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

Unfortunately, this is a good faith argument.

In reality, this will just be used to show fealty to trump and a fastlane visa will be opened to companies willing to join the fascists.

Again, good faith argument against something that isn't bewing done with a reasonably democratic outcome.

A lot of the discussion is about foreign workers competing with native ones and dragging salaries and employment down. This is a simplistic view, because it overlooks the fact that an insufficient labor supply keeps companies from growing faster, which in turn keeps them from hiring even more people.

So there is a tension between competition and increased opportunities and wage growth through increased company growth.

But how does this work out in practice? Luckily, there have been a lot of studies about the impact of the H1B program, which you can find on Google Scholar or SSRN. An extremely quick scan shows mixed findings that are hard to summarize, which is understandable because the dynamics are complex. (Contemplating getting Gemini to do a Deep Research report on this.)

So to narrow things down, I looked for empirical studies that focus on the specific counter-factual, "how would native workers fare if there were no H1B?" Interestingly, while I actually found some, even the recent studies (from 2022-2025) rely on empirical data from 2006 - 2008. That was when the H1B moved to a lottery system, creating a natural experiment allowing for comparison between firms that won and lost the lottery. (One study does find that limited data from 2022 corroborates its findings.) Not perfect, but better than hypotheticals.

Here's a government page with a very brief overview of two relevant studies: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12966 (The page doesn't scroll, but the PDF can be downloaded.)

To summarize, the studies find that there was no negative impact on native-born workers in terms of employment, and in terms of wages, some saw increases and others saw decreases in the range of 3-5%, depending on age, tenure and level of education.

But interestingly, the 2025 study also found that winning a lottery also increased the chance by 2.5% that the firm survived. Causation and correlation etc. aside the implications for employment are clear: if a firm does not survive, all employees, native or foreign, lose their jobs. This is an example of the dynamic I mentioned above.

Beyond these studies, I follow a labor economist and it's fascinating to see how these dynamics have been playing out over the last few years in the broader economy. As a relevant example, there is a credible theory that increased immigration was what helped the US manage its inflation crisis:

https://fortune.com/2024/04/12/immigration-inflation-economy...

The weirdest thing about the zero-sum rhetoric to me is: when one person is demanding to benefit at the expense of someone else, if I'm neither of them, why am I supposed to care?

Suppose I'm not an American--like plenty of HN commenters--or alternatively that (as in reality) I am an American but I have good reasons to think that the personal benefit I derive from the presence of immigrants is greater than the cost to me as an individual, even were I to concede more generic economic arguments about wage competition. Then... why am I supposed to prioritize the interests of American tech workers over foreign immigrants?

I don't in general endorse an "I got mine, screw you" approach, nor one that says "hey GDP is going up so screw the losers", but if someone else is taking exactly that attitude just with a nationalistic inflection, it's hard to extend them a lot of empathy.

It's not a bad proposal, though raising the salary requirements would be better. This essentially does that though since a company has to account for it in their hiring costs. IOW it costs the company $100K/year to hire a foreigner vs a local, which offsets the low salary that you might be offering that foreigner in order to "save costs" vs hiring local.

However, the unsolved problem is that this could just lead to more offshoring by these same tech companies who are abusing the program now. Not sure if there's any way to stop that.

Guest workers have no long term stake in living in the US unless they win a green card. Six years and they're out. Given this state of affairs, they will be compliant and not demand increasing compensation when they don't have to plan for a future in the US. Get too uppity and you get the boot. The suppression is hidden within this dynamic and sinks the prevailing wage for all workers.