Government Proposes New Six-Figure Fee for H1B Visas

52 pointsposted 6 hours ago
by ilarum
(wsj.com)

36 Comments

mexicojalisco

34 minutes ago

Good. What’s happening now in the corporate world (and other places) is very distasteful. Americans shouldn’t have to compete against the whole world to get a job in the USA

iAMkenough

31 minutes ago

Why not? Let the Free Market decide.

If Americans can’t compete on merit, that’s their own fault. We don’t need reverse DEI.

I thought the argument and attacks on DEI policies were about not hiring solely based on merit.

Now you’re asking for a safe space where unqualified Americans get jobs over more qualified candidates.

mexicojalisco

15 minutes ago

Because the country through policy should not act directly against the interests of its citizens. Blue collar is gone and white collar is halfway there. Why even have borders? The government is by the people FOR the people. Not AGAINST the people FOR corporate profits. The h1b is being abused against it’s original intent.

bubblethink

3 minutes ago

That's for Congress to decide, not armchair commentators on HN, nor the executive branch.

karanbhangui

9 minutes ago

Good immigration policy should serve the existing citizens of a nation.

like_any_other

19 minutes ago

Having a country is now "reverse DEI". Good to know.

bubblethink

2 hours ago

This is a nice trick. Since SCOTUS barred universal injunctions, the government can implement whatever batshit ideology they want until the case makes its way through the judicial system. Often that is a year or two. And even if it is eventually vacated, like the tariffs or the previous iteration of this fee, the damage is already done, as you cannot go back in time.

wtfHN26

6 hours ago

Most likely these companies will set up GCCs offshore. Moving the jobs abroad.

Whatever tax and living + lifestyle expenses that USA economy was making from H1B's will be gone.

Good for the rest of the world.

rayiner

5 hours ago

Nothing stops those companies from moving offshore anyway. If being in the U.S. didn’t offer advantages they wouldn’t be here to begin with. At some point americans are going to have to start having faith that their own country and people are a competitive edge against other countries.

Daishiman

3 hours ago

> If being in the U.S. didn’t offer advantages they wouldn’t be here to begin with.

For companies hiring H1Bs it's about being closer to clients and colleagues and just being managerially far easier than opening an offshore office, but the benefit isn't infinite and once companies have the chops for opening new offices they'll turn down the H1B hiring.

The issue for the US is that, are you're saying, "having faith in your own country" only works if you have the process for developing unnaturally skillfull talent, which is just not going to happen once the smart people stop moving to the US as countries have uniformly distributed talent potential.

hollerith

an hour ago

You seem to have interpreted "have faith in your own country" as "have faith in the people who grew up here" whereas I interpreted it is as more like "have faith that the parts of the country's institutions and culture responsible for its excellent economic performance will continue to prove difficult for other countries to replicate".

add-sub-mul-div

3 hours ago

There's certainly fewer barriers to offshoring now that employees have insisted there's no benefit to being onsite.

lingua_franca

4 hours ago

The government can penalize companies for doing so.

potatoking

4 hours ago

Not really.. Corporations have enough holdings abroad to survive and kill a party or two.

lingua_franca

4 hours ago

Any examples?

user

3 hours ago

[deleted]

Daishiman

3 hours ago

Anything that can't be done by the company will be outsourced to a consultancy. This already happens; a lot of work in Google products is done by external agencies.

lingua_franca

2 hours ago

Did Google give work to external agencies because American employees couldn't do it, or because external agencies were cheaper? What happens when they are no longer cheaper w/ the government penalty?

Daishiman

2 hours ago

A lot of companies reasonably prefer to outsource software work that they don't deem part of their value-add or core competency for the same reason any other company outsources that kind of work. It may or may not be a cost reason (it usually isn't because contractors are not cheap even outsourced ones), it's mostly because you don't want to increase payroll for these tasks or the tasks are of temporary nature.

This is not avoidable, and trying to make it illegal would just kill of American software companies.

As an example: a friend of mine worked for a large consultancy that worked on menu screens for gaming companies. The reason for this is that game companies aren't interested in developing specialized UIs for each game but there are outsourcing agencies that already have entire pipelines set up for this and are basically a sausage factory of game menus for most major game engines.

user

5 hours ago

[deleted]

cyanydeez

5 hours ago

oh that's an optimistic view; more likely they slip some more bills into omni-trumps hands and this is silently dropped.

Assume grift first when any American regulation is proposed.

hn_submit

4 hours ago

Wasn't this struck down because by law the Federal Government can only charge the cost of producing a visa? The amount cannot be arbitrary in any way.

Or has the Trump Administration found a workaround for this?

iAMkenough

2 hours ago

The workaround is not caring and doing it anyways, letting the taxpayers pay for endless appeals

FatherOfCurses

4 hours ago

In other words, companies who rely on H1B visas are not donating enough to Trump 2028 or the Republican party.

throwa356262

4 hours ago

All Canada needs to do to become the center of innovation now is to... become 10°C warmer.

_aavaa_

4 hours ago

Warmer would help, but the latitude difference still gets you on sun height and hours of daylight in the winter months.

throwa356262

3 hours ago

I dont know, warm weather but not too much direct sunlight could actually be a good thing.

whoamii

3 hours ago

This is why their forests are currently burning

jerlam

3 hours ago

They're getting a nice assist from global warming.

bellowsgulch

3 hours ago

I vote for Democrats. Sad they didn't step up for American tech workers though, and the guy shitting himself did.

the_optimist

2 hours ago

why?

bellowsgulch

2 hours ago

Track record of the Democratic party vs the Republican party

throwawayffffas

an hour ago

No, why are you saying they didn't step up. They lost the presidency, the house and the senate and the supreme court has had a conservative majority since before Bidens term. So what didn't they do, that they could have done?

stackskipton

an hour ago

Most American tech workers, myself included, have been asking for program to be reformed so it’s actually given to highly skilled workers and not used as method of outsourcing in the US.

It’s not a new problem but Democrats and non Trump Republicans have done nothing and here comes Trump trying to something. It won’t survive court challenges most likely.