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

reuters.com

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

#341

Post by TMWNN »

guyzero wrote: post #248

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 compan…

>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*.

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

#342

Post by smt88 »

guyzero wrote: post #248

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 compan…

Big Tech chose to get elect an anti-immigrant candidate while relying on immigrant labor. Let them burn themselves down.

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

#343

Post by TMWNN »

breadwinner wrote: post #18

$25K annual fee per H1B worker as opposed to $100K one-time would have made more sense. It would have made even more sense to have employers compete (within their own sector, such as tech, aerospace, etc.) such that whoever offers the highest salary will get the H1B worker.

>$25K annual fee per H1B worker as opposed to $100K one-time

It's $100K per employee per year.

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

#344

Post by guyzero »

the_real_cher wrote: post #310
guyzero wrote: post #248

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 compan…

Yeah but no offense if you're paid the same as your peers, you're not necessarily exceptional. There's literally millions of talented Americans out of work in the tech industry right now while companies continue to hire H1B. The companies post impossible requirement job ads in obscure locations..to get around the requirements to hire Americans first.

There's between 5 and 16 million tech workers in the US depending whose definition you use. The tech sector unemployment rate is 2.8% per https://www.comptia.org/en-us/about-us/news/press-releases/t...

That is, at most, less than half a million people in the field and the majority of those jobs aren't the ones looking for overseas hires anyway. If we take CompTIA's number of roughly 5M tech workers it's 140,000 people, not "literally millions."

If you have better numbers, please, let us know.

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

#345

Post by kelnos »

guyzero wrote: post #248

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 compan…

> This is a de facto shutdown of the program

Is it? $100k per hire isn't much of a cost to pay for large companies. Smaller companies may -- may -- end up having some trouble with this, but consider that $100k often amounts to less than a yearly base salary (and will pretty much always be less than a year of total comp/total employee cost), not to mention the costs of legal staff that they're already paying to deal with this stuff.

What this may do is cause some of the "body shop" consultancies to drop some of their "low end" business, so they'll focus more on targeting positions with higher salaries. That's... probably a good thing.

And yeah, we may see some higher rates of offshoring, but I don't think that will be significant. And I'm not even really convinced: offshoring is already possible, and in strict dollar terms is already cheaper than going through the H-1B process to bring someone to the US. If companies preferred offshoring, they'd be doing it; clearly the already-higher-cost H-1B program is still their preference.

I agree that this isn't going to fix the H-1B visa system, and is not a reform or even a particularly positive step toward a reform, but I think you're overestimating the negative impact. I really don't think this will change things much at all.

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

#347

Post by RealityVoid »

davidw wrote: post #176
roughly wrote: 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…

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 p…

I greatly enjoyed your article and it saddens me the rise of this "us vs them" mentality. But people that think like you still give me hope.

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

#348

Post by ohyoutravel »

ericmcer wrote: post #108
frogblast wrote: post #80

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, an…

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…

Thank you! I am so, so sick of not a single person in this thread (except you <3) looking out for Google’s shareholder value.

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

#349

Post by bottlepalm »

Good, but this still doesn't fix the flood of OPT workers (baby h1b's) that are crowding out Americans from getting jobs. I know, my company put out reqs for full stack devs, got hundreds of OPT candidates and are hiring them instead of domestic workers. You can't even discriminate against them as that'd be illegal. Good job America. They all have advanced US degrees, paying little for undergrad in India, while Americans are bankrupt from their undergrad. Unable to compete. The fact that they'll accept lower wages so they can upgrade to h1b's later is icing on the cake.

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

#350

Post by m_ke »

gorbachev wrote: post #239
srameshc wrote: post #104

This is going to kill H1B and immigration from countries like India, China and others for skilled workers. Even though $100K isn't a lot considering the overall investment that goes into hiring a full time employee, employers wouldn't risk that kind of money apart from all the document processing they have to. Maybe big tech will hire a few hundred every year but others won't even bother.

It is, however, a great opportunity for Canada and Western Europe to snatch all those people who now aren't able to come to the United States. I know for a fact that multinational companies are expanding in exactly those areas (plus India) for exactly the reason that it's become very difficult to hire and move people to the US. Those workers aren't paying taxes in the United States, and obviously the companies hiring…

Yeah it's even worse than that. These big cos will be incentivized to move whole teams out of the US since it will be easier to hire from other countries for offices in Paris / Zurich / Warsaw / etc.
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