Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress • Hacker News Board

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#51

Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 7:56 AM UTC

leptons wrote: post #29

calculatte wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think anyone working with the global talent can tell you there are absolutely no controls around measuring their quality. The skilled talent simply isn't skilled at all. They are willing to engage in kickback schemes. Even the O1 "genius" visa is being given to onlyfans models. Immigration is completely broken and it's by design.

Your take only applies to recent developments. For the entirety of the H visa program, it has brought in very valuable talent, which stayed here to generate incredible wealth for the country. "onlyfans" is a recent thing. The kickbacks are a relatively new thing. Sure immigration is broken, but that's what happens when the government is intent on breaking the country.

Onlyfans is a recent thing, but the First Lady had an EB-1 Einstein visa when she was posing for…interesting photos.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#52

Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 7:58 AM UTC

RealityVoid wrote: post #38

m00dy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question I think is more interesting is why can't Europe retain talent?

Because of the salaries. They are much higher in the US. Also, the SV bay area has an absurd concentration of talent that you probably can't find anywhere else. Having a head start from anyone else helps. But don't worry, I'm sure that in the current climate Europe will be able to gather and retain talent. I personally would be much more happy to work for lower pay than contributing to the prosperity of such a predat…

Chinese salaries aren’t bad in tech, especially compared to Europe/Japan/Taiwan but even when compared to Canada. It’s pretty clear where talent could go in the future at least if Europe doesn’t up its game.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#53

Post by happytoexplain » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 8:00 AM UTC

RealityVoid wrote: post #43

I would be incredibly curious if the mods could look into the stats of these political threads. I personally feel they are being manipulated at least through the voting system if not through active bot influence campaigns. It might be me being emotional about this and about seeing a country I looked up to becoming what it's becoming, but I just can't comprehend how some of the people in this otherwise great community…

It's nuts - but I can only speak with anecdotes. The Americans around me are desperate to pull absolutely any lever that will slow the death of the American dream, and at this point even the "light" version of the dream is dying (work hard, be smart and a little lucky, spend on an education in a strong field, get a family and small property). Stats and experts be damned - that's what desperation is.

In the specific case of those around me, they are seeing huge numbers of Indian tech workers, local and offshore, displacing them. That would just be normal competition, except that they are all of the same foreign culture, which makes them an easily identifiable "out group". Multiplying the indignity and perceived "un-American-ness", they exhibit attributes like nepotism, sycophancy, ineffective communication, and a willingness to work longer hours for less pay while producing horrible work. And these attributes are perceived by as desirable to unscrupulous short-term-thinking leadership.

Of course this may exacerbate the problem (more offshoring).

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#54

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 8:01 AM UTC

Espressosaurus wrote: post #18

mattnewton wrote: post #11

Not only are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I feel like the current rhetoric in the US doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the metaphorical baby anymore. The strongest advantage of the US has always been the ability to absorb global talent. I don’t think that is a popular view anymore, and we are instead stuck talking only about stopping abuse that is ultimately still bringing skilled workers to t…

It's worse: we're actively ejecting the global brain drain that has been to our benefit since the post-WW2 era. I know several people on various visas that are making plans to leave after having gotten PHDs here. Still more have naturalized and are making contingencies for exiting. Immigrants found close to half of the fortune 500 businesses, and start something like 20% of our new businesses each year. For those mot…

[deleted]

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#55

Post by Epa095 » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 8:01 AM UTC

m00dy wrote: post #25

QGQBGdeZREunxLe wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question I think is more interesting is why can't Canada retain talent?

The question I think is more interesting is why can't Europe retain talent?

Others has given good reasons, but I think it's hard to overestimate the effect of 'rich gets richer'.

Once you have the stronger pool of talent you get the better companies, you get more income, higher salaries and talented people wants to work with talented people. As a young geek I was very attracted to the tech environments in the US, MIT and silicon valley, and other places were not really on my mind. Even though there are competent places in Europe as well.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#56

Post by kuttel2 » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 8:02 AM UTC

Espressosaurus wrote: post #18

mattnewton wrote: post #11

Not only are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I feel like the current rhetoric in the US doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the metaphorical baby anymore. The strongest advantage of the US has always been the ability to absorb global talent. I don’t think that is a popular view anymore, and we are instead stuck talking only about stopping abuse that is ultimately still bringing skilled workers to t…

It's worse: we're actively ejecting the global brain drain that has been to our benefit since the post-WW2 era. I know several people on various visas that are making plans to leave after having gotten PHDs here. Still more have naturalized and are making contingencies for exiting. Immigrants found close to half of the fortune 500 businesses, and start something like 20% of our new businesses each year. For those mot…

[flagged]

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#57

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 8:03 AM UTC

TMWNN wrote: post #35

gary_0 wrote: post #20

"Killing the golden goose" is the phrase that has come to mind repeatedly in the past few years. As someone living in a country that has been brain-draining into the US for decades, I'm quite perplexed at all this. It looks like the next Andrej Karpathy (born in Czechoslovakia, educated in Canada) will be taking their talents somewhere besides the US in the future. Maybe they think they can just cherry-pick the geniu…

> It looks like the next Andrej Karpathy (born in Czechoslovakia, educated in Canada) will be taking their talents somewhere besides the US in the future. Karpathy, with a Stanford PhD, would not have received or needed an H-1B. This, like the new $100K fee, is about shutting down the Indian body shops that consume the vast majority of "tech" H-1Bs.

There's so many Americans who have this intuition you're expressing, that there must be some good immigration system for responsible people who obviously ought to be allowed to stay in the country. The reason there isn't is that immigration reform deals have been sabotaged for decades by the people who are feeding you this disinformation. To emphasize, the person who told you this information knew it was false, lied to you about it in order to serve their political goals, and you must not trust anything they tell you going forwards.

The actual law, dictated by the F-1 visa program allowing foreign studies, is that a foreign Stanford PhD must permanently depart the United States within 60 days after graduation. There's a one-time extension available under the OPT program, where they can stay up to one additional year so long as they maintain employment complementary to their education for at least 20 hours a week. But after that year they must either obtain an H-1B or leave.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#58

Post by bialpio » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 8:03 AM UTC

yieldcrv wrote: post #10

aboardRat4 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

no OP, but I can answer one way: the US has very many visa programs, including half a dozen to a dozen work visa programs this one particular visa program is politically radioactive, as if it is the only work visa program, and it doesn't accomplish its stated goals in hardly any way until that can be settled I think and the program ironed out, it should be hampered to closed off, a moratorium I would like to see the…

For reference, I was an H-1B holder. My starting salary (straight out of college after finishing my master's) in one of the big tech companies was $95k base pay, this was 13 years ago. From my perspective, the visa program worked as intended.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#59

Post by bjourne » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 8:05 AM UTC

Every state has the right to regulate its labor supply. In fact, that is how society got better. Unions setup oligopolies to ensure workers were fairly compensated. Unlike other commodities, labor cannot be traded on a free market because if you can't sell your time you'll starve and become homeless. And if supply and demand is a thing, it seems that restricting supply favors the sellers.

The US has no shortage of labor. However, it is terribly allocated. Like "baggers" for groceries, old people (that should have retired long ago) working as "greeters", and thousands of Uber drivers working 12+ hours/day cause cities are so badly designed that you need taxis to get around. People whose only job is to put out cones on the street to force cars to slow down when the light is green... So much wasted labor. Why not try and "upgrade" these people through education (which tech companies should pay for in taxes) so that they can work more qualified jobs? Then the US wouldn't need to import qualified labor.

Re: Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

#60

Post by jedberg » Wed, Jan 07, 2026, 8:05 AM UTC

m00dy wrote: post #25

QGQBGdeZREunxLe wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question I think is more interesting is why can't Canada retain talent?

The question I think is more interesting is why can't Europe retain talent?

Risk taking is more frowned upon in Europe, and it's really hard to start a new business there, because of how employee friendly the laws are.

One of the things that makes starting a startup in US so favorable is that you can fire anyone at any time for any or no reason, which means you can easily retool or cut costs.

And if you're not looking to start a startup, the huge different in salaries and concentration of talent in the US, especially in certain cities, is a huge draw.