This sort of rule is extremely common in EU legislation. GPDR, for example, only allows standing in court for governments. You don't get to sue for your GPDR rights, you can only beg the government if your rights got violated (not the police, not the courts, not parliament, the executive). Or "the minister" as they say here. In practice this means the ministry of justice has an office, which has nothing to do with the judicial system, and you can send a letter to them. Of course this means governments and favored companies are effectively not bound by the GPDR.
It is actually possible to change the rules with sufficient notice period and to write enough details that people have a chance to understand exactly how the rules will change.
They're not doing that. This is a choice they are making.
A continuous series of overreach and calibrate the amount of rollback needed based on response makes sense if you're keen to push things to the limit society will bear without rioting
The choice is also to deprive health shortage areas of doctors, and academic institutions of scholars, but keeping tech happy and screwing over health and research isn’t new either the administration.
It was interesting how Microsoft basically directly got called out in the white house brief "One software company was approved for over 5,000 H-1B workers in FY 2025; around the same time, it announced a series of layoffs totaling more than 15,000 employees."
That would be surprising if developers were fungible. You can have a surplus of web developers (whom you lay off) while at the same time have a shortage of AI talent. Those web developers can't be hired in to the openings for AI talent.
I would be surprised if programmers couldn't generally quickly pick up a new domain. I presume we're not talking 5,000 people doing heavy research (wouldn't that be O-1 anyway?), and I don't see how product development work becomes more complicated when you call it AI. e.g. you don't need a PhD to hook calls to a model into VS Code or to build the API and infrastructure around calling the model or data pipelines or all the other 90% of actually making it useful.
I wouldn't call developers fungible, but certainly good developers are adaptable.
None of us knew how to finetune a model 18 months ago, we learned. This idea that what you've done in the past is all you can do is such a dumb big tech idea that needs to die.
axios tries to describe it as "panicky advice," but as written the EO explicitly says H1B holders "except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000 — subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (c) of this section" will be restricted from entering the US.[1] This article isn't really actionable advice when the only attribution is to some un-named "White House official"
More like "sorry, this should not have happened. It still happened, but now we can't do anything. We take full responsibility, but nothings gonna change".
How so? With more isolationist policies? Coercion?
Sure, Trump could make Nvidia invest 5b into Intel. But that's only pacifying the shareholders among his cronies. It doesn't regenerate the company or bring back the burnt bridges and lost talent.
Let's assume it really is only about code monkeys. Those asian code monkeys won't demand silly things like... unionization or decent living conditions. They are less likely to have problems with creating autonomous weapon systems that integrate facial recognition.
But it's not about those people. It's about experts in IT infrastructure, AI, researchers, etc. Those kind of people don't fall from trees and know that their expertise is well sought after. And if the US is not a safe or attractive choice, they go elsewhere. Simple as that.
Anybody know how it plays out for those who are already on a h1b and are changing jobs? Typically that does not count as a new entry in the lottery but technically is a lottery. Without mobility that is just more indentured servitude. Also its not clear why not just lock out the indian consultancies directly as who these culprits are is pretty clear? Or no? There were also plenty of opportunities to tie a single h1b to one person instead of to a job posting (resulting in 3+ parallel filings).
Makes sense, you don't want to affect already working high skill foreigners, because this will have immediate, massive disruptions on the tech industry.
Readit News
Just more corruption and leverage to push companies to do their bidding. Just rancid stuff.
They're not doing that. This is a choice they are making.
>This is a choice they are making.
yup
Dead Comment
It seems eminently sensible to stop cheap labour from abroad in such a situation.
If you do not know the laws of tommorow you cannot game them and also makes long term planning way more exciting.
I wouldn't call developers fungible, but certainly good developers are adaptable.
If anything, what is the difference between an employee and a contractor if you can just terminate them once you're done with them?
Quite convenient to show the data such that it serves a narrative and hide the details.
[1] Section 1 here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
Well, more tech talent for India and China it seems.
Not if the US has any way to prevent that.
Sure, Trump could make Nvidia invest 5b into Intel. But that's only pacifying the shareholders among his cronies. It doesn't regenerate the company or bring back the burnt bridges and lost talent.
But it's not about those people. It's about experts in IT infrastructure, AI, researchers, etc. Those kind of people don't fall from trees and know that their expertise is well sought after. And if the US is not a safe or attractive choice, they go elsewhere. Simple as that.