Department of Defense projects who meet certain conditions
This is not about emigration. Frankly, as a European I would find moving to the US a serious downgrade in living quality.
With the ungodly level of poverty upper-class Indians are used to stepping over back at home, it's no wonder that there's no consideration given to working people here.
We hopefully have a different ethical structure. Extreme racists are largely a minority in the west, whereas birth naturally defining your life is simply common sense in some of the countries that we accept the most immigrants from. I'd be more inclined to accept people who are escaping that structure (like Mexicans, for example, who are running over the border instead of flying into six-figure jobs), but those who are coming here are from the class who have the most say in the conditions of the poor in their own countries.
The descendants of compradors, still winning, but playing the racist card because they know the US is still sensitive about what they did to black people, and how they never made up for it. Most of the immigrants I know are racist, and will explain why not being racist is stupid, at length.
https://x.com/PressSec/status/1969495900478488745
1.) This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition.
2.) Those who already hold H-1B visas and are currently outside of the country right now will NOT be charged $100,000 to re-enter.
H-1B visa holders can leave and re-enter the country to the same extent as they normally would; whatever ability they have to do that is not impacted by yesterday’s proclamation.
3.) This applies only to new visas, not renewals, and not current visa holders.
It will first apply in the next upcoming lottery cycle.
Info from customs agents at airport is aligned with this statement. Specifically that it does NOT apply to current visa holders. How consistent that is, no idea.
A "White House Official" may be saying this now, but it is not what was in the EO that was actually signed. There were no exclusions for current holders, and the start date was explicitly September 21, 2025 (a date that does apply to the "next lottery").
They are more than welcome to roll back this asinine decision, but pretending that everyone else is just mis-interpreting is gaslighting.
Either way, until there is an official, in-writting announcement that can be depended on, no one should be taking the advice of an unnamed White House source.
In any situation, your best bet is to follow the direction and guidance of your own attorney.
I agree with the first part, but for the second, this is not an unnamed WH source, it is the Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
I was not aware that she had made this statement as well. All previous reporting from this morning seemed to report back to a Business Insider article that cited only an "unamed White House official who has been granted anonymity to speak on the issue". I missed that it was a reference to a tweet from her specifically (as opposed to one of the countless other accounts copy/pasting this everywhere).
Note that Leavitt's words are any more enforceable though.
They don't tell her everything. She was clueless before.
We have seen Trump making decisions that surprised his closest aids.
The problem here is that the proclamation says otherwise. It doesn't include any exception for current holders
Trump has the legal authority to block anyone from entering for essentially any reason (see Trump v Hawaii)
So it doesn't matter much what the white house says today. They are free to change their minds tomorrow. That's part of the strategy, if immigrants are afraid they will be arbitrarily extorted at the border, then only the ones whose employers have bribed Trump will even bother applying
Who knows what will happen next? Maybe his base will be unhappy with the current format, start a social media campaign and make the WH post even better clarification that explains exactly the opposite.
They flip flopped on the foreign employees in hospitality and food production. The policies are driven by outrage, crypto purchases and early investors like Project2025 apparently. I don't think that there's any guaranties.
Nothing in the executive order says that those who already hold visas will not be charged, or that it will applies to new visas. And one can pretty much be sure that omitting that fact in the initial executive order announcement is intentional, because this administration wants chaos.
UK around Brexit time thought kind of similar: let's keep the "riffraff" immigrants out by applying higher criteria. The narrative also changed this way: we don't want immigrants in general, but you, with your highly paid PhD-requiring job, you can go in, on a 2 year rolling basis. Then everyone's a winner, except for unwanted, unskilled labour.
But a lot of skilled labour left anyway. Partly because the general atmosphere got unpleasant. But also highly paid people have spouses, children, parents and other relatives. Once you are told you barely cleared (very high) criteria, you can be pretty sure your retired parents won't, if ever you need them to move in with you.
So the effect may well be that the kind of people whose productivity and tax bracket makes a 100k fee justifiable simply choose to go elsewhere.
Especially when the administration makes their contempt for any rights they have so obvious.
Immigration exploded after Brexit. While the official line was "Let's keep the riffraff out". the reality was that the Tories used Brexit to bring in plenty of cheap labour from specific countries, and the income requirements are applied very selectively.
Foreign students were also encouraged to study here and remain after studying. Initially even family reunion immigration was encouraged, although that's changed now.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/5579/live/8ea3a...
The UK has been playing this game for centuries - bringing in cheap foreign labour on the quiet, then using that as political leverage with "We will protect you from the foreign invasion" messaging.
And yet, insanely, the Tories still get called "anti-immigration".
They were the most pro-immigration government in British history, by far.
Another explanation is that they were 100% anti-immigration but also 200% incompetent at implementing their own goals.
Rather than being honest with people about the pros (of which there are many) and cons (of which there are some) of migration, the conservative government increased migration while telling people they were reducing it. That is malice, rather than incompetence. And now, here we are, facing the very really really possibility of loathsome grifter Farage as Prime Minister.
Polling in the US has swung in favor of immigration:
> a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.
It’s hard to separate what’s supported by the public and what are random hobby horses of the far right once they get in power.
Because the US has historically been relatively more positive to immigration I am skeptical that we would see the same reaction as in the UK or other countries in the long run (in the short term, it’s all a sht show)
https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigratio...
> Polling in the US has swung in favor of immigration
Don't forget to quote the parts that contradict your statement:
> After climbing to 55% in 2024, the percentage of Americans who say immigration should be reduced has dropped by nearly half to 30%. Sentiment is thus back to the level measured in 2021, before the desire for less immigration started to mount. Meanwhile, 38% now want immigration kept at its current level, and 26% say it should be increased.
Overall, this poll paints a picture of moderation from a period of anti-immigrant sentiment, not of a population that has "swung in favor of immigration", as you assert.
(It also has nothing to do with H1B visas specifically. As far as I can tell, it's almost entirely about illegal immigration.)
With polls the questions you ask matter a lot. I don't read this poll as being about illegal immigration but someone else might (e.g. you did). That is worth splitting out as a separate question. But asking that risks getting answers you don't like, e.g. my bet would be most Americans would not support the idea that anyone can just come and stay in the US illegally without going through any process, i.e. an open border policy. My bet would also be that most Americans would support immigration of highly skilled labor or certain other professions given the right processes in place and demand for those. There are probably other ways to slice and dice this question to get a deeper understanding of how people think about this.
It would also be nice if the poll probed as to the reasons for why people hold certain opinions. My guess would be the numbers are changing partly due to political backlash and not due to some economical or social insight.
The good thing about this poll is that the same questions are asked over time. So likely the trends are real. It's just hard to get a more nuanced understanding.
> I don't read this poll as being about illegal immigration but someone else might (e.g. you did).
Almost every question was about illegal immigration. They ask some top-level questions about overall immigration, then ask a series of other questions about illegal immigration, border enforcement, etc.
I just read through all the questions again.
There are questions about people present in the US illegally but not about people being allowed to come to the US illegally.
When I say illegal immigration I'm mostly thinking of the question of whether people should be allowed to come into a country illegally and generally immigration laws that govern people immigrating to the country. The question of how to deal with people who are present, maybe for a long time, in the country illegally is a different one. But I can see how in the US those are sort of mashed together. There's an obvious relationship, e.g. if you say that someone present in a country illegally should be allowed to stay and become a citizen that basically means new people arriving (let's say as tourists or not entering via official entry points) can just stay and become citizens. But I think in the US it's generally debated as two separate questions, i.e. people that are present (especially for a long time, families, etc.) should have a path to become legal immigrants. I'm not here to really debate this but more to point out those are somewhat different questions.
Let's review everything just to make sure we're not missing anything:
"Thinking now about immigrants — that is, people who come from other countries to live here in the United States — in your view, should immigration be kept at its present level, increased or decreased?" -> legal immigration (presumably, or at least ambiguous)
"On the whole, do you think immigration is a good thing or a bad thing for this country today?" -> legal immigration (again, presumably)
"Please tell me whether you strongly favor, favor, oppose or strongly oppose each of the following proposals. " -> This one is more of a mix but the question of whether people support illegal immigration isn't really addressed. There are questions about how people who are present in the US illegally should be treated and about things like border security which has some tangents to illegal immigration (presumably a border is there to stop illegal immigration, but also to stop smuggling and other reasons, but why not just ask if people want open borders?)
"Figures represent percentages who favor or strongly favor each policy." -> similar to the above, dealing with the question of those present in the US illegally not the question of more people coming into the US and whether that should be via current legal means or "open border everyone is welcome with no process".
"Do you strongly approve, approve, disapprove or strongly disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the immigration issue?" -> not really clear enough but feels like another permutation of the above. dealing with people present illegally and not general immigration policy questions (who should be able to come and who shouldn't).
> But a lot of skilled labour left anyway. Partly because the general atmosphere got unpleasant. But also highly paid people have spouses, children, parents and other relatives. Once you are told you barely cleared (very high) criteria, you can be pretty sure your retired parents won't, if ever you need them to move in with you.
Chain migration is an anti-immigration argument in the US - even if some particular immigrant is highly-skilled and would benefit the US from being a legal resident, that immigrant's family is probably not as impressive. Nonetheless, once the government gives legal residency to the highly-skilled immigrant, they will be highly motivated to try to get the rest of their family to the US as well. So the US should be careful about granting legal residency even to prospective immigrants whose credentials make them individually look good.
Yep, skilled people have options. When you are treating them as circus animals that constantly need to prove that they are worth the cage they will be put in and the food they will be fed, they just leave the circus.
Smart professional people desire non-hostile space where they can build a life. When a Russian scientist or Iranian doctor left their countries for London or Paris, they were't calculating for a net income increase, they were running away from an environment that didn't show a promise to allow them realize themselves. Lot's of white collar people are paid well below what they will make if they learn a JS library or do construction work because of their desire to fulfill themselves in a peaceful live and be respected. It is kind of similar to game devs being paid very little in respect to the complexity of the programming they do. If you break that magic, they aren't going to stay.
It wasn’t that similar though, because there was a long long period of transition, not “we are doing this on two days time and if you’ve not got £100k hard luck!”
It should be the most obvious thing in the world that whether you take a fundamentally welcoming and positive mindset towards people vs. a negative and unwelcoming mindset, the effects of either will propagate and magnify themselves over time.
But when you're insecure the feelings you get from the latter are more comforting in the short term.
The principle is better stated as "don't be an asshole".
HN's insistence on decorum is just really poorly suited to the moment.
I can assure you the decorum isn’t exactly being maintained and downvotes don’t exactly do much when there’s a consensus that a certain thing is okay to do.
This is probably a good thing for nations providing the bulk of high skilled labor, namely India and China. Their best and brightest will tend to leave less.
Much has been said about Trump, but his main quality is this: he's a foot-gun artist.
And I think it is significant to note that the foot-guns are intentionally foot-guns. Plausible, yet subtly and catastrophically bad solutions to real and imagined problems. Downward spirals for everyone! ...to create favorable conditions for further exploitation.
The H1-B country of origin numbers are a bit cooked because they track by country of birth, not country of application or citizenship
Could only find 2019 data:
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/h-1b...
> But a lot of skilled labour left anyway
The UK has had a "brain drain", but it's as much UK citizens as migrants. Economic migrants migrate.
> But also highly paid people have spouses, children, parents and other relatives. Once you are told you barely cleared (very high) criteria, you can be pretty sure your retired parents won't, if ever you need them to move in with you.
Skilled immigration is sold in almost all of the West as a necessary demographic cure. The classic "we're getting older and there is a labour shortage of working age people". The retired parents were never a part of the deal, and are of no interest to almost any Western country. Obvious given that it completely annihilates the justification for bringing people in in the first place.
So if these skilled workers aren't moving to the UK because they can't bring their retired parents, then presumably they aren't also choosing the US, Canada, Germany, etc., given the same situation.
Canada does have a family reunification program but it is not only spectacularly unpopular among the Canadian public and likely to fade away, it allows for a tiny number per year.
US allows unlimited chain migration for parents with short waiting period. Everyone brings their parents/siblings and put them on Medicaid/Obamacare, Section 8, etc right away. Technically sponsor is supposed to cover those benefits (and signs paper about that) but practically gov never tried to recover benefits (literally never).
There are not "high criteria" to immigrate to the UK post-Brexit. The minimum salary threshold is £26k, barely higher than minimum wage. The list of eligible occupations is a joke and includes such desperately understaffed occupations as "homeopaths" and "reiki healers". The skilled worker visa only requires B1 English, at which level you'll struggle to communicate in many professional settings. Net immigration (legal and illegal) exploded after Brexit and is still higher today than it was in 2016 when we had the vote.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
This, so much. Not the UK, but another western-European country that has slowly succumbed to right-wing rhetoric and fear-mongering. There, legal immigration has continuously been a boon to the economy, but each politician having had to "one-up" the previous one in terms of "tightening immigration" and "looking tough" has only made legal immigration increasingly miserable, and put off skilled/high-earning global workers whose presence was desired.
Of course, nothing has changed for the illegal ones: they haven't (and won't) see the increased burden of legal migration of which they are oblivious. Overall things are only getting worse, and I hate that there's no attempt to having a honest and transparent debate and discourse on the matter.
> you can be pretty sure your retired parents won't, if ever you need them to move in with you
The immigration system should be designed to block retired parents from moving country to live with their working age adult children who have migrated.
One reason to have immigration is to improve a country's dependency ratio: the ratio of working age population to children and retirees.
The ideal immigrants are young well-educated parents that can stay in the workforce for 40+ years with healthy children that are just about to enter the school system.
That way the receiving country didn't need to invest in educating the parents originally, don't need to pay the healthcare costs of very young infants, and it provides the best possible addition to the the receiving country's demographic structure so the host country benefits from a whole working life of tax payments and all the value created by their work output.
The economic case for even skilled immigration is far less compelling for a receiving nation without such restrictions on immigrating retirees.
Your ideal immigrants are young parents with healthy children, who are apparently willing to abandon their own parents? And somehow this is a good thing?
Abandon is the wrong word.
Should the country receiving the immigrants let elderly grandparents be cared for by their own country's pension and aged-care and healthcare industry, instead of burdening the receiving countries?
Absolutely unequivocally yes.
The grandparents can always come visit on tourist visas and the immigrants can visit their original country too.
What if, as a condition of the visa [0], the sponsoring high-performing immigrant guarantees that the relative won’t become a public charge, and becomes legally bound to reimburse the public purse if that happens?
I seem to recall the notion that elderly people are normally isolated, atomized wards of the “aged-care industry” as a relatively recent innovation, no? Versus people seeking to bring elderly relatives to reproduce the sort of multigenerational households that more traditionally handled aging care, and that do that today in other parts of the world?
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_charge_rule
The final years of healthcare for the elderly is unaffordabily expensive.
Nations are able to afford it with a healthy dependency ratio, but with the Baby Boom generation leaving the workforce, it will no longer be possible.
A young family who have recently migrated are saving for a house and college, to make them pay for a decade of end-to-life treatment (cancer treatment, dialysis) at United States price ranges is unaffordable even for very high income earners.
Remember the two parents have four grandparents, and two children (the receiving country would love for them to have a third).
That said, I am open to a special visa with a million dollar escrowed deposit per elderly parent to cover their healthcare. Without extreme restrictions they are bound to become a healthcare burden on the system.
Don’t the elderly people in question—where they or their sponsors can’t cover the cost—1) have their visa applications denied on public charge grounds, or 2) not receive those treatments?
I was of the impression that, in the US at least, such immigrants might be allowed to purchase Medicare if they’d been here for a long time and worked/paid payroll taxes for many years—but that they certainly wouldn’t qualify to get it for free in the way native-born people do. Native-born people with 10 years of formal employment, anyway.
Not sure how that works with Medicaid—it sounds like [1] some states have chosen to implement that in ways immigrants can access if they come in on green cards and spend their working lives in the US, paying in to the system—but that seems to me more like a local policy choice than a primary feature of the immigration system.
For that matter, in your formulation, should the working-age immigrants themselves, who permanently resettle and work their whole life in the US, be denied access to old-age benefits when the time comes?
[0] https://www.kff.org/faqs/medicare-open-enrollment-faqs/enrol...
[1] [PDF] https://www.health.ny.gov/health_care/medicaid/publications/...
Those rules are not enforced, every state has free (or almost free) healthcare that fresh immigrants are eligible for but sometimes they need to jump thru a few hoops. Many states have free “healthcare navigators” that will guide you how to jump thru those hoops.
> have their visa applications denied on public charge grounds
Oh, I wasn't familiar with the 'public charge' requirement of the US immigration system. That's excellent in principle, and wonderful if enforced adequately.
> Not sure how that works with Medicaid—it sounds like [1] some states have chosen to implement that in ways immigrants can access if they come in on green cards and spend their working lives in the US, paying in to the system—but that seems to me more like a local policy choice than a primary feature of the immigration system.
Yes, agree that's not a feature of the immigration itself but a local policy choice. Some states are very lax with Medicaid qualification rules eg, California recently expanding coverage to illegal immigrants with loosened criteria that legal immigrants won't qualify. I recall changes were made in response to federal tightening of rules. It's still a bad policy, but a local one.
> For that matter, in your formulation, should the working-age immigrants themselves, who permanently resettle and work their whole life in the US, be denied access to old-age benefits when the time comes?
No, one principle is they have paid into the system for a long period of time then they should of course be able to access benefits.
The other principle is by that time they are ready to retire they will certainly permanent residents but hopefully citizens, so not seen differently than other citizens.
Can you explain why "move to another country with your family, leaving your elderly parents to fend for themselves" is not abandoning ones parents? Most of the world doesn't believe that old people having a roof over their heads and access to healthcare is all it takes for them to not be considered abandoned.
Even moreso with arbitrary rule changes with zero deadlines meaning they can't even necessarily fly back in emergencies without risking losing their status in the US?
Generally speaking, those parents wouldn’t have the work history to qualify for SS benefits in the US. AND IIRC, they’d need some form of permanent residency to qualify for Medicare/Medicaid.
And the sponsoring immigrant would be responsible for the bill.
Technically yes but practically no. I did research - there were a few court cases in 60ies but after that gov gave up on trying to recover money.
Many Medicaid rules around minimum residency and work history are being (insanely) relaxed/removed. At least in California.
Based on my reading of the law, you can overstay a tourist visa and receive Medicaid coverage in California relatively quickly.
(But that's a different discussion)
Abandon seems to be the right word considering the context you have added.
Amusing that people like you get downvoted into oblivion and still think their opinions are unequivocal.
Hey, quick question: who founded America?
Initially? People looking for gold, silver, fur. Missionaries spreading the word of god, people escaping persecution of various sorts.
Are those the people Europe and the US are look to immigrate?
> Initially? People looking for gold, silver, fur.
For the most part it was companies looking for gold, furs etc, with the support of their governments. Companies founded the colonies and trading posts for the benefit of the stockholders and the governments. The consideration of colonists was a distant third. When the supply of easy marks dried up they turned to indentured labour and then slavery.
Did they bring their parents with them?
Can't pick and choose. Would you be ok with people escaping persecution or spreading their religion coming in the country if they don't bring their parents?
What point do you think you’re responding to exactly?
GP mentioned “abandoning your parents” when you immigrate as if that’s absurd. In reality it’s the most normal thing imaginable.
I know hundreds of people who live outside their home country and I can’t thing of a single one of them who took their parents with them. When does that ever happen?
Having non-working grand parents that can help with watching kids is a nice way to ensure you actually get more kids in the first place. No sane parents will make lots of babies if there is no one who can help them with babysitting. And no, just kindergarten is not sufficient.
It was nighttime in Singapore when the ruling was announced. My husband and I scrambled to find a flight back. The best we could find, at any price, lands 25mins after the deadline.
We are on our way there.
>lands 25mins after the deadline
I'd rather just have waited until an injunction or something next week. The guidance from my company is either make it back before the deadline, or stay where you are until further notice.
"Further notice" can easily be a firing notice.
I understand your position, but it's a bit of an privileged one. Not everybody will have that option.
Universal injunctions were nerfed by the Supreme Court this year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._CASA
I feel for you. I just wonder, at this point why would someone look to go back to the US "At any price", given how bad are they being treated? From what I can see, it seems most of us non-US people are "persona non grata" in the US.
I myself am and live in a so called "shithole country ". But specially because of my Technical skills, I've got plenty of opportunities over here. I would never think on living in the USA. Even though I easily could via TN visa. But it's clear US people dont want me living there.
Consider they have a life, a house/appartment, all things they own,… there. Would you give all that up without at least trying to get back?
And even if you decide it's time to leave, you'd still want to come back and settle your affairs and plan a proper move. You wouldn't want to leave everything behind, especially if you only brought enough for a brief trip.
That's an increasing consideration for people thinking about moving to the US or those who aren't settled there yet. But, of course, people who already have family and belongings there will want to get back in to at least sort those things out before leaving for good.
All your things are there, your entire life. Maybe other family members, children's schools etc. Not easy to just never go home.
I'd do it so that I secure my "life" that I built there, and then plan my exit while it's still optional.
I did move away from the US because of these reasons, and it's been a good decision in retrospect. But no one likes uprooting their entire life and it takes years to build a new one somewhere else.
The calculus on immigrating to the US today is clearly negative, but many people immigrated 5/10/20+ years ago before all this shit and have lives there. They did not know any of this would happen.
> The best we could find, at any price, lands 25mins after the deadline.
Scheduled landing or historical landing time? Flightera.net will show you landing times for 2 years of flights
Check for charter jets, you may be able to jet pool.
The guidance has changed already. Existing holders don't need to do that
Best of luck! Keep us posted.
That's terrible. Best of luck to you both.
Much good luck. Hope you sail trough without harm.
i understand playing safe with this administration, but why?
h1b requires that one company signed as responsible sponsor on form i129. they are the ones on the line for the payment.
Via what mechanism? Will they be ready to accept the payments a few hours from now? Ready to process the re-entry with procedures that aren’t even developed yet?
Getting into the country before the deadline is the only safe way to avoid the uncertainty and ensure you don’t get stranded out of the country or in an airport for days or weeks while the process is developed.
This hastily constructed and implemented executive order is a terrible way to run a country
Because when it comes to immigration, the downside to getting it wrong are life-altering.
The expected value for immigrants is rapidly shifting into it being more favorable to be an illegal, because ICE/CBP is mostly going after low hanging fruit of easy to catch people that they know about with homes and salary jobs / university and a visa. People that are off paper and 100 miles past the border are as good as gone. So basically what we get is the exact opposite of what we want.
Let me guess, you're not an immigrant?
> they are the ones on the line for the payment.
And they decide if you keep your job.
What is your nationality if you don’t mind me asking?
You also have the option of going back to your home country.
Related ongoing threads:
Microsoft memo advises H1B employees to return immediately if currently abroad - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45314906 - Sept 2025 (108 comments)
New H-1B visa fee will not apply to existing holders, official says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45316226 - Sept 2025 (3 comments)
Also recent and related:
Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305845 - Sept 2025 (1675 comments)
The H-1B Visa Program and Its Impact on the U.S. Economy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45309740 - Sept 2025 (51 comments)
In the french news (https://www.lefigaro.fr/international/les-frais-du-visa-a-10...) it seems the white house clarified it is only for new visa and one time only.
[edit] also: https://www.theweek.in/wire-updates/international/2025/09/21...
That's not how laws and executive orders work? The text of the order matters, not some opinion of some admin official
That's why, typically, this would have been reviewed and planned.
I am not trying to defend it, but I understand the issue was that the order was unclear.
That's the thing; the order was not unclear. It very clear said what it said.
The general public's opinion that it was grossly unjustified and most likely going to be rolled back does not change how clear the initial order was.
The fact that virtually every immigration attorney and firm was on the same page about it goes to show how clear it actually was.
All I'm saying is that the text of the order matters, nothing else.
I would love to be wrong on that though...
I think a lot of people arguing about the H1B visa are talking past each other.
- There is no doubt a large volume of abuse by tech consulting companies. It's likely even worse than it looks, because the H1Bs in the U.S. are to support even larger teams offshore. I don't understand why we can't just blacklist these companies.
- Some of medium-skill hires, e.g., did a 2 year MS degree from random university in the U.S., are also a bit sus, in my opinion.
- I'll bet several of Zuck's recent $10M Superintelligence Team hires were at least briefly on an H1B before getting their EB-1A Green Cards.
- Same for a lot of faculty in computer science -- you can get an EB-1B Green Card quickly, but you have to spend some time on an H1B. You cannot convert directly from a student visa. The O-1 exists, but is not on most people's radars in academia. I think likely because the legal fees are prohibitively expensive. (I have heard $40K+)
To add lot of people don't seem to have read the full announcement. It says Secretary of Homeland Security can grant exception. That means companies like Tesla are more likely to get a pass - because manufacturing jobs and what not.
Also, HN is hyper focused on tech consulting. H1Bs are used by doctors too especially in rural America. Doctors apply for J1 waiver and then get H1B for work. From what I have heard some places the only available doctor is an immigrant on H1B. This is going to devastate medical teams.
I'm pretty happy that my continued existence isn't subject to selective enforcement by some US bureaucrat. After all, given the last six months that sounds like a pretty stress inducing thing to have to be subjected to. They seem to err on the side of maximum harm, rather than caution.
Yes, it's a shakedown. If you're a good little poodle and grease the right palms you get a carve out. If you rock the boat or are too small to matter - well, I'm sorry, that's the law now, and no one is going to change it for you, etc.
> - There is no doubt a large volume of abuse by tech consulting companies. It's likely even worse than it looks, because the H1Bs in the U.S. are to support even larger teams offshore. I don't understand why we can't just blacklist these companies.
I wish we could ban offshore IT consultancies dumping "talent". Unfortunately politicians will not support such ban, because those consultancies help corporate donors keep the wages down. If the government banned suppliers who use offshore consultancies from bidding for government contracts those outfits would disappear overnight.
Skimming the articles I don't see the source of the 15 hour urgency. Seems like the fee is on new visas - what's promoting Microsoft to send this notice to existing people?
Per the proclamation:
"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."
So it applies to all H1Bs. Subsection c is limited (but will be interesting to see how it plays out) so I don't bother sharing.
Actual proclamation here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
Reading a thread on r/immigration involving multiple immigration lawyers and corporate lawyers※, the Executive Order wording is apparently unclear and leaves CBP agents with discretion (which can obviously cause confusion and not apply the same rules to everyone).
Much easier for the companies to recommend/insist on folks fly back before the deadline to avoid issues.
※ - https://www.reddit.com/r/immigration/comments/1nlo8jd/h1b_pr...
This level of uncertainty just makes the United States toxic for business and investment. How is this Making America Great Again, again?
Republicans just hate immigrants, it's not more complicated than that.
I am a Republican and an immigrant and there are millions of others. So perhaps it is more complicated than that.
I’m sure the leopard won’t eat YOUR face.
Surely the poster is allowed to be Republican and an immigrant? They didn't even say they voted for Trump. Eg, if they're fiscally conservative and strongly anti-abortion, they may find that they are best aligned with the Republican party, despite being an immigrant.
Well, I hope the leopards don’t eat their faces.
I think I agree with your political views, and that makes me sad. It would be easier to believe in "my" party if this sort of stupidity wasn't so blatant.
I mean either you hate other immigrants or one of the other marginalized groups that unify Republicans in their bigotry, or you're cool with it for some other reason.
So which is it, are you a bigot, or a fool? Because in my mind, those are the only qualities of Republican voters today.
You should talk to your representatives, then.
I would love to know why you feel more aligned with Republicans as an immigrant?
Came here legally, speak English, embrace American culture, appreciate the police keeping my neighborhood safe, support faith, etc. There's nearly hundred percent alignment with my values. Surprised this is so surprising. Like I said there's millions of people like me.
I can't believe you're being downvoted for being Republican and an immigrant. This is BS lol
Perhaps the idea is the post must be false, since nobody would support a party so opposed to their own interests. Otoh that's how left wing politics has worked since the 70s..
"I'm one of the good ones, guys!"
I too pull up the ladder once I'm safe!
Immigration is great when it's done at the right pace. The pace of the last 10 years has been jarring. It's counterproductive at this point just because of the extra cognitive load alone. Can we take a 20 year break then start it back up slowly?
And, economically, I think it'll be fine. Won't it be great for the rest of the world to share in the economic success of the US? I'm looking forward to a day when most nations have their own bay area.
Surely there is a way to implement a "taking a break" policy without purposely squalid concentration camps, extradition to random gulags, sudden capricious fees, legions of masked shock troops, and the like?
> The pace of the last 10 years has been jarring
Is this satire or just solely based on feelings? The rate of legal immigration hasn't changed significantly since 1990 (35 years ago) when it had a huge spike (during Bush1); it then spiked again during Bush 2.
Honestly, I agree quite a bit. The US and other countries have the same dynamic that FAANG does with startups, we put up the money to have anything worthwhile come in-house, which kills competition.
Please India/China/Europe, build tech empires to rival ours. We will all benefit.
> extra cognitive load alone
I don't know what dogwhistle this is supposed to be.
There's no "cognitive load" in things other people do that you aren't involved with.
The WASP, country club types love the appearance of attacking minorities and other opponents but haven't considered the consequences of their footgunnery.
Trump has a ~85%+ approval amongst republicans. This has been the case for every poll which shows Trump’s approval rating dropping. Its only dropping amongst non republicans.
This is not the part of America that is meant to be great. This is the part of America that needs to be brought in line to whatever storyline Fox and the media sphere on the right is playing.
I mean, why ELSE would the President make such a decree? Obviously because something is wrong. Taking action when it counts.
>(which can obviously cause confusion and not apply the same rules to everyone
This is called a corrupt system. It's the intent. Trump will come out with gold visas for companies who pay him whatever favor he wants at the moment.
This corruption is meant to look at like 'just following orders'. You are providing the fascist lubricant by giving it a good faith examination.
Don't do that.
The executive order said to bar re-entry unless the $100k was paid. This is the enforcement mechanism. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
This effectively makes off shoring cheaper no? Just bypass the H1B thing altogether and hire folks in India, or Mexico, or Canada.
It gets harder and harder to have skin pigment, speak another language, or god forbid want to come to the USA under this insane administration.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest... :
> … the effective date of this proclamation, which shall be 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2025.
That doesn’t leave much time. I would have expected that current visa holders wouldn’t fall under this rule. Shouldn’t it be a legal standard not to apply new rules retroactively?
> legal standard
There are no legal standards anymore, when everything is at the whim of one single person.
> Shouldn’t it be a legal standard not to apply new rules retroactively?
It should. But the in the American empire you better pray they don't alter the deal any further.
This is a “better safe than sorry” measure by these companies. I think it’s not 100% clear on existing H1Bs.
No one is going take a chance on that if they don't have to. I'm expecting chaos at the ports of entry tomorrow unless there is some clarification / guidance provided today by the white house.
There are a lot of bad angles to this, here is another one: What happens to people's social security they've build for the years they've been on H1B? (Or J1, etc. before that)? It's technically gone...
Not an expert but I think citizens of most countries still get benefits post retirement if they've crossed the 40 point / 10 year threshold, even if they're not in the US.
At least for now, who knows if that'll change down the road.
This is correct. You’d get your social security if you worked for 10 years (you need 40 credits but can only earn 4 max per year, 1 credit for every $1810 of social security taxes you paid). I think most visa workers who worked 10 years on H1B will meet this criteria
Thank you both for the answers.
Some further googling led me to "totalization agreements" and then it's per country.
It looks like India (for example) may not have such an agreement, but say Austriallia has it. That to be said, it's all news to me, so might be completely wrong here
Anecdotally, although I'm sure it's happening to more people.
I'm Brazilian, I work in the US on H1-B. I'm on vacations in Brazil with my wife and kids, one in school age.
I also came to renew my visa stamp, as I had my extension approved not long ago. My visa is valid from September 21st, so, same day as this proclamation takes effect. And I can't go back before that because my visa is not valid.
My flight was scheduled for tomorrow, and I would land in US by Sep 22nd. Of course, I rescheduled that to not lose my ticket.
I left food in the freezer, car in the garage, and my son is missing classes. And all my family's stuff in the house. Now, I have no idea what will happen, I can't go in to get my things. At least the company is giving support, and I couldn't be more thankful.
But the thing that makes me sadder is the blatant racism towards my Indian friends, reddit and x was swarmed by an army of people that was enabled to call them... whatever they want... It's a good time to be offline now.
The H1-B program has its problems, and I understand the whole frustration with the job market, but this is not they way to solve anything.
Wow.
"On vacation" makes it sounds like workers were just off "having fun" (which of course is their right), but as your story illustrates, many immigrants are required to leave the US for their visa renewals. To be forced to leave the country and then be barred from return by an sudden change in the rules is the most unjust cruelty.
As an American, I'm deeply ashamed by this. I hope you and your family are able to return home soon. Thank you for sharing your story.
This is what sticks with me the deepest.
With immigration are unquestionably tough decisions, tradeoffs, philosophies on the issue, and demographics in general. It gets heated, fast. I know I'm biased, but I wish trust had not degraded to such an extent you could believe people could deal with these topics in good faith.
But how can anyone support this kind of craven policymaking where uncertainty and cruelty are features and not bugs? Just shock and awe and deafening silence.
That's what's so dishearterning. Is that who we are now, or is this just a timely excuse to be who we always have?
The President’s very first speech as a candidate denigrated Mexicans. Xenophobia is his signature issue even more so than tax cuts. 62 million Americans approved this platform in 2016 outvoting 65 million Americans who chose the other candidate.
77M chose his platform in 2024, and that’s after seeing him govern for four years, and talk for four years more after that.
America knows what it wanted and it got it.
Yes. As The NY Times phrased it, 2024 proved 2016 was not a fluke.
The cruelty is the point, isn't it?
The government is not trying to solve anything. This is a ploy to generate uncertainty and obedience.
i did not know until today there is this much anti-immigrant and especially anti-indian sentiment in tech. idk, it was very eye opening and very sad to read those. i am telling myself that people who were posting those things are small in numbers.
It's not surprising really. There needs to be an enemy group, one that some portion of the supporting population has some grievance against. First it's hispanics (illegal immigrants taking your jobs), then trans (men in womens washrooms), then Indians (taking your tech jobs), then it'll be some other group.
There are also the Chinese (stealing your technology).
Didn't mention that one because it was already used years ago. And also kung flu.
Yeah. It's deeply stupid and so counterproductive. I hate it.
I'm sorry you have to go through this.
I can just feel for someone who travelled back home for a family emergency and hope they have the means and courage to leave the family and come back.
I hope they have the courage to stay with their family, and the means to make it in their home country where I’d hope they’re not actively hated on.
That would be the best case and unless somoone seeking refuge, I am sure they aren't hated in their country but who know. Sometimes it takes a little more time to relocate as people build their lives in a different country over time.
Oh great, some of our vendors work in USA on H1bs and when they need to send someone on-site to us (in Canada), they send the Canadian.
I guess we'll be seeing someone new and unfamiliar...
(edit: the vendor workers might be in USA on TN status and might be okay for now, I haven't asked)
Yea that's an interesting dimension too. If this holds as is, then business travel for H1B holders is dead.
No business travel is one thing, no vacation to see your family in your home country is something else entirely.
I guess they really do want foreigners to move out of the US.
Doesn’t seem fair to the companies that employ these people. It’s obviously a hidden tax on large tech companies like x and Tesla that hire a lot of global talent.
I think a bigger tax on small companies. I worked on one where the co-founder was an h1b. That company grew to employ about a thousand people. It's job creation.. that would not have happened when the company was young with this tax.
Meanwhile, big tech is sitting on piles of money. I think startups and scale ups will suffer a lot here.
Doesn't seem fair to the citizens that live here. We should be taxing companies that have international leverage more.
¢¢
–– Citizen, former Data Center Electrician (still blue collar — I'll eagerly do the work if paid citizen-wages!)
I hope your next potential employer rescinds the job offer 2 days before your start date, maybe that will make it clear to you why some of us think this is unfair.
>I'll eagerly do the work if paid citizen-wages
What was the wage you were last offered?
Relevant to immigration bans, this clause is what seems to give the president very broad authority on immigration (see also Muslim ban).
> 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.
Congress shouldn’t be writing this sort of broad language into its laws. Congress has delegated a ton of power to the executive and now Trump is going to pressure test it. The current Supreme Court will decide this clause is wide enough to drive an iceberg through.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182?utm_source=ch...
Not just vacations, but also business trips.
They come up with these rules on a Saturday morning. If you’re a visa holder outside the country and you don’t return to the US by Sunday, you’ll be asked to pay a $100k ransom to re-enter the country where your life and work and children are.
Amazing level of contempt for ordinary foreigners who came into the country legally.
And _required_ visa renewal trips, as mrmansano's anecdote shows [0]
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312877#45313687
Microsoft can also just pay the fee right? My understanding is that it’s on the employer to pay, not the individual. Given that these are incredibly skilled folks this would certainly be annoying if you’re Microsoft (like any other tax or fee) but given the value they get from each employee it seems like $100,000 isn’t much.
Ok.
How does Microsoft pay the fee?
Which online portal do they go to? What bank account do they wire a check to over the weekend? What reason do they give for the payment? What USCIS code do they enter? What USCIS forms do they fill that USCIS will then snail mail (because they’re still living in the 90s) an I-797A to the employee that they will present at the border for evidence of payment. What address will USCIS mail the document to (which will be a U.S. address) and how does the employee who is currently abroad get that document from their U.S. mailing address to their current location abroad?
When are they gonna write the code for the lookup that the border agents can use to confirm the validity of this form and payment?
Also, how does all this happen over a Saturday and Sunday?
And even if there are answers to these questions where are those answers posted?
Maybe Satya can call Donald Trump? I am sure he has his phone number. They can sort it
So if you want your employees to be able to go back from vacation and back to their belongings, you have to pay a large fee. And to pay that fee, you have to talk to the president personally, otherwise you're screwed.
That's so dumb I can't believe you're suggesting it. In a rule-of-law country, lobbying the president should never be a solution to anything, much less routine bureaucracy.
Yea yea I get it - but you’re also drumming up a hypothetical scenario about Microsoft suggesting they have no way to pay the fee - I’m just suggesting a solution, not suggesting the path forward or that the abruptness of this policy change is a good idea. Satya has a direct line to the president’s office and can utilize that to help solve this acute concern if there is, as you are very confidently asserting, “no way to pay” the appropriate federal agency.
> In a rule-of-law country
here's your problem
They can "sort" it? Nudge nudge wink wink? Amazing.
Yea why wouldn’t Satya or Microsoft be able to call the president’s office and figure out how to pay the fee?
Set aside this “nudge nudge wink wink” stuff - I’m providing a solution to the acute issue, not a moral judgement.
Looks like it was sorted https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/20/donald-trump-h1b-vi...
"A breathtaking level of corruption" is not a solution.
That’s a separate point and unrelated to my post.
The "Trump Corporate Gold Card" sounds like something straight out of The Onion, but it is real, and presumably how these bribes will be managed:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-unveils-gold-platinum-v...
Net income per employee at MS is $440K so if H-1B are so important then they can afford it. I worked at MS on a visa and it definitely felt like I was a second class citizen that managers could freely abuse without recourse, it didn’t help that corporate politics had become tribal. So while having a visa was beneficial to me personally I felt it lead to the degradation of the employment market, now a market for lemons, and this hurt Americans. High prices are a signal and people make career choices based on prospective income, many of America's smartest got the memo that Software Engineering was going to be taken over by H-1B Indians and they should pick a different career like law, finance, or medicine. So the program created the problem it was purporting to solve, the fact that the problem exists even though we’ve had H1-Bs for decades. The irony is that without the H-1Bs the US market might be attractive enough for me to return, sadly I’d need the visa. I’m content knowing the market isn’t being destroyed for Americans even if it means I can’t partake in it.
That said I wonder if it’s more of a power grab with the discretion to grant exemptions being used to strong arm corporations to clamping down on criticism of Israel.
> Net income per employee at MS is $440K
MS with N fewer workers is not going to bring in N*$440K less net income. The incremental income added by an average employee is much less than $440K.
That they can afford it does not mean they should afford it, given the degradation of their flagship monopoly product I’m not sure if the H-1Bs are really helping all that much. My time there was absolutely dominated by bureaucracy, so much so that we spent 12 weeks planning a feature I knew I could do in 30 minutes, so I called a meeting and did it in front of them during the meeting, apparently that wasn’t respecting the process so I was punished for it.
I’m sorry, but what? What part of your statement is relevant to the rapid and cruel enactment of the policy? Leaving aside whether or not it is unreasonable, the immediate applicability, over a weekend, of this policy, is that this thread is discussing. Not your smug satisfaction at the validity of the policy.
Point 1 H-1B is a horrible program that has to go, the manner in which this is done is unfortunate. Like many things it should have been done nicer and sooner but apparently that wasn’t an option.
Point 2 I’m certain exemptions will be granted that will mean in reality the H-1B gets to continue being a horrible problem for everyday Americans and the software industry in general. I don’t want to work in a lemon market and that’s what it has become. And I see this as more of an attack on free speech than an attack on H-1Bs but that shoe has yet to drop. In the meantime they need people to believe the threat is real so the companies will yield to power. The chaos is part of making it believable. If I was on a H-1B and I was too far away to make it in time I probably wouldn’t be too stressed about it but I’d understand why other people are.
Seems like the first exemption was all current visa holders so all that panic was over nothing.
Incredibly skilled? More like incredibly low paid. H1Bs are mostly used now to save money not to fill high skilled jobs. I know US citizens who have 10+ years of experience as software engineers and have been out of work for a year now. The $100k will try to take that advantage away from employers.
Why can't they set a salary cutoff for visas at something like 1.5x of median salary in the same industry? That's what EU does. No lottery, no degree requirement even -- if the company wants you to pay above the market, they can, otherwise, nah.
This of course creates another problem -- highly paid foreigners price locals out of the housing market, but hej, we can always blame that on refugees, right.
The salary cutoff is set and it’s met.
Wanna raise the salary cutoff go for it.
But the people claiming that there is no salary cutoff and that H1B visa holders are incredibly lowly paid are simply lying.
Like any other rule or law there are people who break the rules and laws. Usually the way they prove the salary is not being met is by pointing to the tiny fraction of people breaking the law.
It’s like saying we should get rid of anti murder laws because murderers exist.
Ssh. Have to keep up the globalist fiction here.
What does "globalist" mean again? Please explain that to me so I can understand.
10 YoE means nothing. Let's not pretend there isn't a massive skill gap in software engineering. I've interviewed and worked with 10+ YoE people in my company that I wouldn't trust with junior work on my team.
People keep saying this but all my peers in tech companies on h1b were paid the same as me.
I also know people with 10 yoe. But when I dig into it almost always those people have a massive list of requirements for the job they want (remote/short commute/no overtime ever/etcetc)
Though it is reasonable to ask whatever you want you must understand there are always someone more desperate (and often with higher skills) that will take that job.
So the fact that 10yoe can’t find a job doesn’t mean anything. Usually this is either too many demands from seeker or skill issue.
Or they don’t eant to take lower salary.
If a company was willing to pay 70k for a developer you must be delusional to think they will suddenly decide to pay 100k+ for local talent.
They will just get a remote contractor
While you're making a point in response to a specific post (and the OP), and so you're making a point strictly about Microsoft, an implicit premise that's supposed to strengthen your argument is that only the deep-pocketed Microsoft or its equals are subject to penalties. What about other companies for which this is a less manageable expense?
And is it respectable and okay to switch up the law over the weekend if, and just because, the ones who are affected are large companies? Realistically, what's the rush to have the "law" (Congress?) come into effect two days after its announcement, beside making it a shakedown? Remember that policymakers anticipate, or should anticipate, second-order effects. Either Microsoft forks out $100k per employee, or the cost of coping with the new policy is pushed onto the regular Joe. In any case, this produces a sense of crisis and urgency that you'd criticize if it happened at a measly, inexperienced startup you happened to work at.
The law changes three months ahead? Looks like I'll have to cancel my December plans. But when I'm on a holiday? Sure, let me pack my bags, get back to the nearest airport and take the first transcontinental flight. Or maybe Microsoft is flexible enough to have me shoulder the $100K to stay until the end of my holiday?
I'm not sure how openly the measure was discussed beforehand (and on that point: the employees already have visas; why must they return, unless their visa is about to expire?), but it was promulgated _yesterday_.
I agree with you with respect to timing, but I don't think it's too much of one thing or another, and just chalk it up to typical Trump Administration "move fast and make things dumb" approach to various policies. I guess it's possible they chose this weekend to enact the highest shakedown possible on H1B visa holders outside the United States, but I'm reluctant to give them that much credit. I think they just said here is the policy, go now and the inconveniences be damned.
What you wrote reminds me of descriptions of the Soviet Union.
In which way? Because of the poor implementation?
The capriciousness, lack of concern with reality, the poor implementation…
Eh I think that’s a general feature of governments, not necessarily something unique to the Trump administration.
This sure didn't happen under Biden.
Depends on your perspective. How callous and poorly implemented was the withdrawal from Afghanistan? I know Trump signed the deal, but Biden was responsible for the execution at the time.
It’s helpful to not be dogmatic about these things, and even more helpful if you abandon partisanship.
Have you ever worked for a large corporation? Do you think there’s an intranet website where you can just go click on the “Send $100k Wire Now” button?
It’s going to take a long time while Microsoft figures out if they will actually pay these fees and which budget it should come out of.
Meanwhile, if you didn’t return by Sunday, you’re locked out of the country and unable to show up for work which will result in your termination fairly soon.
> Meanwhile, if you didn’t return by Sunday, you’re locked out of the country and unable to show up for work which will result in your termination fairly soon.
I’m actually curious, have you worked at a large corporation before?
It would be atypical for the scenario you are describing to occur given that there has been a US government policy change that’s of no fault of the employee who is still eligible to work in the United States.
Folks aren’t going to be sitting around on Monday morning saying jeez Billy on the H1B visa didn’t show up to work today and we have no clue why, guess he is fired!
Within business units at this scale there are small, dedicated teams that manage contractors, vendor contracts and licenses, keep track of employees on visas, report that information for compliance purposes, etc, and they are almost certainly communicating with their employees who are currently out of the country to provide arrangements and additional details as things progress.
The issue is less "I guess he is fired."
The issue is "my kids are at home in the US and I can't get home to take care of them because of this sudden policy that nobody knows how to navigate."
Sure but I was responding to “they are fired” aspect.
>Folks aren’t going to be sitting around on Monday morning saying jeez Billy on the H1B visa didn’t show up to work today and we have no clue why, guess he is fired!
I deeply suspect it will go both ways -- one Billy would be paid for, while the other will be fired for not being able to show up. Not every Billy is on the same good standing with the corp.
Sure but that’s just business as usual isn’t it?
Well, yes?
Employers have said these workers are critical and they can’t find any workers already in America to do these roles.
FAANG are by far the largest users of H1-B. They also have billions of dollars and access to excellent lawyers. They can pay up for this; an excellent employee is certainly worth more than $100k per year to them. Think of this more as a tax levied on some of America’s wealthiest businesses.
The data is publicly available. Microsoft is the largest US employer of H1-B with about 5,000 H1-B workers. So we’re only talking about $500m. They could probably find that stashed in the basement of one of their offices.
> FAANG are by far the largest users of H1-B.
The H1-B is used across many industries, not just tech.
I think it's mostly targeted at these IT firms that are 75% H1-B doing help desk for $50k/yr.
So create a policy that specifically solves that. This is madness.
> Meanwhile, if you didn’t return by Sunday, you’re locked out of the country and unable to show up for work which will result in your termination fairly soon.
Remember too that this coincides with an RTO order for Puget Sound that kicks in roughly the same time.
There is no mechanism to actually pay the fee
Many people on H1Bs work for nonprofits or hospitals, or are otherwise publicly funded.
only a very small percentage i think, for example only 4.2% work anywhere in the medical field [1]
[1]https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/o...
Yes, that's tens of thousands of people.
This doesn’t appear to apply to people on cap-exempt H1-Bs.
All cap-exempt institutions that I know of are treating it as if it does. There has been no clarification as of yet.
i have never heard of this and nothing i've read has indicated this; it's always been tech companies large fortune 500's. I did some googling and am not finding anything to support this claim, either. If you've got sources i'd love to see them.
You should look up 'cap-exempt H1B'. Many postdoctoral researchers, research staff, and doctors use the H1B program.
It leaked on a Friday night, so they ran with it.
I just saw that some people on 4chan are organizing a mass booking of high-traffic route flights from India to stop some Indians from coming back. It feels like the visa process is politically weaponised for propagating racism.
Judging by Google Flights, the tickets start from five hundred or so each, so I don't really see anyone putting a real dent in this. Unless it's actually Elon Musk who could literally book all the flights full, should he so desire.
That's not how it works. The idea is that the sites will hold your spot for X minutes before they release the seat, so what they're doing is booking the flight, choosing seats (or not), getting to the payment page, and sitting there while the timer counts down. I believe that once it gets to 5 minutes or so there's an alert that asks if you're still there, and if you say yes, they'll either reset the timer or add some additional time on.
The argument is “well why don’t they come legally” … “if they just followed the law” …
And this is what they are doing to those people, who followed all the rules, did everything right.
That tells you everything you need to know about the intentions of this admin.
They ran out of illegal immigrants with prior criminal records almost immediately and their political strategy depends on the generation of new "others" to demonize. MAGA basically hates everyone, including themselves, so they will keep expanding their targets.
Get your relatives and family out of this shithole and start a new life somewhere else. Why paying taxes for fat crooks? Why working your ass off for major companiel that dont pay taxes? I more and more understand people leaving their home country.
Yeah, go work in Asia for 30k/year or Europe for 100k/year.
Or goto Canada and pay even more than the U.S. in taxes and take-home much less.
Who wants these 500k/year salaries in the U.S. anyway?
Like I said when they put workers in chains two weeks ago, shitting on foreign workers and all the cheerleaders here and probably on less liberal outlets are presenting an image of the US individualist culture that I now have to acknowledge.
Having to say to 'UPR' and other anti-atlantist militants 'you were absolutely right' was difficult I will admit.
> 'UPR' and other anti-atlantist militants.
Never heard of either of these 2 terms. What are these?
Regardless of the merits of such visas, they were legal, and companies now depend on them.
Business uncertainty is off the charts when any administration can change existing policy at a whim and on short notice, for any kind of sunk costs.
The whim makes it uncertain, the short notice makes it unmanageable, and the sunk-cost makes it unavoidable.
It's this uncertainty that fuels government corruption, by creating an undifferentiated need to make nice and comply.
At each step, it will be cheaper for companies to join than to resist, and companies that resist will get oversized responses as a warning to others. That makes joining corruption an economic necessity.
This is how Putin organized and subjugated Russian oligarchs and the elites.
GOP seems to prefer choosing to defect in the prisoner's dilemma.
Guam is going to see an influx of people too far away to get to conus
Guam and other US territories in the Pacific like American Samoa have their own immigration systems that are not identical to the mainland. I'm not sure how this intersects with H-1B validity, but it would be an expensive gamble to find out.
Then I guess Hawaii is the play...
15 hours when they know the quickest flights back are 16+ hours. Criminal.
So USA demands its slaves to stay inside?
It's worse than that. Demanding that the job creators and company growers be taxed or stay out. If a team is half H1Bs, it is not because there were Americans waiting for those jobs. These are irreplaceable people (if they could be replaced to not deal with H1B nightmares, companies would readily do so). So, the big irony is these people are job creators.
So, their next vacation will have a 100k fee?
Any surprise change should be illegal, but that doesn't matter when the elected monarch decrees it.
most H1-B per corporation:
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/09867/3/
We all know this was a way for tech companies to keep wages down and replace local labor with cheaper labor.
Now instead of 500 applications for 1 interview. Maybe, jobs vs labor will return to a normal balance.
This is terrible lack of planning. I understand the need for the US to be strict about people entering the country. They have a right to choose but this is so mismanaged.
There are so many active H-1B visa holders, now everyone is just anxious. The rules can start for new visa applications. For existing holders, there should be a time period where people can figure out if the employer is even able to pay.
If this stays in effect for existing visa holders and the employers cannot pay in time or wants to change the contract, the individuals and their families are stuck. Plus, employees probably lose their job if employer cannot pay the fees.
The strength of a theory lies in its predictive capacity. I used to think people who said “the cruelty is the point” were hyperbolic, but the predictive capacity of that theory is doing pretty well these days.
I don't think it is a terrible lack of planning. I think it is exactly what they intended to achieve.
> This is terrible lack of planning.
POSIWID
This is what the system wants
TACO tuesday?
This is such bad policy making. Its like using a cannon to kill a mosquito. And for a party which idolizes the founding fathers these people seem to have forgotten the lesson from Benjamin Franklin. They went from letting 100 criminals go than make 1 person suffer to punishing 100 criminals to full extent of the law and then justify the action if 1 innocent is presented. End justify the means.
And for anyone who is supporting this - Sorry to burst your bubble but just like everything done by this admin so far it is not going to tide over the American job problem.
First, Secretary of Homeland Security has a discretion. It means companies can graft/lobby him to get exception. Maybe shops like Infosys might not get one but Tesla can get one under the garb of supporting American manufacturing.
Second, companies are going to find ways to get that exception. Consulting shops can always open a subsidiary with all American front and lobby for exception.
Third, consulting shops can always bill their customers - maybe partial amounts - that is American companies. Or they can encourage to offshore even more. "You can now save $X + 100k if you offshore".
So and so forth. You need a thoughtful policy not a blunt instrument like this.
Did you mean
"punishing 100 innocents to full extent of the law and then justify the action if 1 criminal is presented?"
Trump will backtrack. He will be bribed if not convinced by rational arguments just like this
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trumps-unusual-nvid...
Rational arguments? You're relying on a cognitively impaired, narcissistic criminal to come to his senses?
Even if he does, there is damage here that will not be undone.
We need to stop treating this monster like a wayward child.
I'm going to keep banging on this website, of definitions of fascism. And also, for the time being, is also hanging in short form at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.
https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html
Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
Labor Power is Suppressed
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
These are all elements of fascism, and is directly on display. We are living in a country being invaded by fascists from within the republican party.
And to my knowledge, no fascist government willingly cedes power. All have required extreme violence (aka war) to oust them. And most also have done so with Communist and Socialist allies (see Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, et merde).
In a way, it might be safer for the H1B's abroad to stay away. Wish I had an exit plan as well.
> Labor Power is Suppressed
Isn't this making labor more powerful since it's restricting competition from overseas?
'15 hours to return or you're fucked' is not the kind of policy to reform H1B status.
Disassociating the employee with special skills from the sponsoring company would do a load better. Right now, the current H1B sponsorship creates a form of indentured servitude, which is horrific.
Now, sure, H1B should be gated similarly to Green Card status, as in there is a need for people of those skills. Right now, H1B serves as a way to depress wages for the rest of us. If anything, H1B should be significantly higher to show "these skills are highly in need", but instead, average H1B wages are 100k/yr.
Reforms are completely needed. But slapping a 17 hour 'show up or you'll be sorry' is NOT it.
President Donald Trump’s new $100,000 fee for high-skill visa holders only applies to new applicants — not current visa holders who may be on travel outside of the U.S. — according to a U.S. official granted anonymity to speak about the policy. Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/20/donald-trump-h1b-vi...
That may or may not be the intention, but the wording of the executive order doesn't convey that.
see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45313274 in this thread
from "unnamed senior official". Take it for what it's worth.
Still stoking the class divide war since …
These new restrictions are uniquely capricious and gleefully harmful to people, but they are really only an extension of behaviors that have gone on for some time. I'd like to share a related story from the previous Trump administration:
My roommate in 2018 was an Indian here on an H1-B. He was working for a large consulting firm. (You've heard of it.) I don't recall his title but it was sort of an SRE/infrastructure position. He was a relatively conservative guy himself, in terms of his views, and a huge fan of America. He delighted in being here. He bought a brand new Mustang because it was the iconic American car. We weren't particularly close friends, but we got along okay.
In the spring of 2018, he went back to India for the first time in several years, for about a month. His return flight date came and went and I didn't hear from him until the next day: He was back in India. He'd landed in Chicago, and CBP had pulled him aside. They said his documents were flawed and he was to be deported. They said he had lied about where he was moving for his job. When he pointed out that he hadn't, they said, well, your employer didn't tell us everything they were supposed to when you moved.
He asked to see documents he had with him, or call his managers. They said no. He asked for time to go online and get his employment details. They said no. The only options he were given was: 1) Admit he'd lied, and be deported but not banned from the US, or, 2) deny he'd lied, and be deported and banned for five years. Indignant, he refused to "admit" to anything. He was deported. His entire life in the US was summarily destroyed. I spent a great deal of time helping him get his possessions either sold or shipped to him, and on the phone, I had to explain to him that he likely hadn't done anything wrong - it wasn't his fault. This was how our system had been set up to work.
About two years later, a judge concluded that there had not, in fact, been any issues with his employer or him that were material. The deportation was ruled to have been illegitimate. But by that point, he'd been back in India for years, and it was now COVID. He's probably never coming back to the US. We lost our chance to have him, because a couple of individual CBP agents in Chicago made a bad call one day in 2018 and wouldn't take no for an answer.
Even if you believe in controlling and limiting immigration, even if you think that we should only bring the best and brightest and then only in limited numbers, even if you think everyone who crosses the border illegally is a criminal, there is nothing just in what happened in this case. If you are such a person, and you think the people in power are on your side, I urge you to look at what they're actually doing over what they say they're doing. There's no justice in what happened in this case; if even legal immigrants have such limited due process and can have their lives so utterly destroyed, what rights do any of us imagine we have?
San Francisco's airport still owes me a pair of boots that they confiscated. Try finding shoes at 5 am after arriving on a red eye because the border guard fancies your boots. The cab driver thought it was a funny story, he knew many that were far worse. I think that's the last time I visited the USA.
I am so glad I left the States. It is horrible to live in a country where on a whim of a deranged leader your whole life can be upended. No country is perfect, but the way US now behaves towards people on visas is not tolerable. (And it was similar situation during COVID)
What country isnt descending into authoritarianism these days?
Most of Europe, Central and South America, Canada, Australia, Japan, India, South Korea - the majority of the world that could not already be described as authoritarian
People describe all of these countries as authoritarian for various reasons. Multiple Indian immigrants I have worked with in the US have expressed displeasure at authoritarianism in India today, which I find difficult to distinguish from just not liking Modi.
Few people actually know what "authoritarian" means, and are mostly just repeating things they've heard and intend to mean as "leaders doing things I don't personally like."
A strict definition of "authoritarian" [1] doesn't fit the current US administration at all in many ways, since they've focused their attention on tearing down government, not building it up. In some ways they demand stricter enforcement of (pre-existing!) rules, but in many others they have acted to undermine government authority (e.g. with respect to environmental regulations). Generally the people who decry authoritarianism in the domain of immigration enforcement will turn around and decry loosening of regulations about things that they prefer to be regulated by the government.
[1] "favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom." per Google's definition.
> intend to mean as "leaders doing things I don't personally like."
If enough people use the word "authoritarian" like that, then that's what it means.
If enough people pretend the meaning of “authoritarian” is sufficiently narrow that every use of the term is hyperbole, then it no longer matters what it means. The semantic nihilists win again.
Your definition says nothing about regulation or deregulation, so I wonder why you’re trying to pin others to it. One doesn’t need laws (or a bureaucracy, for that matter) to “enforce strict obedience to authority.”
If you’re hunting for a contradiction this ain’t it.
They are filling every power vacuum they create with direct executive power. Pure authoritarianism.
> They are filling every power vacuum they create with direct executive power. Pure authoritarianism.
I just gave you a correct definition of authoritarianism, and that isn't it. It's also untrue -- this administration has rather aggressively moved to deregulate a number of areas that prior administrations had regulated. For example, not even a week ago, people here were complaining about the administration's move to deregulate PFAS:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45239803
Say what you will about the wisdom of the change, they aren't replacing that power vacuum with direct executive power. This administration is not canonically left, nor right, and it certainly isn't "authoritarian" by any traditional definition.
What does 'a correct' mean to you? Wikipedia says: > Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law.
As an outsider from Europe, it seems that is pretty much spot on to me. In Europe this probably applies to Hungary as well.
First of all, Wikipedia is useless for definitions of words that are in the middle of active political debate. You completely ignored the definition I gave you (which is from an impartial source [1]) in favor of one you prefer, from a wiki.
Setting that aside, you will see the that the citation for that definition [2] basically underscores the ambiguity of the term:
> Political scientists have outlined elaborated typologies of authoritarianism, from which it is not easy to draw a generally accepted definition; it seems that its main features are the non-acceptance of conflict and plurality as normal elements of politics, the will to preserve the status quo and prevent change by keeping all political dynamics under close control by a strong central power, and lastly, the erosion of the rule of law, the division of powers, and democratic voting procedures.
I challenge you to defend the proposition that the current administration is attempting to "prevent change by keeping all political dynamics under close control by a strong central power", while simultaneously clearly acting to undermine many parts of said authority. There are actions by every administration that appear to be "authoritarian" when taken in isolation.
The parts about erosion of rule of law, etc. are clearly also applied to the current administration, but again, are mostly debatable -- these EOs are either within the power of the executive under current law, or they're overturned by the courts. I openly grant that our legislative branch has been on a 50+ year mission to abdicate responsibility to the executive, but that's neither exclusive to the current administration, nor is it "authoritarianism" to use the authorities granted to you under the law, and again, it's not unique for US administrations to overstep the law and be pulled back by the judicial.
[1] https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism#cite_note-Cer...
a quick google search for "modi authoritarian" would have given you tons of hits talking about it, with documented incidents and policies to back them up. calling it "just not liking modi" does the people justifiably alarmed about what he is doing to the country a great disservice.
That's precisely my point - people will call any country doing something that they dislike "authoritarian". There's no way for me to verify that without spending a bunch of time learning about what specifically Modi is doing that previous Indian political leaders weren't, and evaluate that in the context of Indian politics in general. This is a difficult enough problem when it comes to evaluating what political pundits are saying around your own country and society, and I am well aware that I don't have more than a cursory, outsider's understanding of anything at all that is actually going on in India.
I mean authoritarianism in India is far worse than what Trump can do at his worst, so their displeasure is not unwarranted.
Absolute bollocks, do you actually know anything about India and what's happening in the last 10 years. Easy being a keyboard warrior when you don't have to provide any justification.
What part is bollocks? Please enlighten me on what radical transformation has happened in the last 10 years to make India less authoritarian, I can only see it increasing in the last 10 years. And yes I am very aware of what is happening, having seen the ground reality in tons of different places both urban and rural.
Including India in that list is pretty wild
eastern europe (EU) is absolute best
Europe is generally hurtling towards fascism. Some examples:
- The UK government is busy outlawing free speech, protest and dissent. Because someone threw paint at a plane, you can now be jailed as a terrorist for saying "maybe we shouldn't drop bombs on babies in Gaza". The Labor government is an accident of the right-wing vote being split between the Conservatives and the even anti-migrant even-more-hard-right Reform party that absolutely won't be repeated in the next election;
- France is teetering on the edge of fasicsm as the "centrist" president Macron openly courts the neo-Nazi National Front rather than deal with Melenchon despite his alliance getting the most votes in the last election. It's worth adding that National Front was founded by actual collaborators with the occupying Nazi party in Vichy France;
- Germany has its own Islamophobic anti-immigrant neo-Nazi party that is hurtling towards attaining power: AfD;
- Hungary is already an authoritarian right-wing state.
And literally nobody is working to defuse this bomb by addressing the underlying causes: increasing wealth inequality and declining material conditions, even in otherwise relatively progressive countries like Ireland and Spain.
So what you see and object to in the US is nothing more than Europe's future in 5-10 years if nothing changes.
[flagged]
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, using HN primarily for political/ideological battle, and ignoring our request to stop. Not cool.
This is not what functioning bureaucracy in a functioning democracy looks like.
The democracy stopped functioning a while ago, this is just the bills being presented.
You’re using the term “democracy” in an Orwellian way. The people voted for the guy who promised mass deportations. There were signs and everything. Multiple surveys have found that, if everyone had voted, he would have won by an even larger margin. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec...
A non-functioning democracy would be if the people voted this way and mass deportations didn’t happen. Like how immigration went up in the UK after Brexit.
Democracy isn't supposed to be two wolves and a sheep voting on who to eat for dinner. There are supposed to be checks and balances.
One reason we are in the current situation is because we have discarded these checks and balances, allowing for the president to behave more like an autocratic monarch. If the other branches of government were performing their constitutional function, and if the executive observed the norms it's supposed to that's when you would have a democracy not just in letter but in spirit.
(Ironically I myself am an immigrant and a naturalized citizen, yet I find I know more about American civics than most US-born.)
No, democracy is supposed to be two wolves and a sheep voting on who to eat for dinner. What you’re talking about are the anti-democratic measures the founders put in place because they didn’t trust democracy.
Look, it’s hardly settled that “democracy” is a good thing. The founders didn’t think it was—they restricted the franchise to property owners, and provided for indirect election of the president and appointment of senators by stage legislatures. Just be candid about what you’re arguing, because these distinctions matter. Jacksonian Democracy has a theory of how decisions are legitimized—by the support of the masses. If you believe that the government should sometimes do something different than what the masses want, then you need to articulate a theory for who should make those decisions and what confers legitimacy on those decisions.
Please explain the senate
> No, democracy is supposed to be two wolves and a sheep voting on who to eat for dinner.
The senate is exactly the sheep. That the senate is now controlled by the sheep is also wild. The senate is what gives a person in Wyoming has 4x the voting power of someone in California. The senate was designed so that the less populous states (the sheep) don't get rolled. That the senate is majority minority is wild.
> Please explain the senate
The Senate is orthogonal to our discussion. It implements the federalist structure of our government, representing the states themselves. That’s why the state legislatures originally appointed Senators. We have muddled up the system through direct election of senators and should probably repeal the 17th amendment.
You seem to be under the mistaken belief that democracy means deciding policy based on opinion polls. This is not how democracies work in practice, and opinion polls often show that most people don't want policy dictated solely by opinion polls.
Democracy is a governmental system where political power is vested in the people. It is characterized by competitive elections and the safeguarding of human rights[1].
It is by definition undemocratic for two wolves and a sheep to vote for who to eat for dinner. It is undemocratic to have gerrymandering. It is undemocratic to have uncompetitive primary elections. It is undemocratic for the police to quell protests. It is undemocratic to have state-backed propaganda, censorship, and misinformation.
Maintaining a democracy necessitates maintaining its institutions. An authoritarian one-party state does not magically become democratic just because it has an election or manufactures support for its project. Elections are an insufficient condition for democracy.
[1]: https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jod.2024.a930423
Elections are not a necessary part of democracy as you can have a democracy through sortition as well, like they did in some parts of ancient Greece.
Other than that, yeah.
Which is also why it is a Republic and not a democracy. I wonder why people continue to call it a democracy even when they know that it isn’t. I guess it is just a sticky name
its a union rather than a monarchy.
canada is a monarchy and a democracy.
usa is a union of republics and a democracy
they are different dimensions
> if the executive observed the norms it's supposed to
QE should have caught that bug before it went into production
That is exactly what Democracy is. The only difference is people that are now complaining have, up until recently, actually been "the wolves", and now that they're outnumbered on certain topics and country-wide decisions they complain about the concept itself.
How do you think the people on the other side have felt till now?
The checks and balances only acted as a way to hide the true nature of government.
No, I'm using democracy in the regular way that ordinary people use it: representation through a voting process, non violent transfer of power because it is better than the altneratives. That means that you expect your government to take care to some degree of the interests of all subjects, not just of those that happen to be 'on top' in this cycle.
Your endless efforts at pretending that this kind of cruelty is what 'America' wants - rather than that it is just a reflection of what you want - are painting the majority of the country with a color of paint they do not deserve.
You speak for yourself, and as such you have - repeatedly, incessantly - shown yourself to be roughly HN's resident Ali Alexander. I refuse to believe that the majority of the United States voted consciously for 'mass deportations', and everybody that is cheering this one should think carefully at which point they will find themselves on the receiving end of the cruelty.
I suspect that you will continue to dig in on this until the very moment that you become personally affected, and maybe, just maybe then you'll have the guts to admit that you were wrong all along.
You're using "Orwellian" in an Orwellian way. What do mass deportations have to do with this bizarre sudden policy change that leaves people scrambling with a 15 hour window? You're claiming this is exactly what people had in mind when they voted?
Anyone who had paid attention to Trump’s track record should have expected chaos. Along with the ability to pay Trump to be spared from the chaos. Temporarily, at least.
Hitting the nail on the head.
Democracy is broken because here's a candidate whose entire premise (that America somehow isn't great and needs to be made great again) is made-up, and a significant proportion of the population just believe it.
In a democracy, people are entitled to disagree about what makes the country “great.” That’s like the whole fucking point.
Democracy is when my candidate wins and does things I want.
When 51% of the eligible voters voters cast their votes to genocide the remaining 49% percent of eligible voters (which is not what happened of course), it doesn't matter whether genocide actually happens or not to determine that it's not in fact a functioning democracy.
It sounds like a contradiction, but it's not, because the critique of a democratic society doesn't have to be limited to a decision process that leads to certain behavior, but both to the problem that triggered it and the solution that the system had produced.
Democracy is little more than a mechanism for non-violent transfer of power among elites.
We rely on things other than democracy to protect minorities. Institutions, laws, restraints on power; things the committed democrat believes are unjust constraints on the Will of the People.
It's Tyranny of the Majority - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
That describes a perceived problem with democracy that’s addressed through various anti-democratic institutions.
That’s a fine position to have. But be candid that you’re arguing for anti-democratic institutions. It’s the same reasoning why, at the time of the founding, states restricted the franchise to property owners.
I propose a new form of government. I call it "liberal democracy". The gist is that when liberals are in power they make sure that fascist never get in power again. (So it's not a democracy, only in name.) E.g. they can make fascism illegal, and don't allow them to run for seats. This has the following advantages:
Over democracy: no danger for it to swing into fascism or autocracy.
Over autocracy: bad governments can be replaced.
Additionally, in practice, it should feel the same that we were having for ages when liberal parties were on power. (Proof?)
Probably this is the mythical "better than democracy" form of government that we are all waiting for?
Thoughts?
I'll bite. Do they get to decide what "fascism" means and change it to mean whatever they want on a whim? It might be simpler to just say that they can make whomever they don't like today illegal and don't allow them to run for seats.
Exactly. "fascist" is just another insulting word these days, like "motherfucker". Let's make motherfuckers illegal, and don't allow them to run for seats.
> Over democracy: no danger for it to swing into fascism or autocracy.
I hate to break it to you, but fascism is not the only form of autocracy.
Unless you mean the electoral college overriding popular vote nonsense, and disproportionate Senate power, which was there since the beginning, I don't know what you mean.
The voters apparently wanted more of this per the Nov 2024 elections, when we still had a credible election process.
I don't believe the average American cares about the concerns raised in this thread. Most of them don't have the slightest understanding of how their immigration system works.
I do think that no one would accept this kind of mismanagement if it were to affect them.
Let's say by executive order they make tax day Feb 1st on January 30th. And everyone who's late will pay a hefty fine. See how that would go....
This is no way to make policy, no matter the form of government
"Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" has been sedition that has been let to spread and rot at our foundations for decades now, growing only stronger. There is absolute bedlam and insanity pushed to American voters, completely made up fictionalized reality, blasted out by Fox News and worse. People live in the most absurd hyperreal simulation, built entirely around hating government, disbelief of the state, and disdain for civil society civil rights and decency.
The extremeification of American politics by the right has totally crippled the state. Business can sometimes come in an extract wins for itself, but everyone else loses. The political gamesmanship begat by Hastert rule, where wins must never be bipartisan wins, has decayed the government, betrayed the nation.
I'm so so tired of such loud utterly decoupled unhinged sedition, against the state against reality.
My favorite recurring threads these days is a simple one: society that wants to keep functioning has to disincentivize baldfaced lying, especially by authorities
Aren't the left the ones making the claim posed by your opening sentence these days? Could you clarify whether it's seditious only when one side is making that claim or is the seditiousness of the claim group-independent?
Of course he only thinks it’s seditious when it’s the wrong team. Of course democracy is broken because his team lost the election.
There was evidence of voting machine fraud, though.
Interesting… would you say the election was, erm, rigged?
In almost every single jurisdiction? That would be an impressive fraud to pull off.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/06/us/politics/p...
>More than 89 percent of counties in the United States shifted in favor of former President Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election, according to a New York Times analysis of election results.
>89 percent of counties
Land doesn't vote. People vote. What percentage of the population live in those 89% of counties?
If you scroll down, the article has a breakdown of all the various populations that voted more Republican. Here is another reputable publication:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voter-turnou...
No, you don't need to do that in 'almost every single jurisdiction'. That's a strawman.
It would be quite the coincidence then for all the voting precincts to swing towards the same candidate as the fraud.
I find it likelier that people’s preferences simply changed.
Possible but a simple software update can also do the trick. That's just a fact and the reason why no one should trust a democracy based on voting machines. Experts have been warning against voting machines for decades.
Do all the jurisdictions use the same software? It would surprise me if we are at that level of centralization, plus no discrepancies appeared between audited paper ballots and the software counts?
Why "all jurisdictions"? That's a strawman. You only need to target a few districts in swing states to secure a victory.
…that is the point I am making. Which scenario is likelier:
All 7 swing states went to Republicans due to fraud, and it just so happens that everywhere else also went more Republican.
Or all 7 swing states went to Republicans because voters voted more Republican throughout the country?
Note that not voting is the same as voting for the winning party.
even without fraud, republicans have gerry mandered enough states that they're silencing the public majority.
I see this point being made a lot.
Lets be clear - the election was won on inflation. While a lot was said about 47th's previous record it was often brushed aside with - Sure, this was said last time too and he didn't do any of this. Its the same thing all over again, people crying wolf etc. There was even consternation about Project 2025 and many well minded people didn't believe it would be enacted.
Now the approval rating on handling of economy continues to fall day by day. Immigration was the strongest suit at +10 is now under water at -4.5.
That means while voters might have wanted something to be done about immigration but they might not wanted more of this. This will become clear only during the midterm elections. With all the efforts being made to gerrymander and gain as many seats as possible, it is good guess to say GOP also realize that people didn't want more of this - and the only way now is to hold on to power by any means necessary.
So, that it allows others to say - This government was elected in Nov 2024 and if they are doing this terrible thing then surely people have voted for this.
I don’t give voters that much benefit of the doubt.
They saw a man (and party) make baseless accusations to overturn an election, openly support a terrorist attack on the government, and campaign on freeing those terrorists and punishing those who went after the terrorists.
And they decided this man was better than a woman, especially a black woman. Because he was a man. I’ve been told this even by a few older women, that a woman leader didn’t sit right with them. And they were non white immigrants!
This is all ignoring the myriad sex crimes, fraud, and general lack of integrity of the man.
I don't think this is a bill, just part of a series of proclamations he sprays around to get tied up in courts and then revoked by the next adult in the office. Legislation takes serious time and work and discipline, but it can be lasting in a way this isn't. This is a failed marshmallow test.
I don't know @jacquesm's intent, but I read "bill" as in "invoice", not as in "proposed new law".
You got it just fine.
Oh, gotcha.
Bold of you to assume there will be a “next adult”.
Yeah, earlier this year. Or so you mean that time he sent a mob to prevent certification of a fair election?
Do Americans even want functioning bureaucracy? I'm starting to doubt they realize just how complex a modern democracy is, and how many moving parts need to work _just right_ for there to be jobs, money, media, law and order, free speech etc.
A presidential candidate should be able to campaign on "normal foreign relations", "independent authorities", "functioning government", "decorum in politics", "balanced budget", etc. shouldn't they? Maybe 10 years ago that would seem like obvious things you wouldn't mention. But now you should be able to win an election on _only_ that.
A functioning bureaucracy is the death knell of ordered society.
Somalia is the best place on Early, then?
Obligatory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ul-Efi1Xys
"Here we are, in the long run".
Lots of bad decisions were made over the last few decades, now we are living in the result.
Yea, this is reagan's party with the mask off
Cold war Reagan who stood up to Russia/China, generally represented American interests, and led - regardless of many disagreeing with him politically? No, this is that party having gone insane from stewing in reactionary talk radio for decades in a cycle of getting angrier while being repeatedly suckered into supporting more specious policies that leave them worse off.
The Republican party had been farming this hate in its talk radio cage, and only extracting its energy to support the status quo. Social media came along and opened the door to the cage, while Trump led it out with open arms. The spiral of harmful policy <-> more blind anger is now moving faster and faster.
Notice how these policies are focused on making pain for the individual visa holders, not the companies employing them. This $100k/H1B thing was the very first bit I've seen from this Trump term that I thought sounded halfway reasonable. But then rather than an announcement ahead of time with a clear implementation date, allowances for current H1B residents to either find amenable companies or prepare to leave, etc - it's just pure immediate pain for the individuals. Including making them more indentured as I'm sure many employers will tell employees that they're not going to pay the $100k fee so their employment effectively ends if they leave the country for any reason. (and also at this point who doesn't expect the policy to be relaxed in 3-12 months for politically-favored bigcos?)
It's just like the LG factory raid - attacking the individual workers in a show of performative cruelty, rather than focusing on the company. Trump has already been talking about creating programs to allow illegal labor to continue in "critical" industries such as landscaping, construction, farming, etc. Because when the rubber meets the road those are his own interests, even if his primary business has moved on to taking bribes in shitcoins.
No, reagan who was a giant f'n racist.
Don't pretend these policies are anything but white supremacy and religiousity. Reagan just was dog whistling, which is why the mask is off.
But I wouldn't stop at reagan, this is all regression to Nixon and the equal rights amendments.
Sure, but there was more to Reagan than that, right? Actual constructive things meant to help at least some interests of this country, even if his definition of country left out a lot of people.
The point is that the only thing left in this mob is the racism/xenophobia with desire for cruelty. None of these policies fix our economy or help our country, especially with how they're capriciously implemented.
The same people that spent twenty years shipping our industry to China have now pivoted to closing the door and saying don't come back. And the gullible revanchist patsies are right back to cheering them on as long as they see the "right" people getting hurt.
Not a whole lot more. Abroad he was viewed as a third rate actor and a fourth rate president. Some accidents of timing whitewashed his tenure.
It certainly felt as if behind the Republican party of yesteryear, there were some real values and ideals that benefited the nominally American status quo power structure. Maybe I've just fallen for the whitewashing.
You haven't. Reagan was one of the most popular and beloved presidents in the last 100 years. He was elected in back-to-back landslides.
> who stood up to Russia/China, generally represented American interests
He did not represent American interests. He hollowed out this country and sold us up the river.
H1Bs are slave labor and the program is used primarily by sweat shop consultancies who pay them less than Americans. This will be incredible for Americans looking for work. They don't have to compete with artificially cheap workers.
> This will be incredible for Americans looking for work.
No, it won’t, jobs (especially local jobs) aren’t a fixed commodity that are going to get filled. This will kill jobs overall, and result in more of the jobs (including jobs that didn't take H-1Bs to fill but were associated with businesses that had such positions) that remain being outside of the US as a direct result, and those direct US job losses will knock-on effects that will kill even more US jobs.
> H1Bs are slave labor
How did we get to a point where people casually call H1B tech workers often earning $120K or more “slave labor”?
When their identically leveled peers earn $300k.
There is not a single company where US citizens that are identically leveled peers are paid $300k where H1bs are paid $120k. Places where citizens get paid $300k, H1Bs are making the same money because it’s illegal to to discriminate based on nationality or visa status when it comes to pay.
And, corollary: the places that pay their H1Bs crap also pay everyone else crap, because they are run by greedy people who try to tilt the entire business in their favor.
while its true that at hiring time, companies have to pay the same, any visa is friction to changing job, so the h1 salaries will lag behind citizen and greencard holders' pay
Nah. The “friction” is overstated. H1Bs face the same labor conditions as rest of the folks. When the market is great, you can shop around and make a lot of money. When the market is bad and you stay put, most of the other employees are doing the same. The caveat: I’m not talking about the consultancies that abuse the system, which we can all agree are bad and their employees usually will have a hard time finding other roles.
If you get fired or laid off, you only have 60 days to find a new job or be deported. Also depending on where you are in the green card process, you can lose your place.
This creates an incentive for H-1B workers to tolerate working conditions that American workers wouldn't.
Again, if you have terrible work conditions, you as an H1B have the same options as US citizens. You look for a different job and maybe suck it up for a couple of months, just like a US citizen would.
And while yes, if have an ongoing green card process which takes 12-18 months, you may have an incentive to stick around to see it to completion, anyone who has their I-140, does not actually “lose their place” in the green card process. They can file for a new I140 and retain their place in the queue by retaining the priority date from the previous application.
If you think US citizens don’t stick around for a bit in a shitty job for a variety of reasons, then you’d be lying. People (including US citizens) don’t just quit jobs whenever they want without a plan like you’re making it sound. At least not ones that carry a reasonable wage, health insurance and other benefits. Again, all with the caveat of me not talking about consulting firms, which obviously don’t exactly have the best workplace environments.
Even assuming that is true, is that unfair? Yes. Unjust? Yes. Exploitative? Yes. Racist? Usually. But slavery? Absolutely not.
Or give me your definition of slavery.
Slavery is a spectrum. H1B are more enslaved than natives, because they have less freedom to quit, change jobs, argue with their superiors etc.
As I posted in another thread people seem to be stuck on this point.
Lets agree - some H1B was exploited by sweat shop consultancies who pay less than Americans. And this might be incredible for Americans looking for work.
But in what world does this kind of policy implementation is justified? How is this a functioning bureaucracy in a functioning democracy where people can suffer like this?
Exactly. At this point, I think American businesses need to be forced back toward hiring Americans at legal gunpoint, with the exception of extremely high-skill immigrants (we still need to attract brains). But of course there was never a chance in hell this administration could implement such a complex thing without glaring holes, incompetence, and cruelty.
When I think of slavery I usually think of working for free, not H1B tech worker salaries which are insanely high on a global scale. It's also something people actively sign up for.
To echo a sibling comment: freedom, not salary, is under question. Agreement should not be given one time at sign up, it needs to be given continuously. High cost associated with being compelled to leave the country upon quitting, low mobility between employers, etc. reduce that freedom.
Worth reading about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour, it's not just the practice of chattel slavery, and various forms are still legal in the US.
The free part of slavery is about freedom, not payment. It was not uncommon for enslaved people to buy their way out of enslavement.
The defining feature of slavery is the involuntary part of it.
Quick googling (could be wrong), thousands bought freedom, approx 4 million were enslaved. It would have been uncommon, ballpark 0.1% (which still seems high to me. The issue is a very large denominator)
Slavery was around long before the US existed. In Ancient Rome it was much more common for slaves to buy their way out of slavery..
The order allows for exemptions at the executive’s discretion. Aka, the biggest companies will bend the knee and get their way
What you are replying to is a not even a critique of the policy itself, so defending it is a bit misdirected on your part
This is just cruel and inhumane and solves no issue that I can think of.
The cruelty is the point. It's consistent with the rest of their policy decisions.
God Bless Murica. They need it.
Don't forget that the "normalize indian hate" guy is still employed by the federal government.
I'm actually not sure who this is. Can you please name drop?
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/normalised-indi...
Had to Wikipedia this guy. Wow.
Marko Elez, the 25 year old DOGE staffer.
Solves the issue of appeasing blood-thirsty electoral base.
Does it ever? Blood thrist has a tendency to increase when cruelty is paid for by your taxes, while the source of frustrations isn't going anywhere
It solves the issue of "not looking cruel and inhumane enough" with a bonus of also solving "not tanking the economy enough".
I would not be so sure of the latter.
It solves the issue that the President needs more grift.
This has very strong "cruelty is the point" vibes.
There are a fair bit of international flights in the 10-12 hour range. Add some time to pack, get to airport, baggage check, get through security & how the flight times line up and this seems calculated in a way that is precisely not doable. Never mind people not perpetually online and only seeing this a couple hours later
Meanwhile there is to my knowledge no reason why this couldn't have been 48 hours. Still fast, but doable for anyone suitably determined.
48 hours would also have been crazy.
This should be a bill introduced in Congress, discussed in committee, voted on, and enacted with a date months in the future when it goes into effect, so that people, companies and government agencies can prepare and plan ... you know like an country with laws and procedures.
That argument went out the door when the last administration chose to open the borders.
We have laws against that. But they were ignored.
I agree that we should obey our laws. However, I don't think "they broke the rules, so I can too!" holds, and I feel it's obvious that it's wrong.
The last administration did something you don't like, so this round let's be cruel to people that didn't have anything to do with it?
I really would like to understand what did last administration do to open the doors. Didn't they actually deported historically high number of people?
An eye for an eye make the whole world blind.
The Biden administration didn't "open the borders." That isn't a thing that happened.
Yes, no way that any of this isn't finely calibrated to cause maximum misery. I was on the wrong side of the border when 9/11 happened, for months a whole chunk of my life was in limbo. Thanks to giving my bookkeeper emergency power of attorney in just such an eventuality we managed to squeak through but if not for that bit of foresight I'm not sure if we would have.
Wild. I flew domestically about a week after 9/11 and forgot that I had my leatherman in my pocket until I got to security... and the xray operator didn't see it in my backpack.
Oh that could have ended quite differently. I've had stuff that looked on second thought very much like explosive devices (little black boxes with a bunch of wires sticking out, internal pouch batteries) in my luggage on more than one occasion. I never so much as got a peep out of anything like that. But for some reason my elderly laptop is a real magnet for official attention and there is absolutely nothing non-stock about that one.
Why does it even need a time limit? Having the rules apply retroactively for existing holders is plain cruel.
They always do this because they know their EOs are legal overreaches and will be heavily challenged, but want to set the status quo to enforcing and normalizing the new policy as early as possible. They don't want to give their opponents any advance notice to organize or petition against their actions. Same story with deporting Kilmar Garcia in a hurry. I don't think the cruelty is the point exactly, but it's certainly a bonus for them.
I’m also confused as to why this is Microsoft-only advice. It keeps sounding like the proclamation involves adjusting an administrative fee for new visas (which, I guess, must be how it bypasses normal rulemaking procedures?).
How does that result in a fee for re-entering on a valid existing visa? Is this less about formal policy and more about Microsoft hedging against the possibility of chaotic and arbitrary enforcement? Which seems not-unlikely when a large bureaucracy has a rule change dropped on it with 24 hours to implement…
See other posts above. The proclamation explicitly states that the fee is due upon re-entry for existing visa holders.
I am firmly convinced this came from Stephen Miller (current homeland security advisor). Unnecessary cruelty to legal immigrants is his trademark style.
I smell "grift is the point" vibes.
It's both.
Sure, but for _trump_, it's definitely the grift potential. For the snakes that surround him with white supremacy, it's not really cruelty.
> This has very strong "cruelty is the point" vibes.
Hanlon's razor. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Regardless of what you think about the wisdom of the policy itself, implementing it rapidly is...probably not the best decision. But it's also par for the course for this administration.
It's not clear to me that this is an intended consequence of the policy change, or just Microsoft's attorneys being conservative in the face of chaos. A plain-text reading of the EO does not support the interpretation that people with existing H1B visas would be subject to the restrictions, but rather, seems like an ambiguity in the wording that a conservative lawyer could interpret in that manner:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
> 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.
Unfortunately I think there is enough track record that the administration no longer has benefit of doubt from Hanlon's razor. e.g.
>“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains."
sauce: https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-v...
So basically, you don't know, and you're violating Hanlon's razor because you think its wrong this time.
The fact that this administration routinely implements policies of all types in this way suggests that rambunctious implementation is the default explanation for any particular outcome.
Violating Hanlon’s razor like it’s some universal always true rule?
A razor is a default presumption, yes. It allows you to "shave off" unlikely explanations.
When you find yourself violating a philosophical razor, it's a strong indication that you should question your priors.
>you don't know
Neither do you.
Hanlon's razor is a good baseline when you have no information pointing to either option.
But when you have an administration that climbs onto a podium and announces they want to traumatize people, that's a pretty direct admission of malice in my books. You're free to conclude we're just seeing a string of repeated stupidity, but frankly I think it's incredibly naive to still given them the benefit of doubt.
This level of carelessness is malicious. Reckless neglect at best.
That's an assertion of opinion, not a fact.
This administration has a pattern of implementing policies this way, regardless of domain.
> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
How is this adequately explained by stupidity? Sincerely, I truly cannot imagine anyone in the US government is stupid enough to think "15 hours is enough time". This is like, 3rd grade levels of thought.
You're confusing facts with the opinions of others.
Read the EO. There's literally nothing in the EO stating that pre-existing visa holders are subject to the new rules. Someone else is interpreting the EO, and you're assuming that their opinion is the correct interpretation.
The language of the EO isn't clear, that's the point. Unless the administration comes out with clarification and guidance on what and who is in scope, then one can only assume either maliciousness or incompetence.
> or stating that pre-existing visa holders are subject to the new rules
How are you interpreting "on entry"?
In the plain text manner. To me the more relevant portion is this:
> ...except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000
Again, just doing a plain text reading, this seems to be intended to apply to new applicants, but they didn't explicitly spell it out. It's the sort of thing that would be debated endlessly in the rounds of legal review that accompany a...more traditional...change to law, but when done quickly via EO tends to get overlooked.
I see, you're saying the stupidity here is that they didn't clarify whether it applies to existing holders. Given that possible explanation-via-stupidity, it's unlikely that it was pure malice. I actually think you make a good point. I think the proposed method-via-stupidity is important for understanding your initial claim, I doubt many people have read the EO (indeed many will not even read the linked article)
Yeah, exactly. Given the text of the EO plus the public statements about it from the administration, it sounds like an ambiguous drafting, coupled with lawyers doing what they do best (i.e. the most conservative possible interpretation of any ambiguity).
I read it as, it either was accompanied by a payment already or it has to be supplemented
Where the supplement would obviously be for the existing ones
Except you have to ignore every prior word of the sentence I quoted to make that interpretation.
Why is this hn post not visible?
It was never not visible, but it did set off the flamewar detector, which downweighted it off the front page. We eventually turned that penalty off.
Btw, I've changed the HN title to reflect the article's title now. Submitted title was "Visa holders on vacation have 15 hours to return to US or pay $100k fee". I don't know if the article said that when you submitted it (news outlets sometimes update article titles as more information emerges), or if you rewrote the title, but if it was the latter, please don't do that—it's against HN's guidelines. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
It is?
It's back now but it did vanish for a while.
Maybe the mods temporarily hide a thread to catch up on moderation if it's spiraling too quickly to manage.
Likely because it's too political
Bet all those tech lords are happy they went to the White House to stroke big Don and tell him how smart he is.
You don’t see Accenture, Wipro, or Infosys on the table. The tech lords will be fine.
[flagged]
Not sure about dumbest, but almost definitely the most cruel. (or at least least worried about putting on a facade of caring).
But remember: he was elected; by the people; for a second time. Let that all sink in.
In a true democracy the minority is not ignored, especially if it counts for like 49% of the population.
Otherwise it's just a dictatorship of the majority, which it is now.
Majority will choose dumb old convict instead of being ruled by woman.
It does make one wonder why the democrats insist on putting women and racial minorities forward as presidential candidates. Yes, it shouldn’t matter but it apparently really does and was that the hill we wanted to die on? Handing the presidency to Trump?
A reminder that just because we may feel sorry for these H1B people caught up in this administration’s shenanigans, it does not mean we have to be overly supportive of the H1B program in general.
If it ends, it ends. There’s plenty of American CS graduates desperate for jobs here at home too. Tired of hearing stories about people who have been unable to land any kind of CS job due to low hiring and AI making them irrelevant. We need to support these people and H1B programs absolutely don’t help. I hope the foreigners will understand, and not take it too personally.
edit: but also, if you’re an H1B who gamed the system through consulting agencies to beat the lottery, screw you. Your fraud has taken opportunities from both, Americans and legit H1B applicants.
Might as well kick every single foreigner out of this country to let Americans find jobs.
Of course us foreigners take it personally... Are you serious? How is this understandable?
How should the American workers who constantly get passed over in favor for H1Bs take it?
Americans got so obsessed with being a “nation of immigrants” they elevated actual immigrants to higher status than American citizens themselves.
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/trump-mulls-a...
Non cancerous link to the source.
The original link's page loads okay with an ad blocker.
I am using Wipr on iOS and macOS. I can see the whole Reuters link without a paywall.
>Some employers have exploited the program to hold down wages, disadvantaging U.S. workers,
Change "Some" to "All major employers". I worked at a fortune 500 company in IT and all they hired were H1B employees over the past 15/20 years. The last raise we got that was above inflation and health insurance increases was before 2000. I left 2 years ago and after I left they fired almost everyone in the IT Dept I was in and replaced them with H1B.
So I hope this sticks. Plus remember, H1B people should make a fair wage too, all too often their salary is set by their contracting firm and is far far lower then what we got.
As someone who previously worked in US with H1Bs who were making well over half a million, I doubt your statement. I have moved out of the US a few years back though.
But regardless, I sincerely hope this policy sticks without any loopholes. This policy will only incentivise companies to move more of their operations to other countries and only keep the bare minimum in US to keep their US business thriving.
As someone who worked with mulitple H-1Bs making less than their peers, I believe his statement.
This visa is very two faced. One hand, it's been used to import some really smart people into the United States who have gone on to do incredible things. Other hand, it's been used for job replacement by "native" workers who can do the job but were "too expensive".
I've worked with and hired people on H1B. At least from my experience they're treated (from a job offer perspective) just like any other candidate. Some get bigger offers because they negotiate well, are in high demand positions etc and some don't. There was no lowballing candidates because they're on H1B or need sponsorship.
Then that's your experience. I've worked with H-1B where their salary was lowballed or job title was. Not to mention the difficulty in switching jobs and 5 years in, they were severely underpaid.
My original comment about being two faced I still stand by.
It is absolutely not all major employers. I'm on a visa and have worked for two major tech companies in the US over the last 10 years. I have never been a contractor. I've also compared salaries and know I am doing comparable or better. The majority of my team have always been naturalized citizens.
Name and shame?
The H1B list is all public. You can search through the data on h1bdata.info if you want.
There are many people on H1B's whose employers will not have a problem paying a $100k fee, but there are also many other firms that will not pay.
I guess it's safe to say there won't need to be an H1B lottery next year.
I do think we need a visa category for people who have completed an education in the US. Yes, there's OPT for certain fields for F1 visa holders but it's not enough.
But all that's a part of broader immigration reform that simply won't happen, particularly in this political climate.
As horrible as this all is for those affected, particularly for people who have been waiting patiently in line for 10-20 years, it's also true that:
1. There absolutely is H1B visa abuse, specifically by the bodyshops like Infosys and Tata;
2. H1Bs are used to suppress wages for the entire workforce; and
3. In an era of permanent layoffs and high unemployment in the tech sector, preference should absolutely be given to existing US permanent residents and citizens. That's the declared intent of the H1B program but the reality hasn't really worked that way.
The employers have brought this on themselves and ordinary people will suffer because of it. I do think that if you layoff more than 2% of your staff in any given year, you should be unable to sponsor any visa for a period of 2+ years.
This isn't a big deal for the larger tech companies other than a short term pain in the ass.
This is a large net negative for 3 sectors that I can currently think of:
- American (software) tech workers - Healthcare - Research / Postgrad
Medicine and Research are fairly self explanatory, however, why the American software tech worker?
Let's say you're Microsoft, you have large offices all over the world - instead of hiring in the US and making those departments in US offices bigger, you're going to instead hire in probably the following places:
- UK - Australia - South Asia
It means less focus in the US which eventually will just become sales and marketing only with perhaps some smaller department sized tech jobs.
Another great Trump strategy that appears to be helping the poor whites but actually shafts them.
> This isn't a big deal for the larger tech companies other than a short term pain in the ass.
A sudden $100,000 per year increase on every H1B salary is a big deal.
$0 is smaller than $100,000
Even better than this actually is a one time relocation cost, you retain the domain knowledge of the employee and send someone elsewhere where they can keep working.
I think the focus should be first and foremost on the damage to personal relationships rather than their ability to keep working, even if that will become more important soon after. You can't just drop crap like this on people without warning, this whole governing by proclamation is idiotic.
This is absolutely a mean AF law. This is pure Trump in his element with no depth of thought. However Big Tech does not care about your feelings, there are two realistic options.
To send you back where you came from (severance).
To send you somewhere where you have the ability to keep doing what your doing.
Some may fork out the fee for a year for exceptional staff, thats about it.
Anyway, forget the tech sector. The impact to the health care sector is even worse.
Yes, from the US economy's point of view this is a massive own goal. But I'm far more concerned with the people affected than with the US economy or the companies. Having to re-schedule your life on a 48 hour notice is a very hard problem in logistics, finances and various paper tigers. I'd focus on personal safety first and sort out the details bit-by-bit, the one thing I would not do is to try to get back in to the USA in a situation where I would expose my family to ICE and their penchant for cruelty. Anything better than that.
There is ONLY one solution - get back to America tonight, sort out the logistics afterwards.
The problem is that that may not be logistically feasible. This is no accident.
Can you elaborate more on hiring and immigration in the United Kingdom and Australia with respect to similar skilled visa work?
When you say South Asia could you expand on what specific countries you mean? I think South Asia could mean a few things to a few different people which is why I ask.
> It means less focus in the US which eventually will just become sales and marketing only with perhaps some smaller department sized tech jobs.
As an American I'm curious about this, can you expand on how this will happen or how you think it might happen? If I recall correctly the figure for active H1B visa holders in the United States is under 1 million, so are you asserting that those visa holders all or mostly leave the United States and then the tech jobs that remain will be small in number are most folks working at companies like Google or Microsoft will just be working in sales and marketing? If that's not what you meant to say could you expand?
> Can you elaborate more on hiring and immigration in the United Kingdom and Australia with respect to similar skilled visa work? > When you say South Asia could you expand on what specific countries you mean? I think South Asia could mean a few things to a few different people which is why I ask.
I was in the process of moving one engineer from Dubai to Manchester, probably all in the process is £20,000-£30,000 overall, spread over several years.
South Asia is India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Predominantly this is India and Pakistan though.
> As an American I'm curious about this, can you expand on how this will happen or how you think it might happen?
Best guess, those software engineering departments with predominantly South Asian engineers will cease to exist, they'll buy real estate in London/Sydney which is a much better long term investment because London prices always go up.
Severance is also REALLY easy in the US compared to countries where actual labour laws exist.
Sales and Marketing will stay, they probably need that American presence, they don't need that in software engineering because the Internet exists.
Thanks for expanding. I thought you were referring to roughly the same locations in South Asia but I wasn't sure. I appreciate it.
I was reading just the other day that some US companies have been spending lavishly on office space in the City of London [1].
[1] No paywall https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/apple-citadel-and...
Speaking purely from the UK perspective, London is expensive, however, real estate should not be seen as a cost for a large company, it's an investment. Price increases on office real estate on a year-to-year basis just in London is 5-10% per square metre.
For the UK this is amazing news, it also allows for places like Birmingham and Manchester to get a significant boost.
When OP says South Asia they mean India.
Coincidentally American tech workers just accompanied Trump to the UK where they promised to setup massive new offices. Even more coincidentally the UK just concluded a trade deal with India that includes easier work related immigration into the UK…
As much as I think Trump and crew is dangerous to the nation, I’m not hating this and I believe it’s long overdue.
I was about to wistfully wish Biden or Obama pushed for this, but it’s clear they were too deep in the tech industry’s pockets.
Not sure how this administration intends on addressing the off-shore response though.
Scaling back, seriously modifying, or eliminating the H1B program is a perhaps reasonable policy action.
Giving people 15 hours of notice is incompetent and a dick move.
I'm not American, but with how many software engineers having gotten laid off over the last 4 years, reducing foreign workers competing for the same positions should be a given from the perspective of governing a nation.
I'm surprised how divisive such a decision seems to be considering our current reality of a contracting industry (employment wise)
Why do you think they would not close the position in USA if immigrants are not an option anymore?
If Indian developer cannot obtain a visa in Microsoft they will simply recruit the same person to the office in India.
This is anecdote, but majority of the folks that Microsoft has on H1B from India are people who were hired in India in the first place and were allowed to move over because it was “worth it”. Microsoft specifically will be fine with Indian H1Bs even if they don’t want to pay $100k.
If it's so easy to recruit for the Indian office, why go through the trouble of getting an H1-B in the first place?
Same reason why they go through all troubles to force RTO: to keep people around in the office to justify position of the manager.
The timezone difference between the west coast and India is pretty brutal for close collaboration. Argentina for example is much easier.
> but with how many software engineers having gotten laid off over the last 4 years
And how many times have we heard that you can’t time the market
Can you call the bottom ?
Let's be real here, the metric the foreign workers are mainly competing on is price.
The average tech immigrant is not particularly more bright then the average native dev, and the truly outstanding ones can still be given entrance just my paying 100k - which should be entirely neglectable for world class talent.
> and the truly outstanding ones can still be given entrance just my paying 100k
The same song, a tariff on talent
The H1 system requires the sponsoring company to prove there are no available US citizen candidates. Perhaps the appropriate move would be to look at eliminating fraud in that area. If there are large numbers of available qualified candidates then under the existing system H1-B applications should drop to zero.
Indians would rather import more Indians than hire anybody else (including Indian Americans) domestically. This is well understood by looking at lawsuits against WITCH companies, and by speaking with anyone who has seen what happens when an Indian attains a leadership role in a tech company. That’s why you get downvoted and suspect it’s controversial. It’s not controversial to anyone but Indians.
If the $100k fee was then designated for STEM scholarships for underserved students, this policy would be continued even by the democrats. If the justification of H1B is that the US does not produce enough engineers, let’s financially encourage the domestic supply.
Many of the benefits are degraded or destroyed when the game is shifted immediately and drastically. People fear the game may experience more seismic shifts, so they don't take chances or make major investments.
Even if you like this policy as an end goal, the implementation is pants on head stupid.
Didn’t H1B fees already pay for training ?
It's true they may agree in principle that the program needs reform. But culture war isn't policy. The actual policy implementation would look very different when motivated by good faith vs. hating brown people.
This is not how funding works.
Yeah. It would go to fund education. Sure. Funding education is totally on brand for modern conservatives.
A lot of aggrieved comments blaming US leadership, but nary a word about the leadership of countries which create conditions that people have to emigrate from.
Populations of most countries offshore the blame for the lack of economic opportunity or social conditions where they live. I don’t blame the common folk, it’s the leaders and elite of such places who are responsible for their countries relative success or failure.
> but nary a word about the leadership of countries which create conditions that people have to emigrate from.
Because we in the US largely care about making our country better. And pulling the best and brightest out of other countries has historically been considered a good deal for us or even an explicit 'Brain Drain the Soviets' strategy.
This admin and the people in charge today have forgotten about this and now we are left with our multi decade system getting wrecked.
Except the U.S. right now is nothing like what the USSR was under the Soviets, at least not for people who are in the U.S. via proper and lawful immigration protocols. The bent towards Christian nationalism may covert the US into an unviable USSR-like environment for a majority of its population, including whites and Christians. But I don’t think that scenario is likely given the range of leadership available to the U.S. I guess it depends on how the next two years unfold, maybe I’ll stand corrected.
Regarding brain drains, why is it so bad if the best and most productive of another country stay in their home states, or go else where? The fact is that there are a lot of nations which experience relatively low rates of immigration, but are at the forefront of science and tech, such as China or Japan or Singapore. Maybe brain drains are not the main concern here, if anything the idea is a distraction.
Some people just emigrate without lack of economic opportunity or social conditions. I have a German friend living in Japan because he's curious about Japan (he previously lived in the UK).
The US is responsible for the economic problems of many of those countries. To give an example, whether or not you agree with what the US is doing to Venezuela, all the sanctions have caused mass migrations out of that country and into ours.
> The H-1B is a classification of non-immigrant visa in the United States that allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations, as well as fashion models and employees engaged in Department of Defense projects who meet certain conditions
This is not about emigration. Frankly, as a European I would find moving to the US a serious downgrade in living quality.
With the ungodly level of poverty upper-class Indians are used to stepping over back at home, it's no wonder that there's no consideration given to working people here.
We hopefully have a different ethical structure. Extreme racists are largely a minority in the west, whereas birth naturally defining your life is simply common sense in some of the countries that we accept the most immigrants from. I'd be more inclined to accept people who are escaping that structure (like Mexicans, for example, who are running over the border instead of flying into six-figure jobs), but those who are coming here are from the class who have the most say in the conditions of the poor in their own countries.
The descendants of compradors, still winning, but playing the racist card because they know the US is still sensitive about what they did to black people, and how they never made up for it. Most of the immigrants I know are racist, and will explain why not being racist is stupid, at length.
>>those who are coming here are from the class who have the most say in the conditions of the poor in their own countries.
Wow, okay. How does this work? All such people actually rule those countries? Or their votes somehow counted more than others?