> semi-skilled workers

fwiw the h1-b workers I encountered in bigtech were totally on-par with their US citizen equivalents in both coding and english communication. many teams were about 50/50 in my office (SF, non-HQ).

my current talent/placement company works mostly with AI startups who are usually too early to support visa requirements [0]. being able to support the lead-time and planning for international applicants is a huge advantage later stage companies have in terms of being able to scoop up talent at reasonable prices. big loss for the local ecosystems if these jobs move across the border imo.

[0]: https://www.hedgy.works

Ironically, if it's true that the jobs are being off-shored, rather than on-shored and filled by locals, this would be beneficial for the countries who currently find themselves in a brain-drain spiral (be it India, Ukraine, etc.). It would result in a more tech and economically balanced world rather than having two lobes (USA and China). People would say that it's a detriment to the US's future --but those are often the most critical of US hegemony.

Patently false narrative, equivalent to saying all americans are fat - both are extremely cheap uneducated arguments.

Every single H1B I worked with was brilliant in their field - and paid extremely well often in excess of $400K. I know several that are earning well past $500K. If you claim these are generic Jira pushers, well you are showing ignorance.

The $100K fees isn’t material to them but the whole vitriolic nonsense poured around what they do and just rolling their work in mud - well that’s where they just move and take their 50 ppl organization with them.

This is pure nonsense.

If pay and money is the only thing you care about then yeah. But for the rest of us, none of the places are "the worst place to work in tech" as long as you're in the northern hemisphere. Take a look at what the pay is in Chile if it's so scary to you.

It's still bad. I got a 40%+ pay cut after being transferred from the Bay Area to Vancouver. It seems local companies pay even less than US big techs. And just search and see how Vancouver is regarded as one of the least affordable cities.

Though I don't worry too much about the pay -- it's still a decent amount. It just sometimes makes me feel unfair when I'm doing the exact same job as my US colleagues.

I've been working in Canada for US companies for decades, and pay-wise, it's gotten a lot better, though there's still a big difference. Never been tempted to move though.

Canada was bad for tech specifically because of H1B.

Now that H1B pathway is being blocked, Canada can build an alternative tech center and ecosystem. They can do it, Canada has very strong CS programs and is a birthplace of AI and deep learning

> US tech refugees

Could we hold off on using the term "refugee" here? My partner works with actual refugees. We're talking about a 12 year old Ukrainian girl who last saw her father comatose in a hospital bed with both legs torn off, and who witnessed her entire neighborhood turned into rubble. I doubt you and your wife moving from a safe country to another safe country makes you a refugee of any kind. Call it what it is: you are economic migrants.

> indefinitely held for security checks

Canada has been known to be extremely lenient when it comes to background checks, which, honestly, is something that should be addressed if we want to maintain the free movement of people between the two countries.

> After all, for the same job, the pay in Canada is way worse.

OTOH, you have free universal healthcare - and, the best part is that everyone in Canada gets it. You also have gun-free schools, abortions are considered healthcare, and, on top of all that, a sane government and a population that's considered pathologically nice to each other.

Honestly, I'd take the pay cut (in fact, I did - but I live in Ireland instead).

My uncle is a skilled immigrant to Canada (electrical engineer) and was never able to find an engineering job. They live in an immigrant-heavy subsidized housing neighborhood full of people in the same situation.

The US says they don't want them, the point of the article is the new visa requirements (surprise) aren't converting into hiring US citizens but instead pushing the roles offshore.

the candidate for Canadian PR has to secure a job offer beforehand, so the Canada's plan is that US tech workers move their US jobs to Canada, and big tech employers expand their existing tech offices in Canada, rather than being forced to shell out $100k to Donny.

Why should US employers be forced to pay $100k to Donny or compromise for substandard smaller labor pool in the US and bear increased costs?

Economics is generally not a zero sum game. At least according to what they taught me in Econ 101, on a macroeconomic scale skilled workers tend to increase job availability. They spend a larger portion of their income on services, which has a positive multiplier effect.

They always had that issue - going back 20 years. Nothing new at the moment.

one man's issue is another's man opportunity to overwork and underpay :)

lower wages and higher rents are 99.99% of the reason for the West's immigration policies.

> I mean Canada has jumped so many times in last 8-10 years with these express residencies, hiring H1B laid off workers, grabbing people who are stuck with travel restrictions to US I'd have thought they be half way to the moon.

What if I told you the people Canada really want have no issues getting a US work visa/Green Card?

Check out O-1 visas and EB-1/2.

This just isn't true. Yes, ratio of salary to cost of living is better in the US, setting aside the precarious immigration process, political instability, high rates of gun crime, lack of healthcare, etc. I left this reply to someone else claiming the same thing:

You can easily look up the cost of living for e.g. Vancouver:

> Cost of Living Including Rent in San Francisco, CA is 57.8% higher than in Vancouver

> Rent Prices in San Francisco, CA are 91.7% higher than in Vancouver

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

its a matter of building a sustaining tech ecosystem: colleges, employers, investors ecosystem.

Once they figure out the ecosystem Canada can arbitrage away the broken US immigration policies and anti-immigrant bigotry.

Just as manufacturing jobs in heartland have left US for Asia, so do tech jobs can leave US for Canada, India and elsewhere

I think that both you and the grandparent comment are correct at the same time. It feels like there is a strong dichotomy between how H1B visa is treated across different realms of tech.

I have been working in big tech for a decade, and have a few friends working in the more technical financial firms (think more TwoSigma/HRT/Citadel, not JPM/GS), and my experience matches yours. Every H1B I knew at the companies I worked at was absolutely not hired as a cost-cutting measure. It was just simply difficult to find people who could qualify. And god knows we tried, I remember my team interviewing roughly 50 people just to fill a position of just a baseline decent dev (not a rockstar math olympics winner with multiple groundbreaking publications; though that would've been nice). And absolutely none of them were underpaid either, they were on the exact same comp range for the level, with plenty of them topping out the range. In fact, they actually ended up costing more to the employer than a local would, due to having to deal with immigration lawyers/filing fees/etc. (all while being paid the same as everyone else).

Meanwhile, I have a lot of acquaintances from undergrad working as devs at tech consultancy firms and more "general/traditional finance" companies. The stories I hear from them about H1B at their workplaces are pretty much exactly what the grandparent comment describes, and even worse.

I can't speak to your particular situation, but in my experience this has been two factors; one is location -- it is sometimes hard in some locations to find senior talent whereas H1Bs are (naturally) more amenable to moving. The other is pricing, which is echoing the GP's point. Senior talent is expensive and you can get it at (apparently) considerably lower cost by looking for H1B applicants.

Looks like there is need for 2 separate visa categories: - One to bring top 0.1% talent from across the globe to the US - Another to bring in temporary talent as needed

Current version of H1B had become a big basket to hold both, and abused too for just finding cheaper labor. It may be time to segment these out.

Also, given that US has ~400 million local citizens, there should be less need for either.

I think I would reframe the OP less about cost cutting and more that the company has an unrealistic cap on salary. Would be interesting to see where geographically your experience was. Having worked in the Midwest the problem I have found is that the population wanting to live in the Midwest is small and then when you are trying to recruit top talent it is even harder. You would need to pay more but then most companies do this analysis where they say the median level 1 junior tech salary is x for this region. Which on face value is maybe ok but then you look at the job market and there is low to no real tech jobs. To hire smart people you are asking them to move to a place that has less to do and no interchangeable market for their talent.

While I’m more open to this kind of H1B use, you all should be investing in training local talent as well. Ideally using those H1Bs to train local talent.

We put people on the moon. I find it hard to believe the people here lack the raw ability. I find it much more likely businesses don’t want to give back to the country that they’re residing in.

Both can be true.

Finding the top 1% gets better results if you have a wider net.

Finding the cheapest 20% does too...

This has definitely not been my experience.

+1 to this at big tech.

H1B were no less skilled (and no less paid) than their US-based counterparts.

Comparing getting an American to uproot themselves from their entire community to move to the Bay Area for a job vs. someone on the other side of the world who is looking to get into America just aren't the same. Ultimately, H1Bs are used to lower the working standards of Americans and enrich tiny pockets of existing regional capital holders.

Regional wealth inequality in America has not gotten better as Silicon Valley has gotten richer and brought in more foreign labor. At some point, the people making money hand over fist need to show how they're improving the situation for Americans instead of just saying "trust us, bro."

The AI discussion hasn't helped Silicon Valley seem more in touch with "flyover" states either. It's pretty clear there's a lot of disdain and hostility from Silicon Valley towards the "average" American.

H1B also includes things like high school foreign language teachers.

https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=french+language+immer...

A stack rank by salary would mean "H1B is big tech employees" rather than "these are professionals who have skills."

That would make sense if the purpose of the program was to get the most valuable top talent. How do we decide who is the most valuable? We let the market decide. But that would cause upward wage pressure, which would undermine the real purpose of the program.

the problem is H1B is not only tech, there are nurses, some medical professionals, non-tech specialized workers.

Stack rank would just give all the visas to big tech and starve US hospitals and every other industry

> It should be a stack rank by salary to deal with the over subscription

Considering salary based on country of origin, adjusted for position, would probably be the best way to ensure little abuse (apart from the indentured servitude-like features). If you want to hire the best, they'll be overpaid in their origin markets.

Ranking by salary would basically mean ranking by industry, not just skill

Oh that's a really good way to handle it that would actually follow the intent of the program.

You can't find someone to do a job? Then you need to compete on wage with other companies to bring someone in. Or, you know, raise your salary for local employees.

I have a couple problems with that idea that I've never been able to figure out even though the idea is good.

First, how do we ensure it doesn't become a slave program: that is you get hired for X, and they are paying you that, but you want to find a new job because you don't like your boss. Or perhaps they hire you for X, and you are doing Y (again, nothing illegal)

Second, you hire someone to do a job, and they realize you have to pay them and so they decide to do nothing (or get a second job that they are working instead).

I can find answers to all of the above, but they all fail to: somebody is aware of your solution - how are they going to abuse it. I haven't solved this secondary abuse issue.

It definitely varies a ton.

I've observed more that H1B's keep employee mobility lower, so employees on H1Bs tended to be paid less due to the natural bumps that come out of switching jobs every few years, especially going from an associate to senior/staff level where often the company throws a small raise with promotions that don't keep up with market rates.

One other factor that I experienced is when I was in senior leadership we absolutely tracked 'flight risk' that factored in to retention programs for top talent, and H1Bs were by the nature of it viewed as lower flight risks so less likely to fall into these programs.

Yeah, I'm generally pretty pro-immigration and I'm very anti-H1B.

It's very abusive to the workers hired as H1-B and it's designed for wage suppression. You can stay an H1-B for years. If you lose your job, you'll face deportation. It gives your employer a VERY large amount of leverage over your life.

It's supposed to be about bringing expertise when local expertise isn't available, but in practice it's companies saying "Oh, we can't find someone who will work for $50k as a software dev so we need to hire H1-Bs."

Either the program needs to end or the minimum salary needs to be raised to something like $300k to compensate for the leverage the employer has.

How do you determine the "correct" location of a job?

My employer sells software internationally - are you claiming any international job should be subject to some sort of fine simply because the company is HQed in the US?

I suppose we could try slicing revenue or profit by sales region and comparing against headcount expense per region? But with salaries abroad being a fraction of in the US, that math might still work out in favor of keeping international employees.

EDIT - I dislike the H1B system overall. Just not sure "fine companies that operate overseas" is something we should consider as a replacement.

Given that a lot of the 'offshoring' comes here to Europe (due to our much lower salaries) if the US starts encouraging their firms to cut jobs here via tariffs then the EU should absolutely respond - if this is how the US treats it's allies then perhaps closer relations with China are warranted?

I don’t think people consider the negative ramifications for this on the other side. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft have a ton of H1B. Take India, as an example, since that is where a majority of H1Bs come from. It has been pretty lenient in allowing American tech into the country. Everyone uses Google, YouTube, Windows, WhatsApp and Amazon. All of those are profits that go to America.

If H1Bs are dropped or Indian workers are tariffed I believe you will start seeing a reciprocal tariffs, fines or calls for domestication.

H1B started off with the right idea, but has essentially become gamed to hell. It has created a new white collar slave class that companies exploit.

Rest of us really ought to put tariffs on US software.

Not to bring in jobs or money (tariffs don't do that); just to push us away from your companies.

Call your congressional rep.

The HIRE Act: 25% tax on outsourcing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45161419 - September 2025

Ohio senator introduces 25% tax on companies that outsource jobs overseas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45146528 - September 2025

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/297...

Google doesn’t underpay H-1B holders. In my experience any difference in actual pay is more likely caused by the H-1B people having worse salary negotiation skills than native born people.

If you look at it in a vacuum sure. When the same administration is actually floating the idea of making the program more coercive by making it so you can be deported immediately after losing your job I think it’s pretty reasonable to recognize the coercive nature of the program isn’t their concern.

> What I do care about is the fact that H1-B locks immigrants to a company

They're free to change companies if the new company sponsors them. It may reset the timeline for applying for a green card, depending on the location and job type of the new job. Generally, if it's the same type of job in the same city, it doesn't reset.

People (including Indians) do it all the time.

Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?

I remember when twitter was sold and Elon "Nazi" Musk fired like 4/5 of the staff, all that remained were H1B's

Except that’s clearly not the case here.

Unlike offshoring, immigration increases supply and demand at the same time.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

Elon Musk was H1B after his study at UPenn, since then he created a lot of companies, jobs, and wealth for investors and himself.

Do you think Elon Musk (and every other foreigner who founded US company) diluted supply of labor, or expanded supply of jobs ???

Was he “let’s put some limits on the number of H1Bs” anti immigration or was he “let’s deport 100 million people and shoot some innocent citizens in the face while doing it” anti immigration?

This is the fallacy of inventing a hypocrite by combining individual opinions from multiple people.

Not one single tech person I know in person has ever been "pro immigration" or "anti immigration". They all want reasonable immigration, and part of that has always meant not harming the livelihoods of existing citizens. That's the subjective part.

Edit: This is also a good example of the problem where we assume a person's opinion when they are not loud/explicit about a topic. E.g. a tech person might not have loud opinions on H1Bs, or they might loudly denounce e.g. Trump's immigrant detention centers, and you might falsely then slot that person into a blunt binary like "pro immigration". Then, when their lives are negatively affected by H1B policy, they speak against it, and you then think of them as a hypocrite even though they did nothing hypocritical.

I'm not a yank but it seems to me the actual argument here is that H1Bs suppress the wages of locals, either directly by hiring foreigners which are less price-sensitive in terms of wages compared to locals or indirectly by moving jobs overseas, thus eliminating the jobs altogether.

You can be pro-immigrant while also being pro-not-fucking-people-over, for example by forcing companies to have a baseline "minimum wage" for H1Bs that match what a local would be paid (or higher!) for the role. It doesn't have to be a "let in a gazillion people or 0", you can choose a middle value.

I mean that's what it's always been about, be virtuous about everything unless it actually affects you and your gated neighborhood

Or you know, you could take issue with specific concerns of specific implementations. Driven mostly by corporate greed and cynicism, over a great many decades. Also in an industry that you’re in and know something about.

You’re still allowed to have opinions, even if the situation does directly affect you. In fact, that sounds like exactly the situation you ought to weigh in on. Immigration or otherwise.

I don't think you'll find this community welcoming the idea of lower pay (and hence a more volatile employment).

Overall if in the next 12 months I fully expect compensation on average to be down 30-50%. It's impossible for it not to, given the sudden exodus of talent from US to open up remote consultancies that can offer same skill at 1/4th the price.

I don't think this is surprising given that the US has also lost so much manufacturing due to cost cutting. A service economy is going to need a lot of software engineering. A nice big factory takes a lot of mechanical and electrical engineers.

Are there not 10x the need of software engineers compared to other engineers, particularly in the US?

Hard disagree about being overpaid. These are some of the most profitable companies in the world, what else should they do if not pay their workers well?

But that would increase taxation over corporations. That won't work for as long as corporations can make the vast majority of campaign donations.

Every citizen should have the right to one vote. Large scale campaign financing distorts that.

I think it lessens the damage -- offshore workers do not consume finite resources in their host countries (e.g. housing, medical care) leaving those to the native citizens. Eventually AI will replace the "need" for these visa holders -- cancelling a contract with an offshore firm is more tenable than remigrating thousands of families.

What do you mean it is a distraction? I don’t think the fact that people at the highest level of power go on TV and give racist lectures about how Haiti had problems because Haitians themselves are defective should be ignored when we look at the policy the same people are making and tell us it’s motivated by something else.

You may well be right but that’s where the urgency for massive action comes from.

Well, I’m not making a claim about people showing up to argue on Hacker News so much as the people making the policy. But anyway I anticipate the result of this policy will be economic harm to everyone including people anticipating it will help them.

There’s not much you can do about jobs just moving abroad unless you start some kind of tariffs or import bans on software, which is a self-defeating choice for a massive net exporter of tech services and software.

I came in on an H1B as an IC3 at Meta. Now, with the skills I gained during my career, I maintain core infrastructure that has a massive benefit to the industry and is critical to tech companies of all sizes (I learned last week that a major auto manufacturer uses my infrastructure as well). Immigration's benefit to society is tail-distributed, which is why it's important to have broad-based immigration (you can't predict who will be at the tails).

So then why do they hand out visas that require “extraordinary ability”?

ok great but this hollows out American Industry which is a primary concern right now.

Everywhere else but the USA (and possibly Luxembourg), $90k will buy you a fantastic quality of life.

If you really want to make $90k seem as bad to the rest of us as it feels to you, you need to get the exchange rates changed, have USD devalued compared to other currencies until they're at purchasing power parity.

Of course, doing this would mean forcing yourselves to accept that China's got the biggest economy and the USA is only a little ahead of the EU, instead of thinking China and the EU are about the same as each other and significantly behind the USA.

> who think a $90k salary is something extravagant

I guess Europe is then part of these "developing countries"