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Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

alaskasnewssource.com

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Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#271

Post by bijowo1676 »

whateverboat wrote: post #266
bijowo1676 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the most infuriating part. Big Tech has multiple carveouts to bring tech labor using F1/J1/L1/O1/EB-1 and various other visas, and they wouldn't even feel the 100k fee given their budgets. While non-tech sectors were the ones most affected

Not refuting your point but... Most people who work in tech are not eligible for O1 or EB-1. F1 is a student visa, J1 requires you to go back after finishing your stuff. L1 can actually work but needs to be converted to either H1b, O1 or EB1 at some point soonish.

Plenty of people in tech work on O1 and EB1. F1 is probably the biggest feeder pool for H1. J1 does not always require coming back, it requires return only when funded by US government program, and return requirement can otherwise can be waived, esp if J1 is unfinished

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#272

Post by fweimer »

bijowo1676 wrote: post #147
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Have you considered the possibility that H1B teachers are simply better (at any price point) ? That sounds sort of racist, actually.

It is not racist, but it is true. The Education major is one of the bottom majors, Americans with the lowest grades and lowest SAT scores go on to become public school teachers. and it is well known information among Americans themselves. https://x.com/marcportermagee/status/1954326425072546055/pho... https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2023-total-group-... The average SAT for Education majors: 1023 It’s ranke…

Do SAT scores measure anything about pedagogic aptitude? I expect that at best, you get some form of correlation (in which direction?).

For teachers, other things matter more than reasoning skills or subject matter knowledge, especially in rural or otherwise challenging communities.

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#273

Post by watwut »

throwaway85825 wrote: post #146
nsagent wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived in bumblefuck Alaska for a year, I can honestly say that they do in fact pay more, but it's also super expensive to live in rural Alaska. Likely a bigger issue is that very few people want to live in a town of 3000 people or less that isn't connected to the interstate road system. Money can only do so much to fix that.

Some people live in a pressurized bubble for a month for saturation diving. If the price is right you can get someone to do almost anything.

I would be fully willing to live in a pressurized bubble for a month for saturation diving. Sounds cool and doable. Living for years in rural Alaska and being a teacher? Absolutely not.

That being said, there are not that many saturation divers, because being a month in a bubble is kind of least problem with it. The lifelong health impact is.

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#274

Post by bijowo1676 »

fweimer wrote: post #272
bijowo1676 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not racist, but it is true. The Education major is one of the bottom majors, Americans with the lowest grades and lowest SAT scores go on to become public school teachers. and it is well known information among Americans themselves. https://x.com/marcportermagee/status/1954326425072546055/pho... https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2023-total-group-... The average SAT for Education majors: 1023 It’s ranke…

Do SAT scores measure anything about pedagogic aptitude? I expect that at best, you get some form of correlation (in which direction?). For teachers, other things matter more than reasoning skills or subject matter knowledge, especially in rural or otherwise challenging communities.

It shows revealed preference: all smart people decide to work anywhere but education and public schools are scraping the barrel for talent.

Results you can see with your own eyes. USA had to significantly dumb down SAT, switch to dumbed down “Common Core” curriculum, ditch gifted&talented programs across the board, ditch SAT requirements for college and introduce remedial math at Harvard!!! The creme de la creme of US Education system.

If American teachers were any good, private schools would not be able to charge more than Ivy League tuition for very simple secondary education

This is all consequence of what kind of people decide to become Teachers, and what kind of people decide to become Wall St Traders

In the end this shows up in massive dependence on Foreign talent via H1B visas. US is importing engineers precisely because Americans did not have good STEM teachers who could teach them math and logic in middle school.

https://abcnews.com/amp/GMA/Living/us-students-reading-math-...

https://www.realcleareducation.com/2025/03/20/harvard_launch...

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#275

Post by sinuhe69 »

BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #264
Starman_Jones wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister was a schoolteacher in Alaska. They pay a premium, but it’s still not a life that most Americans are cut out for, including me. That means the schools have to choose between giving these kids subpar teachers who are happy to live up there, or miserable teachers who are only doing it for the money. Or, we can hire foreign teachers who are qualified AND are happy to teach up there.

> foreign teachers who are qualified AND are happy to teach up there But are they? Or are they just willing and here for the money and foot in the immigration door? Sincere question, though I have negative views of the whole H1B thing in general (not a US national, though).

If you care, you certainly can find a lot of information about it nowadays. Of course, whether you want to believe it is another question.

https://youtu.be/FSmtbSYE8pg

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#276

Post by dlcarrier »

Kab1r wrote: post #228
redslazer wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it is a fee or tax is less about whether it funds the government and more about whether when you pay the amount you get some benefit that you wouldn’t if you didn’t pay (above and beyond compliance with tax law). For example a fishing licence is a fee while a flood levy is a tax.

But then sales taxes are fees, no?

No, because the government collecting sales tax isn't a party to the transaction. The fee itself needs to be in exchange for a good, but the government is giving you anything marginal in exchange for sales tax, instead it's going into accounts spent for public good.

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#277

Post by aprilthird2021 »

dmix wrote: post #157
esalman wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this argument all the time. There's an excess of this, there's an excess of that. Seems it only comes from people who are not directly involved in hiring of such roles. We hired for an analyst role few months ago in the bay area and there was no qualified American applicants. My wife is in pavement consultancy and they hardly ever find qualified Americans for pavement design jobs.

People can’t seem to separate the issue of exploitation of H1B by (mostly Indian) consultancy mills to lower wages and bypass normal immigration vs the legitimate value of specialized skilled visas. You can fix one without killing the other. It’s plausible Education might be one of the industries that gets exploited as they have no caps in the lottery like other H1 visas categories such as tech or doctors. But I don’…

Yep, H1B visa abuse exists and should be clamped down on, but it's also extremely vital to our sustained economic growth and frankly our biggest growth industry: tech

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#278

Post by murderfs »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #269
8note wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you could also export the children, or the whole family, to a place that can support teachers

Depopulating rural Alaska, or America in general, is certainly a campaign strategy.

I mean, so's "Bumfuck, Alaska needs a handful of teachers, therefore we're going to import infinite Indians"

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#279

Post by aprilthird2021 »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #252
Grombobulous wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems is that geography and demographic movement trends within that geography is a very real thing. Let’s say a rural town has lost population in the last 20 years, and most of the population that left is educated. Now they need a teacher, which requires a bachelors or even masters degree. The rural town’s unemployment rate is 10% but there are no qualified teachers who are unemployed. So now we want to…

Yeah I agree with all that but notice that the comment I responded to was either about an analyst in the bay area or a stream of pavement design jobs in unspecified locations. I wouldn't necessarily object to the metric of "do qualified americans exist" being limited to a certain geographic area as long as the resulting criteria was sufficiently difficult to abuse.

The bay area's existing talent pool is hugely immigrant in nature. It's totally within expectations to put a job post for an analyst of some kind there and only get immigrant visa holders applying. They also make a lot more than many Americans who wouldn't be qualified but still live in the area.

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#280

Post by aprilthird2021 »

esalman wrote: post #261
corndoge wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to incentivize more kids to get pavement design degrees to increase the supply

The reason US is in this mess is because in the 50s and 60s there was a liberal arts education boom in the US, and STEM education boom in India/China.

We had a STEM education boom in the last decade in the US
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