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Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#581

Post by arn7av »

yibg wrote: post #561
arn7av wrote: post #518

Update from USCIS: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/H1B... "Clarification" from Press Secretary: https://x.com/PressSec/status/1969495900478488745 1.) This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition. 2.) Those who already hold H-1B visas and are currently outside of the country right now will NOT be charged $100,000 to re-enter. H-1B visa holders can leave and…

Info from customs agents at airport is aligned with this statement. Specifically that it does NOT apply to current visa holders. How consistent that is, no idea.

Updated the comment with USCIS update: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/H1B...

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#582

Post by dfadsadsf »

omarqureshi wrote: post #132
ericmay wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate more on hiring and immigration in the United Kingdom and Australia with respect to similar skilled visa work? When you say South Asia could you expand on what specific countries you mean? I think South Asia could mean a few things to a few different people which is why I ask. > It means less focus in the US which eventually will just become sales and marketing only with perhaps some smaller departme…

> Can you elaborate more on hiring and immigration in the United Kingdom and Australia with respect to similar skilled visa work? > When you say South Asia could you expand on what specific countries you mean? I think South Asia could mean a few things to a few different people which is why I ask. I was in the process of moving one engineer from Dubai to Manchester, probably all in the process is £20,000-£30,000 over…

Let’s be real - nobody is moving R&D to Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. Talent is not there and good luck convincing any expats to move there in meaningful numbers.

India is real but every company is already there and very little real high end R&D is happening there - it’s all mostly basic outsourcing. I doubt H1B situation changes anything here frankly.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#583

Post by harshalizee »

sarchertech wrote: post #374
darth_avocado wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. The “friction” is overstated. H1Bs face the same labor conditions as rest of the folks. When the market is great, you can shop around and make a lot of money. When the market is bad and you stay put, most of the other employees are doing the same. The caveat: I’m not talking about the consultancies that abuse the system, which we can all agree are bad and their employees usually will have a hard time finding oth…

If you get fired or laid off, you only have 60 days to find a new job or be deported. Also depending on where you are in the green card process, you can lose your place. This creates an incentive for H-1B workers to tolerate working conditions that American workers wouldn't.

Maybe we should fix that instead. Even the playing field for all, so there's no real incentive to hire H1B over a citizen. They can still hire H1Bs where the is a real shortage of talent. By providing H1Bs a bigger timeline like maybe up to a year to find employment in cases of layoffs, they won't be forced into crappier working conditions.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#584

Post by [deleted] »

toephu2 wrote: post #498
tom89999 wrote: post #24

Get your relatives and family out of this shithole and start a new life somewhere else. Why paying taxes for fat crooks? Why working your ass off for major companiel that dont pay taxes? I more and more understand people leaving their home country.

Yeah, go work in Asia for 30k/year or Europe for 100k/year. Or goto Canada and pay even more than the U.S. in taxes and take-home much less. Who wants these 500k/year salaries in the U.S. anyway?

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#585

Post by nujabe »

dang wrote: post #514
nujabe wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, using HN primarily for political/ideological battle, and ignoring our request to stop. Not cool.

[dead]

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#586

Post by ajross »

nrmitchi wrote: post #535
arn7av wrote: post #518

Update from USCIS: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/H1B... "Clarification" from Press Secretary: https://x.com/PressSec/status/1969495900478488745 1.) This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition. 2.) Those who already hold H-1B visas and are currently outside of the country right now will NOT be charged $100,000 to re-enter. H-1B visa holders can leave and…

A "White House Official" may be saying this now, but it is not what was in the EO that was actually signed. There were no exclusions for current holders, and the start date was explicitly September 21, 2025 (a date that does apply to the "next lottery"). They are more than welcome to roll back this asinine decision, but pretending that everyone else is just mis-interpreting is gaslighting. Either way, until there is…

> In any situation, your best bet is to follow the direction and guidance of your own attorney.

Private lawyers don't know any more about this than we do. The administration will do today what the administration decides to do today, not what it previously said it was going to do. At best, the ambiguity will make for a better case that lawyer needs to file eventually. But she's not a mind reader.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#587

Post by delecti »

afpx wrote: post #580
delecti wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pace of the last 10 years has been jarring Is this satire or just solely based on feelings? The rate of legal immigration hasn't changed significantly since 1990 (35 years ago) when it had a huge spike (during Bush1); it then spiked again during Bush 2.

Buddy, the US currently has highest % immigrant that it has ever had, and it's getting really close to the max that a non-authoritarian government can sustain. For comparison, here are the immigrant pcts for top 20 most populated countries: India (0.3%), China (0.1%), United States (15.2%), Indonesia (0.2%), Pakistan (1.7%), Nigeria (0.6%), Brazil (0.7%), Bangladesh (1.7%), Russia (5.3%), Mexico (1.3%), Ethiopia (0.9…

Okay, so you aren't actually talking about the immigration rate, you're talking about the percent of people who are immigrants. That has nothing to do with the "pace of the last 10 years", it comes down to the pace of the last 50 years, coupled with the selection of people you happen to see around you. And taking a break for 20 years will still leave all of those foreign-born people here, unless that was (too subtly for me) suggesting the immigrants already here leave.

And who's to say that a country can't sustain a high foreign-born population without authoritarianism? Germany's is even higher, and the US maintained a comparable level for 70 years in the 1800s. That seems like a wild claim.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#588

Post by nobodyandproud »

Hizonner wrote: post #442
nobodyandproud wrote: post #387

As much as I think Trump and crew is dangerous to the nation, I’m not hating this and I believe it’s long overdue. I was about to wistfully wish Biden or Obama pushed for this, but it’s clear they were too deep in the tech industry’s pockets. Not sure how this administration intends on addressing the off-shore response though.

Scaling back, seriously modifying, or eliminating the H1B program is a perhaps reasonable policy action. Giving people 15 hours of notice is incompetent and a dick move.

How about 35 years of preparation? Tech businesses had 35 years to lobby and help fix this.

Instead, the businesses abused and lobbied to keep H1B easy to abuse. Huge dick moves. Plural.

The rank and file contractors suffer and they don’t deserve the chaos, but I don’t feel an ounce of sympathy for the hiring bodies and employers (and the abusive hiring managers).

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#589

Post by xyzelement »

duped wrote: post #546
xyzelement wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a Republican and an immigrant and there are millions of others. So perhaps it is more complicated than that.

[flagged]

Neither. I am an open minded individual who's traveled the world, and am a dual citizen, highly educated, highly intelligent and successful:)

And naturally I was a Democrat through 2016, but as Democrats moved left they left me behind on a lot of issues. And then the fact that your side is now like "you are evil or stupid if you don't agree with us" (eg your post) makes any re-engagement impossible.

You seem like a really thoughtful person from your non political posting history but this is clearly such a trigger topic. I know it's not just you but it's really unattractive.

Re: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

#590

Post by questionableans »

someperson wrote: post #218
rich_sasha wrote: post #169

UK around Brexit time thought kind of similar: let's keep the "riffraff" immigrants out by applying higher criteria. The narrative also changed this way: we don't want immigrants in general, but you , with your highly paid PhD-requiring job, you can go in, on a 2 year rolling basis. Then everyone's a winner, except for unwanted, unskilled labour. But a lot of skilled labour left anyway. Partly because the general atm…

> you can be pretty sure your retired parents won't, if ever you need them to move in with you The immigration system should be designed to block retired parents from moving country to live with their working age adult children who have migrated. One reason to have immigration is to improve a country's dependency ratio: the ratio of working age population to children and retirees. The ideal immigrants are young well-…

The true measure of a country isn’t a number like GDP, per capita income/wealth, or tax revenues. It’s how good of a place it is for everyone to live. If we have to keep family members out because medical costs are out of control, we’ve failed. So the question isn’t how to exclude people, it’s how to efficiently provide good healthcare and other basic needs for all. It’s not easy, but it’s what matters.
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