I think there’s plenty of interesting debates to be had about immigration policy and its effects on the labor market, but one thing worth noting here is that the primary problem that damn near every other country on earth has isn’t immigration, it’s brain drain.
A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them do so. You can argue how well that’s worked out for us - having worked with a great many extremely talented H1bs in an industry largely built by immigrants, I’d consider it pretty positive - but it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.
The top end of H1B has been great for America. In the last few decades, there has been growth of abuse of the program to get mid level talent at below market rates which really hurts the middle class in America. People need to understand that most reformists don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration to the US. We need to limit the volume, especially the immigrants that are directly competing with a hollowed out middle class in the US. Let me know if you want further reading on this topic.
The hollowing out of the middle class in the US isn't because of immigrants, it's because of a sustained campaign by capital to reduce the power of labor over the last 50-odd years and to concentrate wealth as best they can. Immigrant labor contributes to that because we've got inadequate labor protections and because we bought into the idea that lower consumer prices was a fine reason to ignore both labor and antitrust.
Idk what visa program was is under, but home depot used to bring in immigrants to run their stores (stockers , cashiers, etc ) under a program that meant that some contractor was putting 12 people in a 3 bedroom apartment and charging them big fees to come work for minimum wage. This was a while ago, but I was in the rental business and got to see it first hand and talk to the workers. It was extremely exploitative. 5 years ago they were still doing it my hometown, I haven’t checked since. It was mostly Eastern Europeans.
This is exactly correct. The H1B visa has not lived up to its original premise in quite some time. A very significant percentage of people who are now working on these visas are not offering anything beyond what is already available within the American workforce, except for lower compensation.
Or you could stop tying H-1Bs to employers, meaning that there's less incentive to do the work to bring "mid level talent" in at below market rates, because those people would immediately find a job at market rates.
There's a straightforward solution here. Right now H-1Bs are a way for companies to lock in employees by leveraging the visa status.
I have worked with software people on H1B visas who's #1 goal was to hire more [specific nationality] and thin out the rest. Their work ethic was a top-down rule by fear, and their code was VERY bad. Made my life straight up worse. One example of abusing the H1B visa system.
I am skeptical that _that_ is what's hollowing the middle class in America, it's equally easy to point to income inequality for this. But you have your story you believe, I'm resigned that the die are already cast.
It's kind of sad to see the accelerated downfall of your country.
Looking at it solely from a perspective of competition between labor glosses over the fact that insufficient labor is also bad for the economy because it keeps companies from growing and hiring more people.
So sure, while the fewer jobs that they can fill could have higher wages (not a given, because lack of labor can stunt or kill companies) there could be much fewer people employed overall, which is clearly bad overall.
Of course, that assumes there is enough room for companies to grow. There are strong indications (e.g. the various labor and unemployment surveys) that this is the case in the US. In fact, there is a credible theory that the reason the US managed the inflation crisis so well was due to the immigration crisis.
> People need to understand that most reformists don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration to the US.
And how are “they” planning on determining who is “truly exceptional”? And what makes you think the “truly exceptional” ones are still going to have any interest in coming here when they see what happens to the people who the current regime deems “not exceptional”?
I sure as hell wouldn’t come to the US knowing I may be deported to a third world prison if I post the wrong thing online.
Exceptional migrants can still qualify under O-1, which hasn’t really changed at all. Most tech startup founders can qualify for O-1, unless your startup is really pointless.
> In the last few decades, there has been growth of abuse of the program to get mid level talent at below market rates which really hurts the middle class in America.
That's a weird definition for "middle class", there are only 65k H1b visas issued every year. If you really are talking about the middle 60% or whatever of all workers, immigrants on H1b's are irrelevant noise. At most, these visas might be seen to impact specific professions (tech in particular, lots of doctors too) that most people don't consider representative of the "middle class".
The hollowed out middle class is surely because of the class of jobs that have been growing the fastest, seeing the highest salaries and salary growths, and have been the best jobs in America for 2 decades.
It’s not because of the other jobs which the H1Bs aren’t even allowed to do abd have seen falling salaries and degrowth.
Are we saying software engineers making $125-150k are middle class? If so, then yes this I absolutely believe this is true. These will still be high level people for the most part that will up our game in my opinion. Thats in the opinion column, hard to prove. But this fee may have a net negative impact on jobs for Americans as it will push more companies to simply outsource to these countries rather than pay more in the US. So you need to tax that too. And then they will find some way around that and we will need to tax that new thing. I don’t like this game, it is trying to stop progress in my opinion. But I guess it is a balancing act and who knows where you set the line. Adding friction to it will definitely make it so only higher quality talent migrates here, that much seems clear.
Agreed, however the top end usually comes to US to do masters and then tries to get job using H1B. If this is where to be instated in this form, it almost precludes any fresh college graduates from getting a shot at this.
People need to understand that most reformists don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration to the US.
What do the most influential reformists want? The ones who set the extreme agenda that everyone else follows? As I understand it, right now the US is routinely enacting policies that the majority of citizens do not want; from this, could we surmise that the majority of people, and presumably thus the majority of reformists, will receive the extreme H1B policies that they don't want?
How valid is this premise in an increasingly global world?
Most of the companies that are paying salaries could (and already do!) have offices in other jurisdictions where they could hire the same talent.
Better to bring this talent onshore, where the wages are taxed, than force these companies to hire from satellite offices?
It doesn't make much financial sense for companies to stop sourcing talent globally just because they can't be brought onshore, especially given enough time.
Purely anecdotal, but for me personally this wouldn't change who or how I hire, just the location.
I suspect that in the case of tech companies, the end result of this won't be more jobs going to Americans, it will be either remote workers in low wage countries or outsourcing to low wage countries. Which, in the long term, might lead to fewer tech jobs in the US overall.
Still, I can't help but feel a little bit of glee at all the tech companies who did their best to suck up to Trump, and now he stabs them in the back.
I imagine for the "best of the best" making $500k+ annually, this is just the cost of business and they're not going anywhere, while for the h1b workers making closer to $100k annually, this is a show stopper.
Agree with the abuse part. Question is - is this the right way to fix the problem? A half baked executive order that raises more questions than answers for the existing H1B visa holders.
With that in mind, would you say the administration is going about this the right way? Because this is going to hurt all H1B candidates, not just the "middle".
First it was "we're only against illegal immigration, we want people to do it the right way".
Now it's "we need to limit the volume" and "don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration".
Forgive me if I am skeptical, especially in a world where ICE is rounding up classic "exceptional" immigrants like biology researchers, or South Korean experts setting up a factory.
Honestly: a lie. One you chose because it appealed to you, and then constructed a narrative to support it. We could easily afford to have a middle class in this country if we distributed wealth differently, and more immigrants would help us do it.
I think one unintended outcome of this would be that the jobs would be completely outsourced to outside of US. The ones remaining would be government contracts that have provisions against it. The government could add tariffs on services, but we need to see if that just moves the companies outside of US or not. Capitalism in a democracy is hard to control.
I don't think it follows that preventing that brain drain would have lead to appreciably better outcomes for those countries. The real sucking factor for the united states is the second to none availability of capital to spend on R & D. If you keep the brains where they were raised, there is no mechanism for them to actually turn their ideas into fruition because there is little funding to support this either in private or public sector. The reason why you hear about research talent going back to China is because they are offered PI positions and generous startup grants or something analogous in most cases, with the government there committed to invest billions in research. You can't really expect that in the global south. You can't even really expect that in Europe in a lot of cases.
> If you keep the brains where they were raised, there is no mechanism for them to actually turn their ideas into fruition because there is little funding to support this either in private or public sector.
In such a world, why wouldn't you see 1. foreign R&D companies, 2. indexed into a thriving foreign equities market, 3. gathering the interest of domestic investors who want to diversify beyond domestic investments, by 4. moving their money and/or investing in domestic proxy investments?
I say this as a Canadian whose managed mutual-fund holdings are apparently largely composed of foreign (mostly American) proxy equities — and who has met many Canadian-based VCs who don't do much investment into Canadian companies. If not for talent immigration, the American investment landscape would probably look similar!
> I don't think it follows that preventing that brain drain would have lead to appreciably better outcomes for those countries.
Well sure, it depends what the counterfactual is. If those countries just physically prevented the people from leaving, and nothing more, I wouldn't expect that countries' outcomes to improve. But what the countries suffering from brain drain presumably want is for there to be attractive opportunities for those skilled workers in their own country.
One man's rising gas prices are another man's oil industry boom.
The H1B process is unfair to engineers because it drives down their compensation in a way that doesn't affect nurses or welders. If immigration were completely irrespective of profession and based solely around whether the imported laborers get paid enough to contribute more than they receive in taxes/public services, nobody would have any standing to complain about their wages being driven down because every single person benefits in the long run from the economic growth.
As things stand, tech workers and unskilled laborers get screwed by the current status quo because they don't reap the benefit of cheaper goods and services in all the other industries, but everyone else benefits from cheaper electronics/software and landscaping/housekeeping/food service while their wages grow.
You're not wrong on paper, the current immigration practices are just screwy.
EDIT - The hard statistical proof that most of the H-1Bs are tech workers:
Precisely, I have been saying this for a while: engineers are smart enough to invent things but too stupid to gatekeep their profession. You have bootcampers, H1B workers, self-taught whatever, anyone can call themselves an engineer overnight. In 5 years you are now a "principal engineer!" I would even go further and distinguish between software and other disciplines of engineering. A web developer who is called a senior engineer is on paper equal to embedded engineers who spent at least 5 years in education plus god knows how long in experience to get the same title. This is wrong. I don't see a CPR trainee suddenly being able to call themselves a registered nurse!
If you look at the background of founders in tech you’ll soon realize that without immigration this entire industry would be a shadow of what it currently is; it’s not about the amount of compensation, it’s about whether there’s a job at all.
As always, so much zero-sum thinking in all these discussions.
Often, the person may not have been as productive, happy, or well compensated in their own country.
Also, over time, some of those people make money in the US and take that, their knowledge and skills and go back home to share there. Everyone is better off.
I was discussing this elsewhere, and dug up something I wrote 11 years ago, and I think I'm still pretty happy with it:
> Also, over time, some of those people make money in the US and take that, their knowledge and skills and go back home to share there. Everyone is better off.
Also: whatever you think of this issue, it's very much r/LeopardsAteMyFace in terms of some of the big tech companies cozying up to the administration.
The weirdest thing about the zero-sum rhetoric to me is: when one person is demanding to benefit at the expense of someone else, if I'm neither of them, why am I supposed to care?
Suppose I'm not an American--like plenty of HN commenters--or alternatively that (as in reality) I am an American but I have good reasons to think that the personal benefit I derive from the presence of immigrants is greater than the cost to me as an individual, even were I to concede more generic economic arguments about wage competition. Then... why am I supposed to prioritize the interests of American tech workers over foreign immigrants?
I don't in general endorse an "I got mine, screw you" approach, nor one that says "hey GDP is going up so screw the losers", but if someone else is taking exactly that attitude just with a nationalistic inflection, it's hard to extend them a lot of empathy.
> A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them do so.
That's largely a myth, though. The vast majority of smart, driven people have no path to lawfully immigrate to the US.
By a wide margin, the main immigration pathway are family visas (i.e., marriages and citizens bringing in relatives). H-1B visas are a comparatively small slice that's available via a lottery only to some professions and some backgrounds - and the process is basically gamed by low-wage consultancies, with a large proportion of the rest gobbled up by a handful of Big Tech employers. And that's before we even get to the fact that H-1B doesn't necessarily give you a path to permanent residency, depending on where you're from.
For most people who aren't techies, the options are really very limited, basically "be exceptionally wealthy", "be a celebrity", or "be one of the world's foremost experts on X".
This is so absolutely fundamental to US strategic advantage.
A huge reason we have so many unicorns is because doing business and scaling in the US is easier than EU or other places.
A huge part of why the Manhattan Project was successful was also because of substantial brain drain from Europe. I think Scott Galloway wrote about this or may have popularized it.
If you're only talking about the exceptional sure. But when Microsoft fires x and applies for ~x H1Bs the same day... That doesn't seem like what you're talking about at all.
If an employee is exceptional and a skilled unicorn wrangler... 100K is nothing.
I've read brain drain in this thread multiple times. I might agree this happened back then, but I don't know what people mean by it right now. Where is the term coming from suddenly and why is it used to uncritical?
Taking the well-being of abstract concepts like a country over the well-being of concrete individuals is a slippery road towards a particularly unappealing version of collectivism. Me emigrating from Eastern to Western Europe was among the best decisions I have made in my entire life, and I couldn't care less if the outcome of this is my country doing "worse". My country by itself doesn't feel nor think anything, but I certainly do. One of these thoughts is me not believing that I have a civic duty to be less well-off materially and mentally just so my taxes get re-routed to a country I accidentally happened to be born in. I vote with my feet.
Sites like jobs.now show the H1B situation is incredibly corrupt. So many hard to find jobs where they ask applicants to physically mail in their resume, so that later on they can make it an H1B job.
I don't think being against exploitive mass migration - which by its definition is brain drain of other countries, which every bleeding hearter likes to ignore - is the same saying no one should ever immigrate ever.
Don't worry. The actual text declares that DHS has the discretion to give exceptions to companies. [1] I'm sure this does not at all imply that what this policy really means is that companies who bend the knee won't see this extra charge.
The Manhattan Project engaged thousands of scientists, but over 16 notable principal scientists (with major published credits) were foreign-born and either retained their citizenship or became naturalized U.S. citizens only after escaping persecution or war in Europe.
As of 2025, about 10-12 CEOs of the top 50 Fortune 500 (F50) companies were born outside the United States, representing roughly 20-25% of F50 CEOs. This number has grown over the past two decades, reflecting increasing diversity among leadership at America's largest corporations.
Nearly half of all Fortune 500 companies in 2025—specifically 44%—were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants, meaning the original founders were not born in the United States or were the first generation after immigration.
I don't know if that's easy. If this was flipped around, 100% of the top Fortune 500 would be born inside the United States if no immigrants were allowed in.
A better test may be comparing company performance worldwide instead of only in the F500. That's a different list, the Global 500.
> A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them do so.
This is a double edged sword given that it means there’s less incentive to invest in US public education and fostering our own talent. Instead of brain drain we’re dealing with brain rot.
A hugely overlooked point. If FAANG etc want talented people, and couldn't hire H1Bs, they might have more of an incentive to try to influence education and to train people with aptitude but lacking learnable skills.
As of now, both the K12 system and college education seem in freefall in terms of quality and applicability to careers. No doubt those companies will devote their money to lobbying to keep hiring H1Bs instead of training the talent they need here, since they're just profit-optimizing functions, rather than humans with morals.
We would have to filter for these more. In reality the majority of H1B visa are issued to companies like Infosys or Tata who often have below average people.
They really should just outlaw H-1Bs for body shops. There is no rational justification for it given the blatant abuse of the visa program they have long demonstrated. If a company needs work done, they should be forced to sponsor a guest worker directly.
The elephant in the room is that many of these highly successful people who have brought great economic advantage to the US over the years happen to have brown skin.
As for why this policy is being adopted: sometimes an elephant is just an elephant. The huge price increase hurts brown people (mostly), and possibly curbs immigration. It will play well with a certain segment of Americans.
There are many subtleties to the H1-B visa debate, but I don’t think they are at play in this policy change.
I’ve worked with plenty of coworkers on H1B both on boring old enterprise companies and BigTech. Absolutely none of them were better (or worse) than American citizens.
On the other hand, those working for WITCH companies…
And trust me, I’m in no way “anti minority”. Not only are some of my best friends minorities - so are my parents…
Maybe talent in third world countries. I think it's mostly mid-tier people from first world countries.
People with actually talent and intelligence realise how messed up the USA is (and has been for some time) and prefer things like healthcare and gun control.
And if they really want the lack of work life balance and/or high paid roles, they can consult from US company like I do. Now I get the money, but I live in a decent country.
I don't think there is any amount of money you could offer me to move to the USA. Well ok, maybe when it gets to $10 million / year I would have to start considering it.
Meanwhile the vast majority of people in real world don’t consume a steady diet of r/politics et al, has actually spent an appreciable amount of time in the U.S., and has come to a different (nearly opposite) conclusion. I wonder which is more correct.
> but one thing worth noting here is that the primary problem that damn near every other country on earth has isn’t immigration, it’s brain drain.
It's great if you only root for the US, but taking more global perspective, let's have other countries improve their situation as well. There are almost 200 or so countries, I am ok with them improving their economy using their equivalent of H1-B programs.
This is a golden opportunity for others to step in an eat Americans' lunch so to speak, let's see if they capitalize on it.
In the UK it is mostly immigration policy. Thanks to something called Boriswave, corporations could import knowledge workers at close to minimum wage (so locals couldn't even compete for those jobs) and now it changed a little, but still it's fraction of what local worker would command for similar job. This has basically collapsed the IT market. Then you have more people competing for the same resources, meaning rents going up, you wait longer for a doctor's appointment and so on.
Just don't get me wrong - I don't blame immigrants. If I was in a poor country and had talent, I'd grab any opportunity to get more experience and get foot in the door so to speak.
It's corruption of the government.
Now, by the way I understand H-1B, $100k still seams cheap for essentially getting a slave.
After adjusting for inflation, slaves from the 19th century prices would be worth somewhere from $30k-$150k in present day dollars, according to the best research.
>> hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from
Not so straight forward. Ambitious people leave underdeveloped countries because there are little opportunities. It's not like they are going to build same great product there as in California.
There’s another benefit to immigration that isn’t often discussed. Known as the immigrant paradox, children of immigrants routinely perform better academically than their peers, even despite other socioeconomic challenges. This suggests that immigrants not only benefit the country from the work they directly perform but their children also benefit the country by raising the bar for academic performance and arguably growing up into better educated if not better skilled workers themselves.
Where would we be without foreign brains like Musk, Theil, the Wright brothers, knuth, North Korean programmers and that guy that got hired by 40 different startups at once.
Admittedly my frame of reference here is now a decade ago when I was living in California. But we would routinely hire people on H1B, and it most definitely wasn't because we thought it was a cost saving. Between the >=$20K in legal fees, similar budget for relocation expenses to bring someone into the country, and having to pay them as a foreign contractor for anything up to 10 months while we wait for the applications to re-open for the year. And then pay them the same as any local talent we hand on the team.
Hiring local people was preferable in every way. But the market was hot and it was seemingly almost impossible to actually do that.
>it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.
It damn sure hasn't worked out well for a lot of talented, perpetually underemployed (many deep in perpetual debt) US kids. And I'm pretty sure that what those talented folks learn here in the US has made its way back to those countries, considering (e.g.) the level of competition we see from Asia these days.
I misread this initially as the problem that damn near every other country has is also immigration. This seems to also be at least somewhat true for first world countries.
Looking at the politics in Europe and Asia today, the question of who is allowed in and why is a central point of debate that rages and threatens to tear apart much of the fabric that was built over generations.
I think some people underestimate the power of those willing to migrate to the US.
I’m in my early 40s and moved from Western Europe to the US 11 years ago, and I feel I was the last generation eager to come, the perception of US is changing fast. This is not an H-1B problem but still a parallel one on how to attract people.
Being an immigrant, I think it’s net positive for everyone. I brought skills that, at the moment I immigrated, my home country could not leverage, even though it paid for my free education. I built on these skills and if my home country ever needs these skills, I would be excited to contribute.
Shutting down H1Bs is extremely stupid because >50% of our unicorn founders are first generation immigrants that started out on the H1B. They are the greatest creators of jobs in the entire economy. Shutting down the H1B is a dark horse for the end of American success.
Ok that may be true but I would also argue there is such a thing as elite overproduction[1] via immigration. That is, we are basically importing a new elite for a fixed number of roles in society. Let's presume also that the children of highly talented immigrants are also highly talented. In some sense this kind of social engineering could be harmful to both nations involved.
Example of Poland and guys that Sam.A. Gave shout out.
Their talents would be simply wasted in Poland. There simply is not enough capital and academic resources are not going to best people but to ones gaming the system.
I bet a lot of talented people move to US because they would have to fight uphill battles in their home countries with lack of funding, nepotism, corruption, caste systems you name it.
So I don’t think it would make much difference for the countries if they don’t have society set in ways to benefit from those talents.
love it or hate it, it hasn't worked out well for/in the minds of native-born us citizens either, a sentiment which I think this policy is going to tap into hard.
That was my thought too, and then I wondered if the workers are $100k more expensive to bring here then maybe the jobs are just going to go to the same people, but in their home country.
What other country do you know of that can, with a wave of a hand, import a million highest-quality, ambitious people from across the globe? These folks aren't clamoring to go to other countries; this is the US position, and it was built with lots of hard work. With these changes, let's see how much this hurts in the foot.
It’s not a strategic strength of the country as a whole to displace out of the economy the top talent, with a constant stream of new workers. This is just a local gaming by industry heads chasing end of year bonuses based on short term financials. We saw the offshoring of talent in manufacturing destroy domestic capacity. We are now seeing a similar phenomenon as there is pressure from many sides to offshore tech or migrate employment from citizens and permanent residents to temporary residents.
The employment environment in Silicon Valley has been extremely strange since 2022. I haven’t been able to find a job in my field since then, despite being at the top of my game. I’m practically bankrupt and currently making ends meet in a minimum wage job.
> but it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.
The ethics of emigration is an interesting area that's under explored, especially in non-emergency scenarios. We have obligations to our own societies, for example, but how this affects emigration requires clarification.
Lots of truth there. But it's certainly worked wonders for the top tier of Indian society, being able to farm out labour. Akshata Murty certainly has had a fair slice of the cake, for example.
Thats why this move is good news for the rest of the world. Our competitive advantage will increase, year after year, albeit from a low level compared to the US.
A lot of the H1B's in the software industry definitely match the description you stated - talented folks coming from places which (I'll add) have superior education systems. The problem isn't immigration, it's the undercutting of wages and the fact that these H1's (who we ALL work with) are trapped, working with fear and under pressure, due to the leverage the employer has.
H1B program == leverage over the H1B workers due to the employment tie-in to residence, leverage over other non-H1B workers as well, due to the wider talent pool at LOWER wages.
I don't know whether Trump is doing is good, but the H1B program helps Owners more than it helps Workers.
Not quite. This type of visa helps folks like me live in livable countries with good enough salaries to help our family and elderly don't die in our home countries
> but it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.
No, it has not. And not because the people were not capable. It is because most of those projects depend on having the right kind of ecosystem. Massive venture capital, stable institutions, cutting-edge infrastructure, tolerant regulation, network effects, and huge government spend especially in space, defense, and R&D.
Those elements are overwhelmingly concentrated in the U.S. and particularly in Silicon Valley.
Jan Koum didn’t build WhatsApp in Kyiv he built it in California. Ukraine in the 1990s barely had reliable phone lines, let alone the mobile networks, cloud infrastructure, and capital required to scale a global messaging service.
Sergey Brin didn’t found Google in Moscow. Russia had brilliant mathematicians,
but no open internet culture, no ad driven funding model, and no free flowing capital markets. No chance of a SpaceX out of South Africa or Canada. Those countries entire annual space budget wouldn’t even cover a single Falcon 9 launch.
These are not just anecdotes, but the proof that without
the combination of American capital, infrastructure,
and government spending, projects on this scale simply would not
have been possible. The brain power was there, but the ecosystem
that turns raw talent into global impact was not.
The U.S. had immigration restriction for almost half of the last century: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-a.... During this period, the U.S. became the undisputed superpower. Silicon Valley was established during this period too.
Of course we continued to accept superstars even during immigration restriction, like German scientists fleeing the Nazis. We probably don’t need more than 10,000 or 20,000 carefully selected immigrants a year to continue doing that.
The $100,000 fee isn't the real route to a visa. See the proclamation text: [1]
(c) The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.
"At the Secretary's discretion" means "get your bribes ready". Lobbyists are probably already working the phones on this.
This is the reality, combined with the fact that this was pretty much the status quo already. O-1 visas were also a commonly targeted with lawmaker bribes. This just codifies what was already happening and screws over the smaller companies that don't have the resources, networks, guanxi, etc to play the game.
Every change this admin implements needs this examination first. Everyone is in here having earnest discussions about policy pros and cons, but it ain't that country anymore.
The companies the admin favors are being given backdoors for every policy that's presented, and the way to become favored is to present bribes, whether they come in the form of gold plaques, lawsuit settlements, crypto investments, or stock market collusion.
Quite a while back the exponent podcast did an episode that has stuck with me for a long time about what they called “principal stacks” as an analogue to protocol stacks.
The idea that I left with was to look at the hierarchy of principles not just the set of or claimed principles.
At this point it seems as if the top of the principal stack for those in power isn’t even more power anymore, it’s just grift.
This thread is a poignant example of why I think tech folks might be one of the most gullible crowds out there - despite being perceived as smart. It's like a perfect storm of attributes and incentives. So here we are, completely preoccupied with picking apart details and effects of visa programs for a blatantly obvious kiss-the-ring initiative that couldn't care less about that.
The old “book smart vs street smart” rings loudly.
I completely disagree with much of what the Trump Administration is pushing, but they seemed to execute on the “street smarts” while policy wonks and others who want to analyze are preoccupied discussing policy.
Frankly it’s embarrassing how gullible and easily tricked much of the intellectual class is.
Actually it’s much more sinister. It’s another way to force companies to kiss the ring. The government apparently can grant exceptions if they deem it’s in the good of the country.
> The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.
This is after increasing the repatriation tax that H1-B workers pay on the sum they’re sending home for Indians only in the One Big Beautiful bill so it’d be effectively taxing both ways
I very much expect companies to make 10 million dollar "campaign donations" to avoid the visa processing fees. Impossible for small companies to afford, but if you have 1000+ H1Bs in your company, it's a bargain.
IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse.
I think a very high application fee is actually part of a good solution, but is useless by itself.
A flawed proposal:
* Dispense with the 'need to search for a qualified American' which just complicates the process without achieving the stated goal, and includes a ton of legal and bureaucratic expense and time.
* A large application fee paid from the company to the federal government.
* The worker's relocation expenses must also be covered by the company.
* The worker gets a 10 year work authorization on the day of their arrival.
* The worker gets to leave their sponsoring employer on the day of their arrival, if they choose to. The employment contract may not include any clawbacks of anything.
The latter bullet is the key one. That's the one that uses market forces to truly enforces this person is being paid above market wages, and is being treated well, at their sponsoring employer. (which in turn means they don't undercut existing labor in the market).
It also means that employers don't really look abroad unless there really is a shortage of existing labor. But when there is a true shortage and you're willing to spend, the door is open to act quickly.
The obvious defect is that it creates an incentive for the employee to pay the federal fee themselves (hidden) plus more for the privilege of getting sponsored, and the company basically being a front for this process. Effectively buying a work authorization for themselves. I'm not sure how to overcome that. Then again, the current system could also suffer that defect (I don't know how common it is).
No company would ever sponsor someone if the last bullet is part of the deal. You're just killing the visa program another way with that wishlist item alone.
If they are using the program as intended they would. They are supposed to be looking for skills that are impossible to find in the US. If they are offering a good deal to the employee then the employee should stay, just like someone with full work authorization would.
If they are just using the program to pay less than they otherwise would for labor that does exist in the us, well, then we have another issue.
I would modify the proposal to include a larger annual fee rather than an application fee, so that the initially sponsoring company isn’t solely bearing the cost. There should also be a floor pay rate for the visa holder, something the 75th or 80th percentile of both the company and of income in the MSA the visa holder is located in.
That's pretty common in Europe. Temporary work permits can be valid either for a specific job or a specific industry. In the latter case, as long as you can find a job that meets the requirements in a reasonable time, you can quit and stay in the country.
But those work permits mostly concern the individual and the government. The employer is not as much sponsoring them as providing evidence.
Not for an interchange cog. However you can keep someone with a golden handcuffs deal at above market rates if there’s some reason to bring that specific person.
Locals have always been allowed to quit the new job on day 1, and it has never been a crisis for employers.
A company that is confident it is offering worthy salary and career should have no extra reason to worry a foreign worker will quit during first week, than that a local worker would do the same thing.
The only difference a fee would make under such conditions is that locals become cheaper to hire, which is the point.
If you just want someone and not this particular applicant, yes but if you want a particular person to work for you, you will sponsor them regardless of this bullet point.
This is not true at all. Employers will still sponsor talent that they need.
If you are sponsoring an employee for a visa and "it's a great thing they can't quit, it's the main thing that's keeping them here!", then you are abusing the system and should be excluded anyways.
I thought there was no-one else on the market? If you think it will kill the visa program, that means you thought hiring underpaid developers was the goal of the visa program. No-one would change companies if if get paid decently: You leave a bad boss, but you can stay with a with a 10-15% lower-than-market salary just because of the friction of changing (Cue the downvotes: “I’m changing for a cent more” - yes you do when you have energy but most employees absolutely don’t). And employees will stay because they need time to settle in the new country and the welcoming company is generally equipped to make integration easier for newcomers.
Almost all European visa programs have the last bullet point with the stipulation that they have 90 days to find another visa sponsorship job if they leave their sponsor.
You never get someone to pay a large application fee without some kind of reasonable prospect of getting an exclusive right.
Else, if company A pays a $100k fee, company B has an incentive to give the worker $90,000 more to jump ship. And this devolves to no one paying the $100k fee.
Only if employees are actually interchangeable at the rate you’re paying. You might bring someone from oversees who knows your internal systems and is therefore worth far above market rates to your company relative to any other US company.
What if we make the fee per-year? "It costs $10,000 to sponsor a new H1B immigrant's entry, and then it costs $5,000 per year per H-1B employee you have." H1-B holder is free to leave, and the cost of that happening to their employer is fairly low. Then let's say after 5 years of H1B employment, you automatically become eligible for citizenship, since you're clearly a valued worker.
The other thing I've heard is to sort the priority of who gets H1B by projected salary which would go a long way to eliminate anyone trying to get people to train their lower paid replacements.
Forcing citizens to train their foreign replacements is a violation of the terms of the program and illegal. Disney did that and, while not being held accountable, they were forced to reverse their criminal decision.
* The worker gets to leave their sponsoring employer on the day of their arrival, if they choose to. The employment contract may not include any clawbacks of anything.
> IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse.
This is not true. Transferring your H1-B to another employer is entirely possible, the new employer will have to file the application as usual, but the application is not subject to the annual H1-B quotas.
At least this was the way it was several years ago. I doubt the process has changed since.
Would they now have to also pay the $1k fee for a "transfer"? AFAIK, it's considered a new application, but as you stated, its excluded from the quota/lottery.
> The worker gets to leave their sponsoring employer on the day of their arrival, if they choose to. The employment contract may not include any clawbacks of anything.
I'm not familiar with current H1B law, but what prevents this from happening today? I've hired away an H1B holder in the past; the process wasn't particularly difficult.
My understanding at the time was that the tricky thing for H1B holders is that they can only have a 60-day gap of unemployment before they need to leave the country (or find a different visa resolution, I guess).
Now, if this new fee applies to H1B transfers as well as the initial application, well, that'll actually make it harder for H1B holders to change jobs.
A company paying half a million annually to ensure this employee is retained. It's not meant for joe sixpack making $100k/yr as an underpaid consultant.
They had no problem offering 7-figure salaries to PhDs with research experience in AI a few years ago. Those are the exceptional workers the program was supposed to be bringing in the first place, not dime-a-dozen JS vibe coders.
The last one is tricky because who is going to sponsor a worker at the price tag of 100k with no guarantee of performance. That is rife for abuse. You could get google to sponsor you and then hop to your friends startup on day one.
It is reasonable that if you get a temporary visa to perform work in another country, and you decide you don't want to do that work anymore, you leave. They aren't enslaved or anything if the work is not worth it you can attempt to transfer your status to another employer or leave.
It seems like there are two conflicting forces here. We want to ensure that we accept mostly high-skilled immigrants, so we can't do a pure lottery. But anything less than a pure lottery and immigrants are forced to "perform" or be kicked from the country, they will end up "both paid lower and unable to escape abuse" as you say. I don't know that it's possible to solve this satisfactorily.
Why is a lottery necessary? There is a quota so why not fill it with those being paid the highest compensation? What's wrong with a market solution? It would bring in those who are most in demand. What better way to measure demand than prices?
> IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse.
> I think a very high application fee is actually part of a good solution, but is useless by itself.
This is always going to be bad if you compare to what any functioning democracy should be doing in this situation which to revert the deterioration of wages and punish/reeducate abusers. I admit it's idealistic, but if you could suspend the need for political realism here a moment there is a chance you could see this is only logical.
> * The worker gets to leave their sponsoring employer on the day of their arrival, if they choose to. The employment contract may not include any clawbacks of anything.
This would be workable if it also results in the person losing their visa. There must be some downside for the employee, otherwise it's an invitation for abuse.
If the worker gets to keep their visa then it's just a backdoor way to get a company to pay for their visa and relocation so they can immediately quit and then go do some other job they actually want (at no expense to the next employer).
The final scenario you describe already happens with immigrant visas. Once you have your Green Card you are free to quit the sponsoring employer and work for whoever you want.
The last bullet is a good idea but wouldn’t work in practice. Otherwise a company could hire someone else’s H1B worker for $10k more per year and avoid the $100k fee.
Maybe a company that hires someone else's H1B worker for $10k more per year in the first year has to pay the $100k fee and the first company gets their fee back.
>> IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse.
This is not true. Typically you want to stay until i140 which for me took 1 year or so back in 2020. If I want to switch there are multiple other reasons I'd end up delaying the switch anyway (wait for vest, bonus etc ...)
Instead of a $100k lump sum by the first employer, what about $10k each year by the current employer? Or even $2.5k each quarter? That way there is no particular incentive to poach a "paid-off" H1B employee, and the company doesn't have to worry about making a $100k investment up front.
> It also means that employers don't really look abroad unless there really is a shortage of existing labor. But when there is a true shortage and you're willing to spend, the door is open to act quickly.
You underestimate the ability of INFY/TCS etc.. to game these laws.
> * Dispense with the 'need to search for a qualified American' which just complicates the process without achieving the stated goal, and includes a ton of legal and bureaucratic expense and time.
Most H1B go through perm process that does this already.
You care about that, and you say that's the problem with H1B but I think that, really, a lot of tech workers in the US, and even a lot of the HN crowd _really_ care about protectionism. They want to suppress competition for their jobs, they want to keep their salaries high. I think this is myopic, but... What the heck, your country is speed running some interesting trajectory, this measure is the not even the biggest one on the radical measures pile.
What's myopic about keeping your salary high? Most people work for themselves an their families, not how their countries will appear economically in three decades? The situation of wage suppression helps investors and the owning class more than anything.
They should set a very high salary as a criteria for hiring someone from abroad. You want exceptional people, not regular people that you pay less than the ones you find in your own country.
Isn't getting specialized workers (who you supposedly can't hire from the national talent pool) incentive enough? My understanding of the H1B system is that it was supposed to be a "last resort, exit hatch" sort of a programme.
I mean I'll admit I'm a bit of a radical on this issue, but I think the most sensible work authorization policy is "you're welcome if you're not a criminal, terrorist, or public health risk, and on that last point here's some penicillin and a flu/covid shot, let us know when you're feeling better"
My ancestors came here ~140 years ago when the only "visa" process was a look in the mouth at Ellis Island. I don't see any fundamental reason why we need to have stricter regulations than that, and I reject dragging the Overton window further right on immigration.
In 3 months after implementing this policy there will be ports of entry full of people who paid any money to get to the US and that ready to share beds and work for $4/hour. Salaries will plummet, rent will skyrocket, crime will go up, quality of life will drop. Your neighbors will have to move out and new tenants will be 20+ people who don't speak your language and share none of your values.
Funny thing is those who opened the gate will be protected from consequences of their own policies in their gated communities.
That's what we see here in Canada after reckless immigration policies implemented by past government.
> My ancestors came here ~140 years ago when the only "visa" process was a look in the mouth at Ellis Island
This is revisionist history. 140 years ago the Chinese Exclusion Act had already been in place for 3 years, and the Foran Act had just been passed. The high clearance rate of immigrants at Ellis Island had far more to do with preliminary screenings being conducted by transport companies, who were liable for the cost of deportation plus a fine.
hard disagree on the 'search for qualified citizen' or something to replace it. American policy needs to put Americans first.
Your other points are a good start. The main thing I would add is a floor on salary. H1B for a >$200k job makes some sense, it shows it's essential, the employer really wants to fill it and is having a hard time finding a US citizen. H1B for average or below average salaries is where the real abuse is. It's basically a form of indentured servitude.
The search for a qualified citizen is a sham process. Why shouldn't it be eliminated?
Make the incentives align with the priority, is what OP was getting at.
I'm with OP. Make it crazy expensive and let the employee quit if they want. Employers will immediately build the 'search for qualified citizens' into the process themselves.
Everyone in these threads always points out all sorts of issues with the H1B system, which are mostly true, but it's not like there's a suggestion for a replacement here. This is a de facto shutdown of the program, not a reform. I'd be happy to see a reformed skilled immigration program for the US, but this isn't it.
The US makes up about 4.5% of the global population and it seems silly to think that the FAANG companies and the new AI startups chasing behind them are going to restrict their hiring to this tiny slice of the global talent pool.
The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US.
I myself became a US citizen two years ago after being on a H1B. I was paid the same as all my peers and for all its shortcomings the program worked for me. It stunning to think this has been closed off, killing the main path for skilled immigration into the US.
Some AI recruitments have seen 9-figure contracts. $100K is actually a surprisingly well-considered number and would still see the intake of legitimate talents, obviously contingent on the specific details. Indeed, those people wouldn't have to compete with masses of consultant trash and the whole lottery system could be done away with.
$100K actually seems perfectly coherent with forcing the program to winnow down to actual talents. People truly good enough to get the employer to pony up $100K to pull them in -- presuming there isn't some kickback fraud happening -- will truly be the best of the best.
> The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in
Paradoxically the #1 reason H1B employers bring in H1Bs is to bridge offshoring work. Pull in a dozen Indians and they're your bridge to the big Indian office, which is precisely why Infosys, Tata et al are such H1B users.
> Some AI recruitments have seen 9-figure contracts.
These are crazy outliers who would go through a different visa path anyway. US tech companies still need mid-level workers making low-to-mid six figures. Weirdly O1 visa holder spouses will get an O3 which doesn't allow them to work, making it worse than the H1B/H4 visa for some set of people. (H4s allow spouses to work)
> People truly good enough to get the employer to pony up $100K to pull them in -- presuming there isn't some kickback fraud happening -- will truly be the best of the best.
And what stops those people, best of the best, working somewhere else, with much better living standard(EU) ?
In the past, it's because of salary, but now, the 100k/year will either make company to lower their package, or try to extract much more from the employee.
> The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US.
Offshoring can, and ought to be, heavily tariffed.
The tariffs are illegal and void. Even if it's implemented, how do you rise tariffs on intangible works? For the planned tariff, US consumers are the ones to bear the brunt of the costs.
In this supposed competition with China, Trump is deeply dedicated to giving China every advantage possible.
From defunding science, fining the biggest universities, defunding green energy, making hiring ambitious foreign workers economically unfeasible, replacing technocratic administrators with incompetent lackies with quite literally zero experience, imposing inordinate tariffs ... It's just win after win for the CCP.
Sad that we're doing this. The United States couldn't compete and was a poor country with minimal scientific achievement until the H-1B visa was created in 1990.
Yes, but all these things will have bad long-term effects. The short-term effect would be payment into the federal budget and increase in local employment.
Even with tariffs, the initial effect was to increase purchases before the tariffs hit. Later the companies started eating from their margins instead of increasing prices right away. So it all resulted in increased economic activity and then increased tax payments into the federal government. However, because this is tax on consumption, it will eventually reduce business profits and personal wealth of the consumers. Meanwhile, Trump can claim that the economy is booming and he is collecting huge tax revenues without any negative effects.
Is it? $100k per hire isn't much of a cost to pay for large companies. Smaller companies may -- may -- end up having some trouble with this, but consider that $100k often amounts to less than a yearly base salary (and will pretty much always be less than a year of total comp/total employee cost), not to mention the costs of legal staff that they're already paying to deal with this stuff.
What this may do is cause some of the "body shop" consultancies to drop some of their "low end" business, so they'll focus more on targeting positions with higher salaries. That's... probably a good thing.
And yeah, we may see some higher rates of offshoring, but I don't think that will be significant. And I'm not even really convinced: offshoring is already possible, and in strict dollar terms is already cheaper than going through the H-1B process to bring someone to the US. If companies preferred offshoring, they'd be doing it; clearly the already-higher-cost H-1B program is still their preference.
I agree that this isn't going to fix the H-1B visa system, and is not a reform or even a particularly positive step toward a reform, but I think you're overestimating the negative impact. I really don't think this will change things much at all.
That's almost as much as the media H1B salary. It's a huge cost overhead. I don't understand how you can be dismissive of a number almost as high as hiring another engineer.
$100k for a startup is a no-go from the onset. This makes foreigners basically unhireable for startups, and probably shuts down founding startups as well?
That is, at most, less than half a million people in the field and the majority of those jobs aren't the ones looking for overseas hires anyway. If we take CompTIA's number of roughly 5M tech workers it's 140,000 people, not "literally millions."
>The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India
Such offshoring was possible before and after today.
Put another way, if all the H-1B jobs really can be offshored quickly and easily the way so many Indians and anti-Trump people here and elsewhere confidently predict, *that would have happened already*.
No, this is just another tariff. If it costs $200k/yr to employee an H1B Software Engineer, and you expect them to work for you for 3 years, it raises the cost of employment from $200k/yr to $233k/yr. It'll discourage people from applying on the margins, which will bring the application rate down and acceptance rate up.
> The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US.
I’m honestly tired of hearing the argument “if we do X then business will move to another state or out of US”.
Good riddance to the companies that flee from jurisdictions enforcing workers rights, don’t allow exploitation, etc.
The most important thing is protecting people, not fearing the cries of money-making machines.
Particularly in tech, where the network effects and first mover advantages are so strong.
California could introduce a million dollar minimum wage for software engineers, ban electricity on Thursdays, raise corporate taxes to 60% and still probably have more new unicorns founded in the subsequent year than Europe.
The business must go where the talent pool is if the talent can't be brought to the money. This H1B change is intended to remove a sizable portion of the talent pool from the US, so companies will have to follow (and spend US investor money on wages abroad).
Oh! This is unexpected, I thought it’s only for new applications, asking every h1b holder to pay 100k is just unfathomable. We will see thousands of layoffs and people moving out on an unimaginable scale.
This is announced with so much confusion and ambiguity too. Does it apply to current visa holders? Don't know. How do companies pay the fee? Don't know. Also announced on Friday night to go into effect Sunday midnight. Probably a feature though not a bug.
> Deleted the below posts out of an abundance of caution. Despite the words of the Proclamation, an unnamed White House official told New York Times that they intend to apply the $100,000 only to new applicants only.
> If that is correct, the implications are not as urgent.
I've been hearing that H1B holders are currently trying to stay within the US in fear of not being let back in or because of shenanigans like this[0]. Wonder how many people are currently looking for a flight.
If this is truly per application, the companies that try to boost their chances with the lottery by creating multiple applications for the same person are going to get hit hard. Phantom companies that only exist on paper so people can tweak the probabilities are now liabilities.
Unfortunately that doesn't work in practice since the consulting firms submit multiple applications for multiple candidates to get one candidate in. I believe charging extra for each application is a good way to discourage this practice but I'm not sure if $100k is the right number or not. To me it seems a bit too high.
When faced with an arbitrarily small, insignificant problem, in lieu of the status quo, the solution he/she advocates is to completely dismantle the status quo without any form and reason instead of actually focusing on the solution.
IMO, the fee is the wrong thing that needs adjusting. It's the salary that should be adjusted. The minimum salary for an H1B should be $200k. It's something like 50k right now which is ridiculous especially with all the restrictions an applicant is under. It both suppresses wages and abuses the worker.
Can every industry pay $200k? I bet software, AI, or finance would be okay paying $200k, while e.g. hardware, aerospace, or biotech would have a harder time.
The idea of requiring a high salary is reasonable, but I'd make it rather e.g. 120% of the median salary in a particular industry.
Dare I say - If you're desperate for skilled workers, they should probably be highly compensated due to simple supply and demand.
If you can't find somebody skilled enough here to work for 200k or less, then you should probably be paying 200k or more since you're looking for a role that is niche and low supply.
Since we have relatively reliable economic data on median income per industry, it would be really stupid not to use that data in a formula such as the one you suggested.
To go further, I believe there’s good data on cost of living, geographically. It would probably be wise to use that in the formula as well, so as not to disadvantage smaller areas, where cost-of-living and salaries are lower.
Who would have a harder time? The company that wants to bring in employees? Sure. But I'm also sure that the top experts would be lining up to take such a job. The companies wouldn't struggle to find someone abroad.
The percentage could be reasonable, but I think it's too easily gamed. You just know the company would try and say they are bringing in entry level people for whatever they want and use whatever lowest median they could find. There needs to be a fairly significant minimum salary to avoid such monkey business.
An H1B job should be cushy. Otherwise, the company should simply raise salaries to find local workers.
The entire market works through supply and demand. The basic idea is if you can't find someone willing to work for $x an hour you have to raise x until you find someone.
The h1bs are often used to abuse that system by just importing someone willing to work for x, with the added bonus of it being very hard for them to ever leave your company.
Is it too complex to just look at the companies taxes and be like... "Hey you are paying H1B workers 25% less than their peers. You get hit with a fine".
If you couldn't undercut H1B salaries there is little incentive to use them except for their desired purpose (you can't find any local workers).
Even paid identically, a company might prefer H1Bs for retention purposes. Having an indentured serf who's difficult for other companies to hire and is at constant risk of deportation if they lose their job is a winning prospect for the worst companies.
A great way to circumvent this is to build a large headquarters in an undesirable location. "No American software engineers are applying for my job in <random midwest town where I will be the only software employeer>! I need H1bs!"
the counterfactual is 'is there an equally qualified nurse who didn't get the position?' There is a lot of under-employment for highly qualified US citizens.
It's not in this article but in others that this will be addressed.
"The proposal would increase the wage floor for H-1B visa recipients from $60,000 to $150,000, eliminate the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, and replace the current lottery-based selection process with a highest-bidder system."
You may have policy opinions but what would incentivize the current admin to require more money given to foreign workers vs keeping wages low (which also helps suppress wages for non-foreign worker peers industry-wide) while collecting more fees for federal use?
Because I don't really want to penalize a company for bringing in foreign labor. If a company can't find someone for a specific job or role then I don't care if they go abroad to find that person.
What I care about is the current system isn't being used to find hard to find labor, it's used to bring in cheap labor in an abusive situation.
We as a nation are really better off if we bring in the best in the world to work here with a cushy salary.
IMO the minimum salary should be $0 and Americans should be free to hire whoever they want, without paying a fee and asking permission from the government. Non-citizens should be subject to the same minimum wage and workplace regulations as everywhere else. Whoever wants to come to America should be able to freely come, treated the same as anyone else.
But that would be a free market that respected human rights, and Americans don't want that! Equality? Freedom? That's just marketing!
> Whoever wants to come to America should be able to freely come, treated the same as anyone else.
So just open USA borders to anyone that passes screening (security / health / etc)?
What about gov subsidized welfare / healthcare / education / ...? Would you end all that? If not end it how would you handle the situation with current citizens vs the influx of foreigners who will expect these things be provided for them? And if those who show up start to vote for communism or some other ism that you do not like what will you do?
Readit News
A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them do so. You can argue how well that’s worked out for us - having worked with a great many extremely talented H1bs in an industry largely built by immigrants, I’d consider it pretty positive - but it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.
There's a straightforward solution here. Right now H-1Bs are a way for companies to lock in employees by leveraging the visa status.
I have also worked with amazing H1B visa people.
Just make sure they're actually talented.
It's kind of sad to see the accelerated downfall of your country.
Any suggestion that the program is dragging wages down instead of dragging wages up is not just misleading but factually wrong.
So sure, while the fewer jobs that they can fill could have higher wages (not a given, because lack of labor can stunt or kill companies) there could be much fewer people employed overall, which is clearly bad overall.
Of course, that assumes there is enough room for companies to grow. There are strong indications (e.g. the various labor and unemployment surveys) that this is the case in the US. In fact, there is a credible theory that the reason the US managed the inflation crisis so well was due to the immigration crisis.
I elaborated more (along with a couple of relevant studies) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45308311
And how are “they” planning on determining who is “truly exceptional”? And what makes you think the “truly exceptional” ones are still going to have any interest in coming here when they see what happens to the people who the current regime deems “not exceptional”?
I sure as hell wouldn’t come to the US knowing I may be deported to a third world prison if I post the wrong thing online.
That's a weird definition for "middle class", there are only 65k H1b visas issued every year. If you really are talking about the middle 60% or whatever of all workers, immigrants on H1b's are irrelevant noise. At most, these visas might be seen to impact specific professions (tech in particular, lots of doctors too) that most people don't consider representative of the "middle class".
Can you please share your reading material that links H1B software engineers with decline in middle class jobs from this list?
It’s not because of the other jobs which the H1Bs aren’t even allowed to do abd have seen falling salaries and degrowth.
What do the most influential reformists want? The ones who set the extreme agenda that everyone else follows? As I understand it, right now the US is routinely enacting policies that the majority of citizens do not want; from this, could we surmise that the majority of people, and presumably thus the majority of reformists, will receive the extreme H1B policies that they don't want?
Most of the companies that are paying salaries could (and already do!) have offices in other jurisdictions where they could hire the same talent.
Better to bring this talent onshore, where the wages are taxed, than force these companies to hire from satellite offices?
It doesn't make much financial sense for companies to stop sourcing talent globally just because they can't be brought onshore, especially given enough time.
Purely anecdotal, but for me personally this wouldn't change who or how I hire, just the location.
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Still, I can't help but feel a little bit of glee at all the tech companies who did their best to suck up to Trump, and now he stabs them in the back.
What is "mid level talent" though? you're not getting that data from H1B wage filings, they're factually under-reporting compensation.
Plenty of peeps are being much more factual below, compared to the gvt linguo that you are just rehashing rn
Now it's "we need to limit the volume" and "don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration".
Forgive me if I am skeptical, especially in a world where ICE is rounding up classic "exceptional" immigrants like biology researchers, or South Korean experts setting up a factory.
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In such a world, why wouldn't you see 1. foreign R&D companies, 2. indexed into a thriving foreign equities market, 3. gathering the interest of domestic investors who want to diversify beyond domestic investments, by 4. moving their money and/or investing in domestic proxy investments?
I say this as a Canadian whose managed mutual-fund holdings are apparently largely composed of foreign (mostly American) proxy equities — and who has met many Canadian-based VCs who don't do much investment into Canadian companies. If not for talent immigration, the American investment landscape would probably look similar!
Well sure, it depends what the counterfactual is. If those countries just physically prevented the people from leaving, and nothing more, I wouldn't expect that countries' outcomes to improve. But what the countries suffering from brain drain presumably want is for there to be attractive opportunities for those skilled workers in their own country.
The H1B process is unfair to engineers because it drives down their compensation in a way that doesn't affect nurses or welders. If immigration were completely irrespective of profession and based solely around whether the imported laborers get paid enough to contribute more than they receive in taxes/public services, nobody would have any standing to complain about their wages being driven down because every single person benefits in the long run from the economic growth.
As things stand, tech workers and unskilled laborers get screwed by the current status quo because they don't reap the benefit of cheaper goods and services in all the other industries, but everyone else benefits from cheaper electronics/software and landscaping/housekeeping/food service while their wages grow.
You're not wrong on paper, the current immigration practices are just screwy.
EDIT - The hard statistical proof that most of the H-1Bs are tech workers:
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/o...
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Often, the person may not have been as productive, happy, or well compensated in their own country.
Also, over time, some of those people make money in the US and take that, their knowledge and skills and go back home to share there. Everyone is better off.
I was discussing this elsewhere, and dug up something I wrote 11 years ago, and I think I'm still pretty happy with it:
https://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-job...
How are Americans better off in this scenario?
Suppose I'm not an American--like plenty of HN commenters--or alternatively that (as in reality) I am an American but I have good reasons to think that the personal benefit I derive from the presence of immigrants is greater than the cost to me as an individual, even were I to concede more generic economic arguments about wage competition. Then... why am I supposed to prioritize the interests of American tech workers over foreign immigrants?
I don't in general endorse an "I got mine, screw you" approach, nor one that says "hey GDP is going up so screw the losers", but if someone else is taking exactly that attitude just with a nationalistic inflection, it's hard to extend them a lot of empathy.
That's largely a myth, though. The vast majority of smart, driven people have no path to lawfully immigrate to the US.
By a wide margin, the main immigration pathway are family visas (i.e., marriages and citizens bringing in relatives). H-1B visas are a comparatively small slice that's available via a lottery only to some professions and some backgrounds - and the process is basically gamed by low-wage consultancies, with a large proportion of the rest gobbled up by a handful of Big Tech employers. And that's before we even get to the fact that H-1B doesn't necessarily give you a path to permanent residency, depending on where you're from.
For most people who aren't techies, the options are really very limited, basically "be exceptionally wealthy", "be a celebrity", or "be one of the world's foremost experts on X".
There is also EB with National Interest Waiver - including for profession like Doctors and such.
Not to mention a lot of employment based visa, if you work for a US employer - L1, EB1/2 directly etc...
There isn't a permanent resident visa for Driven people - but you can get entrepreneur visas if you run a profitable business.
A huge reason we have so many unicorns is because doing business and scaling in the US is easier than EU or other places.
A huge part of why the Manhattan Project was successful was also because of substantial brain drain from Europe. I think Scott Galloway wrote about this or may have popularized it.
If an employee is exceptional and a skilled unicorn wrangler... 100K is nothing.
I don't think being against exploitive mass migration - which by its definition is brain drain of other countries, which every bleeding hearter likes to ignore - is the same saying no one should ever immigrate ever.
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/josephpolitano.bsky.social/post/3lz...
And its an easy argument:
The Manhattan Project engaged thousands of scientists, but over 16 notable principal scientists (with major published credits) were foreign-born and either retained their citizenship or became naturalized U.S. citizens only after escaping persecution or war in Europe.
As of 2025, about 10-12 CEOs of the top 50 Fortune 500 (F50) companies were born outside the United States, representing roughly 20-25% of F50 CEOs. This number has grown over the past two decades, reflecting increasing diversity among leadership at America's largest corporations.
Nearly half of all Fortune 500 companies in 2025—specifically 44%—were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants, meaning the original founders were not born in the United States or were the first generation after immigration.
These are just three major examples.
A better test may be comparing company performance worldwide instead of only in the F500. That's a different list, the Global 500.
This is a double edged sword given that it means there’s less incentive to invest in US public education and fostering our own talent. Instead of brain drain we’re dealing with brain rot.
As of now, both the K12 system and college education seem in freefall in terms of quality and applicability to careers. No doubt those companies will devote their money to lobbying to keep hiring H1Bs instead of training the talent they need here, since they're just profit-optimizing functions, rather than humans with morals.
We would have to filter for these more. In reality the majority of H1B visa are issued to companies like Infosys or Tata who often have below average people.
The elephant in the room is that many of these highly successful people who have brought great economic advantage to the US over the years happen to have brown skin.
As for why this policy is being adopted: sometimes an elephant is just an elephant. The huge price increase hurts brown people (mostly), and possibly curbs immigration. It will play well with a certain segment of Americans.
There are many subtleties to the H1-B visa debate, but I don’t think they are at play in this policy change.
Context: 50% tariff has been applied to India. Chabahar port sanctions are reintroduced. And more to come in next few weeks.
On the other hand, those working for WITCH companies…
And trust me, I’m in no way “anti minority”. Not only are some of my best friends minorities - so are my parents…
People with actually talent and intelligence realise how messed up the USA is (and has been for some time) and prefer things like healthcare and gun control.
And if they really want the lack of work life balance and/or high paid roles, they can consult from US company like I do. Now I get the money, but I live in a decent country.
I don't think there is any amount of money you could offer me to move to the USA. Well ok, maybe when it gets to $10 million / year I would have to start considering it.
It's great if you only root for the US, but taking more global perspective, let's have other countries improve their situation as well. There are almost 200 or so countries, I am ok with them improving their economy using their equivalent of H1-B programs.
This is a golden opportunity for others to step in an eat Americans' lunch so to speak, let's see if they capitalize on it.
It's corruption of the government.
Now, by the way I understand H-1B, $100k still seams cheap for essentially getting a slave.
Very chilling to think about.
Not so straight forward. Ambitious people leave underdeveloped countries because there are little opportunities. It's not like they are going to build same great product there as in California.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5555844/
H1B visa is just a rank and file worker with a certain skill.
The cost is not even close to cover the wage difference (20-30%): https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wa...
Hiring local people was preferable in every way. But the market was hot and it was seemingly almost impossible to actually do that.
It damn sure hasn't worked out well for a lot of talented, perpetually underemployed (many deep in perpetual debt) US kids. And I'm pretty sure that what those talented folks learn here in the US has made its way back to those countries, considering (e.g.) the level of competition we see from Asia these days.
Looking at the politics in Europe and Asia today, the question of who is allowed in and why is a central point of debate that rages and threatens to tear apart much of the fabric that was built over generations.
I think some people underestimate the power of those willing to migrate to the US.
I’m in my early 40s and moved from Western Europe to the US 11 years ago, and I feel I was the last generation eager to come, the perception of US is changing fast. This is not an H-1B problem but still a parallel one on how to attract people.
Do we need more Facebooks and AirBNBs?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction
Their talents would be simply wasted in Poland. There simply is not enough capital and academic resources are not going to best people but to ones gaming the system.
I bet a lot of talented people move to US because they would have to fight uphill battles in their home countries with lack of funding, nepotism, corruption, caste systems you name it.
So I don’t think it would make much difference for the countries if they don’t have society set in ways to benefit from those talents.
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The employment environment in Silicon Valley has been extremely strange since 2022. I haven’t been able to find a job in my field since then, despite being at the top of my game. I’m practically bankrupt and currently making ends meet in a minimum wage job.
The ethics of emigration is an interesting area that's under explored, especially in non-emergency scenarios. We have obligations to our own societies, for example, but how this affects emigration requires clarification.
In reality, this will just be used to show fealty to trump and a fastlane visa will be opened to companies willing to join the fascists.
Again, good faith argument against something that isn't bewing done with a reasonably democratic outcome.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...
This mindset was always going to backfire and now you are just witnessing it.
H1B program == leverage over the H1B workers due to the employment tie-in to residence, leverage over other non-H1B workers as well, due to the wider talent pool at LOWER wages.
I don't know whether Trump is doing is good, but the H1B program helps Owners more than it helps Workers.
Any amount of observing children will show that equal instruction will not net equal outcome.
No, it has not. And not because the people were not capable. It is because most of those projects depend on having the right kind of ecosystem. Massive venture capital, stable institutions, cutting-edge infrastructure, tolerant regulation, network effects, and huge government spend especially in space, defense, and R&D.
Those elements are overwhelmingly concentrated in the U.S. and particularly in Silicon Valley.
Jan Koum didn’t build WhatsApp in Kyiv he built it in California. Ukraine in the 1990s barely had reliable phone lines, let alone the mobile networks, cloud infrastructure, and capital required to scale a global messaging service. Sergey Brin didn’t found Google in Moscow. Russia had brilliant mathematicians, but no open internet culture, no ad driven funding model, and no free flowing capital markets. No chance of a SpaceX out of South Africa or Canada. Those countries entire annual space budget wouldn’t even cover a single Falcon 9 launch.
These are not just anecdotes, but the proof that without the combination of American capital, infrastructure, and government spending, projects on this scale simply would not have been possible. The brain power was there, but the ecosystem that turns raw talent into global impact was not.
Of course we continued to accept superstars even during immigration restriction, like German scientists fleeing the Nazis. We probably don’t need more than 10,000 or 20,000 carefully selected immigrants a year to continue doing that.
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(c) The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.
"At the Secretary's discretion" means "get your bribes ready". Lobbyists are probably already working the phones on this.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
The companies the admin favors are being given backdoors for every policy that's presented, and the way to become favored is to present bribes, whether they come in the form of gold plaques, lawsuit settlements, crypto investments, or stock market collusion.
We know how decisions are made in this admin, and how shortlived they can be.
Why would someone pay 100k knowing tomorrow this might disappear?
The idea that I left with was to look at the hierarchy of principles not just the set of or claimed principles.
At this point it seems as if the top of the principal stack for those in power isn’t even more power anymore, it’s just grift.
You forgot monopolization, power consolidation, etc
I completely disagree with much of what the Trump Administration is pushing, but they seemed to execute on the “street smarts” while policy wonks and others who want to analyze are preoccupied discussing policy.
Frankly it’s embarrassing how gullible and easily tricked much of the intellectual class is.
> The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg98erzl8eo
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I think a very high application fee is actually part of a good solution, but is useless by itself.
A flawed proposal:
* Dispense with the 'need to search for a qualified American' which just complicates the process without achieving the stated goal, and includes a ton of legal and bureaucratic expense and time.
* A large application fee paid from the company to the federal government.
* The worker's relocation expenses must also be covered by the company.
* The worker gets a 10 year work authorization on the day of their arrival.
* The worker gets to leave their sponsoring employer on the day of their arrival, if they choose to. The employment contract may not include any clawbacks of anything.
The latter bullet is the key one. That's the one that uses market forces to truly enforces this person is being paid above market wages, and is being treated well, at their sponsoring employer. (which in turn means they don't undercut existing labor in the market).
It also means that employers don't really look abroad unless there really is a shortage of existing labor. But when there is a true shortage and you're willing to spend, the door is open to act quickly.
The obvious defect is that it creates an incentive for the employee to pay the federal fee themselves (hidden) plus more for the privilege of getting sponsored, and the company basically being a front for this process. Effectively buying a work authorization for themselves. I'm not sure how to overcome that. Then again, the current system could also suffer that defect (I don't know how common it is).
If they are just using the program to pay less than they otherwise would for labor that does exist in the us, well, then we have another issue.
I would modify the proposal to include a larger annual fee rather than an application fee, so that the initially sponsoring company isn’t solely bearing the cost. There should also be a floor pay rate for the visa holder, something the 75th or 80th percentile of both the company and of income in the MSA the visa holder is located in.
But those work permits mostly concern the individual and the government. The employer is not as much sponsoring them as providing evidence.
I thought they needed these foreign workers because no American could do the job?
A company that is confident it is offering worthy salary and career should have no extra reason to worry a foreign worker will quit during first week, than that a local worker would do the same thing.
The only difference a fee would make under such conditions is that locals become cheaper to hire, which is the point.
If you are sponsoring an employee for a visa and "it's a great thing they can't quit, it's the main thing that's keeping them here!", then you are abusing the system and should be excluded anyways.
Else, if company A pays a $100k fee, company B has an incentive to give the worker $90,000 more to jump ship. And this devolves to no one paying the $100k fee.
You almost had me there.
We can do better than bonding people by immigration status. This might be controversial, but I don't think should be bonding people at all.
This is not true. Transferring your H1-B to another employer is entirely possible, the new employer will have to file the application as usual, but the application is not subject to the annual H1-B quotas.
At least this was the way it was several years ago. I doubt the process has changed since.
I'm not familiar with current H1B law, but what prevents this from happening today? I've hired away an H1B holder in the past; the process wasn't particularly difficult.
My understanding at the time was that the tricky thing for H1B holders is that they can only have a 60-day gap of unemployment before they need to leave the country (or find a different visa resolution, I guess).
Now, if this new fee applies to H1B transfers as well as the initial application, well, that'll actually make it harder for H1B holders to change jobs.
The whole reason most people stay at jobs? (Theoretically)
That's the whole point. It distorts market forces when companies are allowed to just trap people.
It is reasonable that if you get a temporary visa to perform work in another country, and you decide you don't want to do that work anymore, you leave. They aren't enslaved or anything if the work is not worth it you can attempt to transfer your status to another employer or leave.
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> I think a very high application fee is actually part of a good solution, but is useless by itself.
This is always going to be bad if you compare to what any functioning democracy should be doing in this situation which to revert the deterioration of wages and punish/reeducate abusers. I admit it's idealistic, but if you could suspend the need for political realism here a moment there is a chance you could see this is only logical.
This would be workable if it also results in the person losing their visa. There must be some downside for the employee, otherwise it's an invitation for abuse.
If the worker gets to keep their visa then it's just a backdoor way to get a company to pay for their visa and relocation so they can immediately quit and then go do some other job they actually want (at no expense to the next employer).
This is not true. Typically you want to stay until i140 which for me took 1 year or so back in 2020. If I want to switch there are multiple other reasons I'd end up delaying the switch anyway (wait for vest, bonus etc ...)
You underestimate the ability of INFY/TCS etc.. to game these laws.
Most H1B go through perm process that does this already.
My ancestors came here ~140 years ago when the only "visa" process was a look in the mouth at Ellis Island. I don't see any fundamental reason why we need to have stricter regulations than that, and I reject dragging the Overton window further right on immigration.
Funny thing is those who opened the gate will be protected from consequences of their own policies in their gated communities.
That's what we see here in Canada after reckless immigration policies implemented by past government.
This is revisionist history. 140 years ago the Chinese Exclusion Act had already been in place for 3 years, and the Foran Act had just been passed. The high clearance rate of immigrants at Ellis Island had far more to do with preliminary screenings being conducted by transport companies, who were liable for the cost of deportation plus a fine.
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Your other points are a good start. The main thing I would add is a floor on salary. H1B for a >$200k job makes some sense, it shows it's essential, the employer really wants to fill it and is having a hard time finding a US citizen. H1B for average or below average salaries is where the real abuse is. It's basically a form of indentured servitude.
Make the incentives align with the priority, is what OP was getting at.
I'm with OP. Make it crazy expensive and let the employee quit if they want. Employers will immediately build the 'search for qualified citizens' into the process themselves.
The US makes up about 4.5% of the global population and it seems silly to think that the FAANG companies and the new AI startups chasing behind them are going to restrict their hiring to this tiny slice of the global talent pool.
The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US.
I myself became a US citizen two years ago after being on a H1B. I was paid the same as all my peers and for all its shortcomings the program worked for me. It stunning to think this has been closed off, killing the main path for skilled immigration into the US.
Is it?
Some AI recruitments have seen 9-figure contracts. $100K is actually a surprisingly well-considered number and would still see the intake of legitimate talents, obviously contingent on the specific details. Indeed, those people wouldn't have to compete with masses of consultant trash and the whole lottery system could be done away with.
$100K actually seems perfectly coherent with forcing the program to winnow down to actual talents. People truly good enough to get the employer to pony up $100K to pull them in -- presuming there isn't some kickback fraud happening -- will truly be the best of the best.
> The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in
Paradoxically the #1 reason H1B employers bring in H1Bs is to bridge offshoring work. Pull in a dozen Indians and they're your bridge to the big Indian office, which is precisely why Infosys, Tata et al are such H1B users.
These are crazy outliers who would go through a different visa path anyway. US tech companies still need mid-level workers making low-to-mid six figures. Weirdly O1 visa holder spouses will get an O3 which doesn't allow them to work, making it worse than the H1B/H4 visa for some set of people. (H4s allow spouses to work)
And what stops those people, best of the best, working somewhere else, with much better living standard(EU) ?
In the past, it's because of salary, but now, the 100k/year will either make company to lower their package, or try to extract much more from the employee.
Offshoring can, and ought to be, heavily tariffed.
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From defunding science, fining the biggest universities, defunding green energy, making hiring ambitious foreign workers economically unfeasible, replacing technocratic administrators with incompetent lackies with quite literally zero experience, imposing inordinate tariffs ... It's just win after win for the CCP.
Couldn't possibly be more generous
Even with tariffs, the initial effect was to increase purchases before the tariffs hit. Later the companies started eating from their margins instead of increasing prices right away. So it all resulted in increased economic activity and then increased tax payments into the federal government. However, because this is tax on consumption, it will eventually reduce business profits and personal wealth of the consumers. Meanwhile, Trump can claim that the economy is booming and he is collecting huge tax revenues without any negative effects.
Is it? $100k per hire isn't much of a cost to pay for large companies. Smaller companies may -- may -- end up having some trouble with this, but consider that $100k often amounts to less than a yearly base salary (and will pretty much always be less than a year of total comp/total employee cost), not to mention the costs of legal staff that they're already paying to deal with this stuff.
What this may do is cause some of the "body shop" consultancies to drop some of their "low end" business, so they'll focus more on targeting positions with higher salaries. That's... probably a good thing.
And yeah, we may see some higher rates of offshoring, but I don't think that will be significant. And I'm not even really convinced: offshoring is already possible, and in strict dollar terms is already cheaper than going through the H-1B process to bring someone to the US. If companies preferred offshoring, they'd be doing it; clearly the already-higher-cost H-1B program is still their preference.
I agree that this isn't going to fix the H-1B visa system, and is not a reform or even a particularly positive step toward a reform, but I think you're overestimating the negative impact. I really don't think this will change things much at all.
That's almost as much as the media H1B salary. It's a huge cost overhead. I don't understand how you can be dismissive of a number almost as high as hiring another engineer.
It is $100k per hire per year.
https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-trump-immigration-8d3969...
Really? 100k on top of a salary per year? Why would anyone do that?
There's literally millions of talented Americans out of work in the tech industry right now while companies continue to hire H1B.
The companies post impossible requirement job ads in obscure locations..to get around the requirements to hire Americans first.
That is, at most, less than half a million people in the field and the majority of those jobs aren't the ones looking for overseas hires anyway. If we take CompTIA's number of roughly 5M tech workers it's 140,000 people, not "literally millions."
If you have better numbers, please, let us know.
Says you. I work in Lake Wobegon.
Such offshoring was possible before and after today.
Put another way, if all the H-1B jobs really can be offshored quickly and easily the way so many Indians and anti-Trump people here and elsewhere confidently predict, *that would have happened already*.
I suspect it didn't happen before because these companies were more focused on growth than efficiency.
That being said, thanks to AI parts of the big companies are again focused on growth at all cost.
No, this is just another tariff. If it costs $200k/yr to employee an H1B Software Engineer, and you expect them to work for you for 3 years, it raises the cost of employment from $200k/yr to $233k/yr. It'll discourage people from applying on the margins, which will bring the application rate down and acceptance rate up.
https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-trump-immigration-8d3969...
I’m honestly tired of hearing the argument “if we do X then business will move to another state or out of US”.
Good riddance to the companies that flee from jurisdictions enforcing workers rights, don’t allow exploitation, etc.
The most important thing is protecting people, not fearing the cries of money-making machines.
California could introduce a million dollar minimum wage for software engineers, ban electricity on Thursdays, raise corporate taxes to 60% and still probably have more new unicorns founded in the subsequent year than Europe.
L1 has no PWD, no min wage requirements (beyond min wage law in US) and is completely uncapped.
https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3l...
Unfathomably cruel.
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lz7tewnfrr23
> If that is correct, the implications are not as urgent.
https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3l...
[0]: Oh, it looks like the bsky link has an article with companies advising as such - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/03/31/immigra...
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We'll see a rebalancing for sure.
This was already addressed by changing the odds to be per unique candidate, not application, thereby reducing the incentive to game it. More context here: https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/uscis-announces...
When faced with an arbitrarily small, insignificant problem, in lieu of the status quo, the solution he/she advocates is to completely dismantle the status quo without any form and reason instead of actually focusing on the solution.
I.e punishment over progress.
But you'll really need that person. It will also kill OPT in general.
The idea of requiring a high salary is reasonable, but I'd make it rather e.g. 120% of the median salary in a particular industry.
If you can't find somebody skilled enough here to work for 200k or less, then you should probably be paying 200k or more since you're looking for a role that is niche and low supply.
To go further, I believe there’s good data on cost of living, geographically. It would probably be wise to use that in the formula as well, so as not to disadvantage smaller areas, where cost-of-living and salaries are lower.
The percentage could be reasonable, but I think it's too easily gamed. You just know the company would try and say they are bringing in entry level people for whatever they want and use whatever lowest median they could find. There needs to be a fairly significant minimum salary to avoid such monkey business.
An H1B job should be cushy. Otherwise, the company should simply raise salaries to find local workers.
The h1bs are often used to abuse that system by just importing someone willing to work for x, with the added bonus of it being very hard for them to ever leave your company.
If you couldn't undercut H1B salaries there is little incentive to use them except for their desired purpose (you can't find any local workers).
"The proposal would increase the wage floor for H-1B visa recipients from $60,000 to $150,000, eliminate the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, and replace the current lottery-based selection process with a highest-bidder system."
EDIT: This is a proposal by 1 senator - not Trump. https://www.newsweek.com/h-1b-visa-change-proposal-2132484
What I care about is the current system isn't being used to find hard to find labor, it's used to bring in cheap labor in an abusive situation.
We as a nation are really better off if we bring in the best in the world to work here with a cushy salary.
EDIT: This is a proposal by 1 senator - not Trump.
It is ridiculous. Do you have a citation for the $50K number?
But that would be a free market that respected human rights, and Americans don't want that! Equality? Freedom? That's just marketing!
So just open USA borders to anyone that passes screening (security / health / etc)?
What about gov subsidized welfare / healthcare / education / ...? Would you end all that? If not end it how would you handle the situation with current citizens vs the influx of foreigners who will expect these things be provided for them? And if those who show up start to vote for communism or some other ism that you do not like what will you do?