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/graphics/2025-h1b-visa-middlemen-c...
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.
How many people on here can truly say that they were considering between two different countries. That doesn’t happen at scale.
There is a global competition for coming to Western Europe, Canada, and the US
During last century, USA has been the most benefited from that kind of immigration.
Personally I think that this is a very short sighted decision by USA administration. But overall, I think that this will benefit the rest of the world. Maybe in a few years even USA will start exporting their best minds abroad!
/me
I started in Slovenia, considered London, actually got an offer in Canada, but ultimately chose San Francisco. Figured that if I’m going to the trouble of moving abroad, I might as well go to the center of the industry.
Got lots of friends who chose various EU companies based on desired lifestyle/work/partner balance. You have lots of options as a good engineer. Especially before the last 3 years of market shenanigans.
As someone who lived in all three geographies and interacted with immigrants who lived in there, here is my raw take:-
Western Europe:- Love it and people are so nice but they are also (I am sorry to say) racist. Proof:- How many immigrant CEO's do you see from companies based in Western Europe? The top 4 largest tech companies in the US have two indian CEO's for more than 10 years now.
Canada:- Super nice and immigrant friendly more than the US, but the size of the country (approx 10% of the US) doesn't have the financial/economic/social infrastructure that is needed to support a large number of immigrants. Also tech salaries are miserable compared to the US
US:- For all its faults, US is truly the only country where immigrants looking for a better future can immigrate and assimilate into. For how long this lasts remains to be seen but I don't think that is going to change anytime soon.
Hi!
I know I'm just a datum, but I gotta represent myself.
The slate of policy choices in the US is removing it from that list of countries, and will strengthen those countries' labor forces.
Right now SV salaries command a huge premium, because all of SV is predicated on increasing productivity, increasing the economic pie, and rewarding those who do so with a fraction of that gain in GDP.
Treating SV labor like plumbing or construction labor fundamentally misunderstands the dynamics and the creation of wealth.
Mmmh...How about four countries?US,UK,Canada &South Africa.
As a student,though
By US you mean corporate America? What if they maintain that massive lead on the backs of the US citizens?
The exploitation of the US worker needs to end, if the company does not have 100K to bring in global talent then that company cannot "massively lead" in any domain and the "talent" is neither global nor talented.
"the exploitation of American worker" ? American workers have one of the richest standards of living in the world.
20K H1Bs with $30K fee
20K H1Bs with $60K fee
20K H1Bs with $100K fee
unlimited H1Bs with $200K
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B-dependent_employer
... and is done for these employers already (though not to the level that is being proposed)
Public Law 114-113 (December 2015 to September 2025) : additional fee of $4000
Public Law 114–113, part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, imposed a fee of $4,000 on H-1B petitions and $4,500 on L-1A and L-1B petitions. The additional H-1B fees would apply to all petitions postmarked on or after December 18, 2015, and until September 30, 2025.Of course the visa is a privilege and there are tons of abuses associated with it. There are methodical ways of going about it and actually fixing the problem. Slapping a $100k fee with unclear language and no heads-up uproots while uprooting lives of so many people have lived in the country for years if not decades, maintained legal status, and paid taxes including Social Security and Medicare is "a smart move" according to the top comment.
But we all know what the real problem is. If majority of the H-1B visa holders had the right skin color, they would be welcome with open arms regardless of any abuse of the system. Just like how South African refugees are welcome while other those from the "wrong" kind of country are not.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." ― Lyndon B. Johnson
“The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family. The opinion advanced in the Notes on Virginia is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived, or if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism? There may as to particular individuals, and at particular times, be occasional exceptions to these remarks, yet such is the general rule.” — Alexander Hamilton
You admitted that there were tons of abuse. This gets back to the law’s original intent. This is the best fix that corporations “pay up” for.
It’s just politics. You have CS grads facing employment headwinds against AI, H1B, and high interest rates. They aren’t going to vote for the incumbents if they’re unemployed. Now they’re going to have a $100k discount to hire them instead of from a WITCH company. FAANG will still hire H-1Bs.
The opportunity created in the US is due to the concentration of talent, high productivity, and extensive networks of people creating innovation that inflated the pie even larger.
Go ahead and move to any of those countries from the US, it's prettt easy, because everybody wants to be like the US! The only possibly better passport was a Canadian one!
Something deeply sick has infected the US when we no longer recognize the source of the wealth of our nation. Nobody could touch us. At least until we started to intentionally make ourselves poorer.
The EO expires in 12 months, so, yes, it's short-term.
Maybe in a year the administration will rethink things. Maybe sooner.
There are big issues with the h1b, particularly how strongly tied to the employer the employee is and how few of these we give away. But this basically closes the door for hiring foreign talent to anyone but BigCo.
It is a sad shotgun shell on the right foot on a long streak of the US feet shooting it's way out of relevance.
> the US wins wins when people move to the US, especially young, skilled people.
I personally lean towards this being true, but it is a claim that needs to be demonstrated comprehensively for your argument to hold water. It is not trivially true.
What someone's labor is worth is up to the market to decide. Also those $100k are taxed out of the employer and employee's value.
On the benefits of people moving to the US: it's been widely studied and it's basic economics, immigrants bring both supply and demand, so the size of the economy grows and so the opportunities to current residents.
Take the extreme: when people leave a country or city the economy there collapses, see Detroit or the increasingly old and depopulating European countries.
Or take the extreme on who comes: fiscal studies show that even low skilled immigrants are net positive fiscally. Only very old and unskilled immigrants are a fiscal burden.
Finally, thinking that we can capture the world's economy in a bottle and live lavishly without competition is delusional. If we stop letting people build here, they will build elsewhere and without us. We are increasingly less relevant.
Imagine spending 25 years raising, educating, feeding, and clothing a person, investing over a million dollars of money and labour in them, and then they just pack their bags and leave.
Educated, skilled, young immigrants are a colossal gift to the host country, and a crippling debit on the welfare and prosperity of the country they have left.
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Anyone who has ever given it more than thirty seconds of thought knows that countries become wealthy when people living in them work - and make stuff. So what do you do to improve a country's prosperity?
Obviously, in backwards-logic, you start raising barriers to people who want to do useful work in it.
(Because dealing with the systemic issues that have resulted in the country becoming prosperous not being correlated with the plurality of people in it not becoming prosperous would upset wealthy people who don't actually build anything.)
I'm by no means xenophobic. Bring in all the immigrants you want. But I can't agree that H1Bs are working as designed and pull in labor that doesn't otherwise already exist in the US.
Do you personally know any H-1B visa holders? I can only assume that by your comment that you do not. The ones who play by the system have their entire livelihood and home held over their head while under an H-1B visa.
Punish the companies and staffing firms abusing the H-1B visas instead of creating a blanket, anti-immigration policy that will only bolster those abusing the H1-B visa, because those already abusing are the ones who have the funds to pay this fee. Companies who do things legitimately will not be able to easily absorb this fee.
I will lose friends and colleagues because of this imposed fee. This will kick out all the good people we actually want working in this country. This will further reduce good people wanting to come to this country.
The logic from this administration and it’s supporters is opposite of Benjamin Franklin. Rather than thinking that it is better a hundred guilty persons should escape than one innocent person should suffer. They think it is better a hundred guilty persons be punished than one innocent person’s suffering. We have seen this from the South Korea detainees debacle and here too.
There is fraud in H1B system. People do take advantage of it. People do suffer from ghost jobs. But the question at the heart of the matter is what is the basis for a flat 100k fee? Because lots of numbers from this administration seem to be pulled out from thin air. There are reasons fines are set low in comparison to a company revenue but POTUS doesn’t seem to know.
this is a change in the direction of significantly reducing hiring of foreign workers by American companies, which is bad for everyone. It's bad for American companies, because it will reduce their growth. It's bad for American workers because when our companies don't grow, neither does our economy and that hurts Americans. So it's a change, but it's a dumb change.
Changing the statute requires Congress to act.
Sure. But we are arguing about two separate things here. I am pro-immigration. But I am also against using immigrant primarily to depress wages.
the US is no longer the clear destination for the best and brightest
The US competitive advantage is built on us being a destination for the best and brightest. Between this and the crackdown foreign students at US Universities why would the anyone want to come here?
The misuse of H1Bs is a small problem compared to the value it provides.
The rich get richer.
The economy kind of sucks right now but it ain't H1B visa holders that are the problem.
Looking at it solely from a perspective of competition between labor glosses over the fact that insufficient labor is also bad because it keeps companies from growing and hiring more people.
So sure, while the fewer jobs that they can fill could have higher wages (not a given, because lack of labor can stunt or kill companies) there could be much fewer people employed overall, which is clearly bad overall.
Of course, that assumes there is enough room for companies to grow. There are strong indications (e.g. the various labor and unemployment surveys) that this is the case in the US. In fact, there is a credible theory that the reason the US managed the inflation crisis so well was due to the immigration crisis.
I elaborated more here (along with a couple of relevant empirical studies about how H1B actually impacted employment and wages of native workers): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45308311
Better instead to look at larger scale studies out there, including the ones I mentioned in the comment I linked. The results are much more nuanced, but generally they find negligible or mildly positive impact on native workers, suggesting they are largely orthogonal to foreign workers.
The point is that the dynamics are more nuanced than simple supply vs demand.
Every h1b role I see posted at my bank pays more than I make so I don't get the lower paid comments
If there are abuses, then let’s fix them. But this is too heavy handed, and may have an impact on US competitiveness for generations to come.
Is it really? Given the current salaries for AI talent ( or whatever future most desired skill sets are ), 100k seems like a decent enough spot to do the following:
- keep the program limited to what it was intended to do ( bring in the best people in, keep US competitive -- on tech, not on low wages ) - keep populace in a state, where they don't see a reason for a leadership change
Unless, of course, that is not what the program is used for ( and anecdotally, that take does not seem that far fetched ).
So my overall response is: good. Frankly, this made Trump's election worth it.
So - it's less heavy-handed than I thought. Given recent layoffs and the current state of the job market, I could maybe even be convinced that it's a good thing in the short term.
I do still have concerns about US comptetiveness in the longer term though if we incentive companies to hire in other countries vs bringing talent to the US.
The intent is obvious, but the foresight into potential outcomes is shortsighted.
Labor is expensive, more competition will rise overseas, as it will become more expensive to operate.
It also crushes the opportunities of a gigantic number of individuals who are here today who had a plan in place to exist in this ecosystem. Additionally the institutions that supported them will also be hurt. Although, they might have been aware of the writing on the wall over the past year.
The policy topic is irrelevant. This is not normal reform. Looking from the outside, the United States is clearly democratically backsliding and is imposing decree upon decree of emergency measures, without a functioning parliament, with a sand-in-wheels judiciary, along with an enormous cult of personality, without any empathy towards the victims of sudden policy changes and black-bag jobs.