Live data from Hacker News

Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says

reuters.com

321–330 of 1001 posts

Re: Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says

#322

If H-1B workers are too expensive to hire, tech employers have two options: 1. Hire more American workers (pay more, maybe they don't exist so don't hire) 2. Move their offices overseas (already happening, we should see an acceleration) Ok, I guess AI could also start replacing more roles, but we won't see that productivity for a year or two. If companies choose 2 over 1, it will mean fewer jobs overall in the USA (i…

What about just hiring remote contractors?

Logistics and vetting mostly. The Indian body shops have a business model that already does this, actually: you hire the body shop, they send over one or two more senior engineers who then act as liaisons that farm out work back in India where most of the body shop is still located. My guess is that you'll just see more of that going on, although the R&D tax rules are getting weird with respect to amortization and out sourced labor.

Re: Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says

#323

I think this is great news for countries like Canada and UK.

Oh no, Canada, don't take my low-paid, equally-skilled and desperate-to-stay-at-one-company competition from me! /s

haha so true

Re: Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says

#324
I wish the US would just return to "racial" quotas like pre-WW2 instead of all this huffing and heaving.

MAGA (and most Americans) don't seem to have any issue with immigration -what they have a issue with is the culture/skin-color/ethnicity of who immigrates. Indeed this is where the country quotas come from - Europe with 20 odd countries has 20x the priority than India or China.

If the US had an ounce of honestly they'd just make this explicit instead of beating around the bush. Since people have better opinion of the Chinese and other "white" East-Asians (admittedly the fairer gender only), just restrict it explicitly to "race" of Caucasians and there "Yellow" races.

It'll save Indians and other "suburbans" a lot of trouble not dealing with this farce of "liberalism" going forward. I genuinely mean this - given how things are going, Indians will find themselves in the place of Jews in Nazi Germany quite soon. And much like the useless British-colonial state that governed Israel then, the vestigial British state in India which is as internet upon Anglo-American triumph today, can't and will do jack shit for them.

Re: Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says

#325

There's a ton of abuse, feigned work and loopholes, and rules that undermine the law and also make foreign workers a 2nd class. Amongst other elements that should be fixed: * Taxation without representation (i'm suggesting adding the latter, not removing the former) * The H1B worker must be paid at or above the higher of the median rate at the company for the role or at the employee's request by an independent valuat…

They will never allow you to port your h1b to another employer. The companies love h1b because it nails your feet to the floor.

Re: Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

The median pay of an H1B visa holder is $118k. The 25th percentile is $90k. This is from the government's official data: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/O... Any suggestion that the program is dragging wages down instead of dragging wages up is not just misleading but factually wrong.

A better perspective is that the median H1B holder created $100k+ worth of value for some US company. Salaries are lower than the value you create, or else your employer would stop paying you.

There could be some rare edge case where you are undercut by a direct competitor, but overall America is much richer with H1Bs that without them.

Re: Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says

#327

Sorry, is this legal? Like is the fee something that can be changed with an EO, or is it set by congress? The original Bloomberg article doesn't state: https://archive.is/tpuut Some research (okay, okay, I used Claude) indicates that "In summary, while Congress provides the statutory authority and mandates certain specific fees, the specific amounts for most H1B fees are set through the regulatory process by DHS/USCI…

Recovery costs is set by the USCIS, which is under the executive branch and subject to "rule" changes.

Re: Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says

#328
post #250

Interesting decision. I'm on the F1 -> H1B pipeline myself as a software engineer. And my wife is a researcher working on Genetic Engineering. Of the both of us, I've been the strong proponent for moving the US. and with each passing day, its getting harder to make a strong case for the pain, and uncertainty of moving here. Lately everything has been counter to what one would expect from a pro-growth, accelerationist…

if you are exceptional, there is always the O-1 visa

No, you become exceptional after coming here. The majority of our unicorns are first generation immigrant founded.

Re: Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says

#329
post #85

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…

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…

Re: Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says

#330
post #173

"Critics, including many U.S. technology workers, argue that it allows firms to suppress wages and sideline Americans who could do the jobs." I don't know many tech workers who criticize H1B visas, outside of maybe the way that they empower the employer over employees.

How many American tech workers know anything about h1b? It's not like your employer tells you who is who.
Post reply on HN