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

reuters.com

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

#651

If you want a good job in tech, go look at Walmart’s job board in the coming weeks. They literally have thousands of Indians doing all kinds of jobs that could easily be done by Americans. I liked my time there, and there’s lots of great people, but it felt very clear that the system was being abused.

homedepot too

in my team of 23 there were 2 americans

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

#652

As an american engineer, I love this! Thank you President Trump! "if H1Bs are supposed to be a means of obtaining labor not available domestically it's curious they're cheaper than domestic labor an easy way to ensure that they aren't directly substituting for domestic labor would be to add a $100k surcharge per head"

Don't love it yet. $100K surcharge per head for a 3 year visa is just $33K per year which is very absorable, and won't in itself affect visas much.

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

#653
How are startups supposed to afford this? How are talented H-1B workers supposed to start companies? And no, the answer is not always an O-1. I know plenty of foreign founders contributing meaningfully to the US economy, now slapped with a 100k fee.

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

#654

This is actually smart. Many H1B visas are used to undermine fair labor wages for already local talent. We should ensure that H1B visas are for actual unique talent and not just to undercut local wages. H1B is ripe with abuse - this article by Bloomberg says that half of all H1-B visas are used by Indian staffing firms that pay significantly lower than the US laborers they are replacing: - https://www.bloomberg.com/g…

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Trump is following mostly the Project 2025 plan that was put together but others: it called for greatly reducing H1-B visas.

And supposedly a lot of his power grab moves are being run by Stephen Miller: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/step...

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

#655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top end of H1B has been great for America. In the last few decades, there has been growth of abuse of the program to get mid level talent at below market rates which really hurts the middle class in America. People need to understand that most reformists don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration to the US. We need to limit the volume, especially the immigrants that are directly competing with a h…

The hollowing out of the middle class in the US isn't because of immigrants, it's because of a sustained campaign by capital to reduce the power of labor over the last 50-odd years and to concentrate wealth as best they can. Immigrant labor contributes to that because we've got inadequate labor protections and because we bought into the idea that lower consumer prices was a fine reason to ignore both labor and antitr…

this is why people cant afford anything

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

#656
post #632

The actual proclamation [1] is very narrow: a $100k surcharge on new H-1B petitions for workers outside the US. It’s a one-time hit tied to the petition. It does not say “annual.” It does not drag in renewals or transfers for people already in status. Boundless is technically right that a $100k fee exists, but the piece glosses over the narrow scope and leans into speculation. It frames the fee like an ongoing tax on…

You may want to read the section on enforcement:

> Section 1. Restriction on Entry. (a) Pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000 — subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (c) of this section. This restriction shall expire, absent extension, 12 months after the effective date of this proclamation, which shall be 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2025.

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

#657

This is actually smart. Many H1B visas are used to undermine fair labor wages for already local talent. We should ensure that H1B visas are for actual unique talent and not just to undercut local wages. H1B is ripe with abuse - this article by Bloomberg says that half of all H1-B visas are used by Indian staffing firms that pay significantly lower than the US laborers they are replacing: - https://www.bloomberg.com/g…

This is very short term thinking, in that it assumes a constant amount of work and ignores the global competition for labor. If the US loses its massive lead in the network effects of a large labor pool, the amount of work in the US will shrink, both by moving to other countries and less overall innovation. This is not a beneficial move for most software engineers.

Do you think those countries will be nice and invite us to be reverse "H1Bs" into their countries or will they keep the pie to themselves? If they think like you they'll invite the whole world talent pool into their countries.

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

#659

It’s not set in stone and can be reversed like tariffs no?

Do you mean reversed by future executive order answer that question is most likely, however, courts have shown a propensity to limit which executive orders can be undone by future presidents. For example, we saw this during Trump won with DACA.

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

#660
post #85

I think there’s plenty of interesting debates to be had about immigration policy and its effects on the labor market, but one thing worth noting here is that the primary problem that damn near every other country on earth has isn’t immigration, it’s brain drain. A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them…

>it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.

It damn sure hasn't worked out well for a lot of talented, perpetually underemployed (many deep in perpetual debt) US kids. And I'm pretty sure that what those talented folks learn here in the US has made its way back to those countries, considering (e.g.) the level of competition we see from Asia these days.

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