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

reuters.com

811–820 of 1001 posts

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

#813
post #802

Putting all else aside: if you’re an H1B holder currently outside the US you must return within 24 hours or you’re on the hook for $100k: https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3l... Unfathomably cruel.

This link is dead already. Not sure if this is correct, it truly is confusing.

> Deleted the below posts out of an abundance of caution. Despite the words of the Proclamation, an unnamed White House official told New York Times that they intend to apply the $100,000 only to new applicants only.

> If that is correct, the implications are not as urgent.

https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3l...

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

#814

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.

Hire Americans.

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

#815
post #463

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 this doesn't match reality. The surplus of labor has allowed big tech to be exceedingly picky during the interview process. You will now fail interviews if you're unable to solve two Leetcode Hards in 45 minutes. If there was insufficient labor pool as you suggest, interviews would become less selective and wages would rise.

Tech interviewing has been dysfunctional for a long time, but yes it is much worse now because the tech job market is terrible. However I have previously commented (along with citations where possible) about how this job market is deliberately depressed. BigTech has achieved this through a few mechanisms, namely a) increasingly offshoring jobs while simultaneously b) freezing headcount in the US, and c) performing significant layoffs triggered by Elon's shenanigans at Twitter. And a highly under-reported aspect of all this is that these layoffs are causing much higher pressure on the remaining employees, which is leading to record levels of burnouts.

I'm letting my cynicism show here, but I think this is a power move by the capital class to show labor their place after an exceptionally strong labor market during ZIRP. This is much more recent and not related to the H1B program.

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

#816

Putting all else aside: if you’re an H1B holder currently outside the US you must return within 24 hours or you’re on the hook for $100k: https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3l... Unfathomably cruel.

Oh! This is unexpected, I thought it’s only for new applications, asking every h1b holder to pay 100k is just unfathomable. We will see thousands of layoffs and people moving out on an unimaginable scale.

They said at the signing that it was per year. No idea if it’s applicable to existing h1-b’s.

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lz7tewnfrr23

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

#817
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 think one unintended outcome of this would be that the jobs would be completely outsourced to outside of US. The ones remaining would be government contracts that have provisions against it. The government could add tariffs on services, but we need to see if that just moves the companies outside of US or not. Capitalism in a democracy is hard to control.

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

#818
post #345

Everyone in these threads always points out all sorts of issues with the H1B system, which are mostly true, but it's not like there's a suggestion for a replacement here. This is a de facto shutdown of the program, not a reform. I'd be happy to see a reformed skilled immigration program for the US, but this isn't it. The US makes up about 4.5% of the global population and it seems silly to think that the FAANG compan…

> This is a de facto shutdown of the program Is it? $100k per hire isn't much of a cost to pay for large companies. Smaller companies may -- may -- end up having some trouble with this, but consider that $100k often amounts to less than a yearly base salary (and will pretty much always be less than a year of total comp/total employee cost), not to mention the costs of legal staff that they're already paying to deal w…

$100k for a startup is a no-go from the onset. This makes foreigners basically unhireable for startups, and probably shuts down founding startups as well?

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

#819

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.

Hire Americans.

Ever live somewhere that isn't a city, but has access to talent from a local university? No one is sticking around to be hired for $70k a year when they can make $120k a year in a city. Yet, there are plenty of hires due to a local migrant population, which commonly has generational support. This disrupts that. It hurts more than migrants. It hurts communities.

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

#820
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so absolutely fundamental to US strategic advantage. A huge reason we have so many unicorns is because doing business and scaling in the US is easier than EU or other places. A huge part of why the Manhattan Project was successful was also because of substantial brain drain from Europe. I think Scott Galloway wrote about this or may have popularized it.

If you're only talking about the exceptional sure. But when Microsoft fires x and applies for ~x H1Bs the same day... That doesn't seem like what you're talking about at all. If an employee is exceptional and a skilled unicorn wrangler... 100K is nothing.

Not sure if it applies to H-1B but if a company does mass layoffs, it automatically makes it so that the PERM applications (required for green card, which you need to keep the employee past the visa validity period + extensions; up to 7 years iirc) will be automatically rejected for some time. So it screws over your existing H-1B holders, making your company way less attractive.

Source: I came to the US on H-1B in 2012. I may be misremembering which stage of the process the mass layoffs affect.

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