Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee • Hacker News Board

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#291

Post by fc417fc802 » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 9:20 AM UTC

bijowo1676 wrote: post #290

fc417fc802 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's highly deceptive. To start with, salaries have to increase just to tread water given inflation. Beyond that, there's nothing wrong with a position that produces a large amount of value being compensated in accordance. If a particular sector does well we should expect salaries to rise relative to the economy as a whole. The question is simply whether a policy would depress wages relative to not having that poli…

you know what would depress wages even more? not having H1B foreigners like Elon Musk or Satya Nadella create/grow companies that employed tens of thousands Americans and created trillions of value for investors. Remember it was White American Steven Ballmer who almost ruined Microsoft (he took MSFT at $620 bln and left at $280 bln valuation), and it took a foreigner like Satya to bring it to $4 trillion. not having…

It appears you didn't bother to comprehend what I wrote before replying. I don't think this is the right venue for political grandstanding.

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#292

Post by pas » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 9:29 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #225

QGQBGdeZREunxLe wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Fees have to be justified and USCIS is not spending $100,000 to process a H1B applicant. They are raising revenue. Which is taxation. Calling something a fee doesn't make it a fee if, in substance, it operates like a tax.

Fees don’t have to be limited to the cost of the specific transaction. Lots of agencies, not to mention the courts themselves, charge fees that go towards the operation of the agency and don’t just defray the specific costs of a single transaction. In the NCTA case cited above, the Supreme Court upheld a law that authorized the FCC to impose “fees” on cable licensees that took into account the value of the license to…

it sounds like USCIS should do auctions too. is that not an option, or just nobody bothered with it so far?

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#293

Post by ryani » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 9:31 AM UTC

Grombobulous wrote: post #238

fc417fc802 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there was no qualified American applicants. But are there qualified Americans who could easily switch to that job for one reason or another? Is the issue a lack of qualified professionals or is it a lack of interest by qualified professionals in the listed position? It's very easy to receive no applications from qualified professionals that do in fact exist by simply not offering to pay them enough (among many othe…

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…

> I can tell you right now that you would have to pay me far above market rate to get me to move

If everyone feels that way, then it's not an above-market rate, it's by definition the market rate. The market rate for a job might be different at different locations.

(Note that I'm not taking a position on whether or not using the H1B program to reduce the market rate here is a good idea)

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#294

Post by adjejmxbdjdn » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 9:32 AM UTC

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #277

dmix wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, it’s clear that H1Bs have destroyed the American software industry as evidenced by the fact that the American software industry saw the largest growth in wages relative to any other field in the U.S. over the past 2 decades while also seeing a massive growth in the numbers of employees over the same period, also outpacing every other industry here as well.

Clearly the H1B has been devastating to American workers unlike all those other industries which haven’t seen an influx of a capped number of H1B workers every year.

And that’s even before we get to how the U.S. software industry remains one of a handful of industries where the U.S. is the leader in the world and has generated trillions in wealth, and is largely responsible for the US’s continuing dominance in the world today.

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#295

Post by bijowo1676 » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 9:33 AM UTC

fc417fc802 wrote: post #291

bijowo1676 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you know what would depress wages even more? not having H1B foreigners like Elon Musk or Satya Nadella create/grow companies that employed tens of thousands Americans and created trillions of value for investors. Remember it was White American Steven Ballmer who almost ruined Microsoft (he took MSFT at $620 bln and left at $280 bln valuation), and it took a foreigner like Satya to bring it to $4 trillion. not having…

It appears you didn't bother to comprehend what I wrote before replying. I don't think this is the right venue for political grandstanding.

quite the opposite, all of H1B opponents imagine current wealth and state of tech will preserve the moment immigration stops and their loud temper tantrums are satisfied.

that American capitalists are stupid enough to overpay underskilled Americans, the moment H1Bs are banned or limited, instead of opening satellite offices outside US

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#296

Post by ahoka » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 9:51 AM UTC

8note wrote: post #244

fc417fc802 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true but I think the salient observation here is that it's only realistic to pay so much for education. So either you can't have children in such a town, or you're forced to homeschool, or (I guess what's being suggested is) you import someone willing to work an undesirable job if it gets them into the country. I think there's an important difference between importing labor to undercut qualified americans in…

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

Do you really suggest to copy Ceaușescu and start evacuating villages in rural Alaska?

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#297

Post by JuniperMesos » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 10:32 AM UTC

cguess wrote: post #25

JCTheDenthog wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rigorous examinations for English fluency and for competency in their alleged field of expertise would be a good start. I have several H1B coworkers in the US who barely speak intelligible English, and who barely understand normal conversation let alone anything technical. A blatant example of this that I experienced recently being that several of them could not understand that just because a method in C# is asynchro…

This is a hiring issue, not a legal one. The US has no official language, and no language tests, so requiring English in law would be dicey to put it mildly. What if I'm hiring someone specifically to work at a Spanish language news outlet?

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/desi...

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#298

Post by fc417fc802 » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 11:01 AM UTC

ahoka wrote: post #296

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

Do you really suggest to copy Ceaușescu and start evacuating villages in rural Alaska?

I wonder if he realizes that we historically went to great lengths to get people to move there.

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#299

Post by cgag » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 11:32 AM UTC

jsemrau wrote: post #236

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.

> there was no qualified American applicants I have been hiring for 20 years and find this increasingly impossible to believe. Please expand why that would be the case.

Every post I see from young people trying to get tech jobs is about applying to 500 places to get one interview. It’s a lie.

Re: Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

#300

Post by yen223 » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 11:32 AM UTC

WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #158

ttul wrote: post #76

There is actually a sensible way to do recruit foreign workers to fill jobs that locals for some reason can't fill, and it's just a few miles up north... Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) is not limited by annual caps or lotteries. You just apply (as a company) by filling in a few simple forms and posting a job in the "Canada Job Bank" for a period of time to demonstrate that you genuinely searched for…

Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program is a horrible program that has been flagrantly abused for years to the detriment of Canadians. There's record high youth unemployment yet every Tim Hortons is filled with Indians.

What's wrong with Indians? Why do so many people here want us to hate on Indians?