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

reuters.com

781–790 of 1001 posts

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

#781

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 not smart. If you want to reform an H1B program, reform it. This is not a reform, this is a bizarre attempt to do what? stop companies from hiring foreigners? they will simply hire them in their foreign offices or offshore.

Unless they follow this up with some major excise tax, this is the obvious outcome of this, IMO.

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

#782

IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse. I think a very high application fee is actually part of a good solution, but is useless by itself. A flawed proposal: * Dispense with the 'need to search for a qualified American' which just complicates the process without achieving the stated goal, an…

The last one is tricky because who is going to sponsor a worker at the price tag of 100k with no guarantee of performance. That is rife for abuse. You could get google to sponsor you and then hop to your friends startup on day one. It is reasonable that if you get a temporary visa to perform work in another country, and you decide you don't want to do that work anymore, you leave. They aren't enslaved or anything if…

It seems the best way is to sponsor a seat and not a particular individual. That way you can rotate persons for the same paid h1-b seat.

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

#784

This straight 100k to the top is not a good way to implement this. It should be a percentage (say 50%, we can talk about what the number should actually be) of the total compensation that is being paid to the H1B. We should also just completely remove caps on H1B. This allows companies that truly want extraordinary talent to pay a premium to acquire it with no red tape . It also makes it far less likely that they can…

The entire point is to block middling unneeded H1Bs that are just taking middle-class American jobs, a high yearly salary bar does exactly that.

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

#785
post #338

This will only drive jobs offshore and reduce the H1B population. It doesn’t solve any problems. This is literally the dumbest administration this country has ever seen. Between tariffs and immigration and now this, it’s like they don’t even know what the consequences of their actions are.

>This will only drive jobs offshore This was true before and after today. Put another way, if all the H-1B jobs really can be offshored quickly and easily the way so many Indians and anti-Trump people here and elsewhere confidently predict, * that would have happened already* .

There’s a fundamental difference in talent. H1b talent is often upper class scions from India or China. Offshore talent has always been leveraged for support or staff aug.

It’s entirely possible some H1b’s would happily pay the $100k if they had a guaranteed visa for 5-10+ years, but the vast majority will simply go home and work remotely.

But I believe the effect of this extortion will be a brain drain on U.S. fortune 1000 companies and that will push those same companies to build off shore offices, completely avoiding the administration’s goofiness.

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

#786
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…

love it or hate it, it hasn't worked out well for/in the minds of native-born us citizens either, a sentiment which I think this policy is going to tap into hard.

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

#787
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…

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…

I would like further reading on this topic.

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

#788

Doesn’t this just mean less talent? Companies would hire locally if equal level talent was available. I doubt it’s really about saving money when these jobs earn a lot of revenue per employee. Adding this fee means companies may just not find anyone worth hiring. It would make more sense to require H1B salary to be equal to the highest paid local employee of the same role at that company than to just throw an arbitra…

I think it will mostly impact cap-exempt employers. For example, universities typically use H-1B for new faculty hires, as the visa is available quickly and without too much effort. But if the visa costs $100k, the university will probably skip international applicants, because the hiring department rarely has that much money it is allowed to use freely. Research universities could probably use O-1, as the requiremen…

Yep. My wife just started as a professor (humanities) and she entered on H1B visa last week, as green card takes years to obtain. I have been offered a teaching job at the same institution as a partner hire and they have filed an H1B petition for me.

Unless they clarify that education is exempt from these rules, my wife will surely have to quit her new job. She is supposed to go on fieldwork later this year and she won’t be able to re-enter. Not to mention I can kiss my lecturer offer good bye. This is an incredibly retarded situation.

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

#789
post #2

All it'll do is replace competent workers who don't have $100k to spare, with incompetent workers who have the money.

I certainly don't think the industry's hiring processes are perfect, but $100k on top of a normal wage for an incompetent worker is a lot of money to throw down the drain and not either run out of money or have someone competent notice and stop the situation before too long.

Unfortunately, to stop the situation you either need to let competent foreign workers in, or somehow make 2 years of masters education, or 7 years of PhD education more attractive to average Americans than flipping burgers and earning $22 an hour, on top of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars loan to get bachelor's degrees.

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

#790
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…

What other country do you know of that can, with a wave of a hand, import a million highest-quality, ambitious people from across the globe? These folks aren't clamoring to go to other countries; this is the US position, and it was built with lots of hard work. With these changes, let's see how much this hurts in the foot.
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