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.
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
I forgot where I heard this, but the thought is that if a country takes the world's best and brightest, it means those other countries that they are coming from lose their best and brightest, making it harder for those other countries to succeed.
Well arguably H-1B is being abused specifically to lower wages. I think we're aware especially given the contrived ways of circumventing how H-1B is supposed to be used like deliberately advertising jobs in an obscure print newspaper that doesn't even get circulated or modifying the job description to suit an international candidate alone.
This is one of the problems with this issue. People talking about it are pretty clueless and have no idea what they're talking about. They get whipped up into an ignorant frenzy about something they don't understand. H-1B has no requirement for advertising in newspapers.
>But for me, a larger concern is elite overproduction.
Props for finding incredibly niche and out-there theories to support your worldview. This is kind of nice about HN. Normally, people would just cite the great replacement theory or other leftist slop to support protectionism, but you found something even more bizarre. It reminds me of how Vance talks. He'll bring up latin incantations like ordo amoris to justify otherwise mundane cruelties.
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.
A city's leadership shouldn't try to look after the city's interest? The answer to that is so obvious, you should look to explaining why it doesn't apply to the elected leadership of a nation.
Why should America’s best and brightest minds have to sacrifice the quality of talent on their teams? Choosing a less qualified candidate because of where the most qualified candidate was born.
How is encouraging brain drain looking out for best interests?
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
> 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
So how did America become a world power before H1B? The U.S. was the world’s largest industrial power by the early 20th century with almost zero skilled immigration. We had restrictionist immigration policies from 1921-1965 and skilled immigration after that was a trickle until the 1990s. Apart from one-off events like German scientists after World War II, immigration was heavily skewed towards poor but hard workers.
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".
Having seen American institutions up close I’m sorry to say that if you subtract the people who have bought into the American dream you’ll find that it’s educational institutions are unremarkable.
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?
Don't give away our job to Indians? I mean what do you want here, it's not a post-grad course. If H1Bs are for "highly specialized knowledge," why the fuck are we taking in Indians at below par cost for American "highly specialized knowledge?"
Why is there not a highly significant fee or compensation threshold to prevent abuse?
But why not? Your [right to a] job isn't something enshrined in the constitution. Congress deemed it appropriate for your job to be given to someone else, for they provide better value than you do. The answer to all your "why" questions is - "Because Congress deemed it so".
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.
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.
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?
There's an attempt under "Cost Basis" to justify the cost.
===
The proposed ~$8.78B/year in H-1B fee revenue would be allocated roughly as follows:
USCIS: $3.00B (34.2%)
EOIR / immigration courts: $2.96B (33.7%)
DOL: $1.21B (13.8%)
ICE: $1.05B (11.9%)
State Department: $484M (5.5%)
CBP: $76.2M (0.9%)
Total: ~$8.78B/year
> Notably, only $79.2M of the $8.78B is specifically allocated to DOL's H-1B program.
The workaround is not caring and doing it anyways, letting the taxpayers pay for endless appeals
All Canada needs to do to become the center of innovation now is to... become 10°C warmer.
Warmer would help, but the latitude difference still gets you on sun height and hours of daylight in the winter months.
Ireland nd UK are doing fine and we're farther north than most Canadian cities.
I dont know, warm weather but not too much direct sunlight could actually be a good thing.
This is why their forests are currently burning
They're getting a nice assist from global warming.
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In other words, companies who rely on H1B visas are not donating enough to Trump 2028 or the Republican party.
Elon has been trying, he is not putting in money for the midterms for his health. Tim brought him a statue of gold....
This is not due to bribery. Everyone using H1B have already done the bribing.
The Republican base is demanding this. They want jobs for themselves and their kids.
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
I forgot where I heard this, but the thought is that if a country takes the world's best and brightest, it means those other countries that they are coming from lose their best and brightest, making it harder for those other countries to succeed.
Well arguably H-1B is being abused specifically to lower wages. I think we're aware especially given the contrived ways of circumventing how H-1B is supposed to be used like deliberately advertising jobs in an obscure print newspaper that doesn't even get circulated or modifying the job description to suit an international candidate alone.
But for me, a larger concern is elite overproduction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Turchin#Elite_overproduc...). We've basically massively expanded the number of highly credentialed people in the country and this might not be a good idea.
This is one of the problems with this issue. People talking about it are pretty clueless and have no idea what they're talking about. They get whipped up into an ignorant frenzy about something they don't understand. H-1B has no requirement for advertising in newspapers.
>But for me, a larger concern is elite overproduction.
Props for finding incredibly niche and out-there theories to support your worldview. This is kind of nice about HN. Normally, people would just cite the great replacement theory or other leftist slop to support protectionism, but you found something even more bizarre. It reminds me of how Vance talks. He'll bring up latin incantations like ordo amoris to justify otherwise mundane cruelties.
> Americans shouldn’t have to compete against the whole world to get a job in the USA
Milton Friedman would have a couple of things to say about that
He would, except for he has been dead for 20 years.
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.
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.
That's for Congress to decide, not armchair commentators on HN, nor the executive branch.
I don't think he is advocating for this but rather juxtaposing it with common right wing talking points.
Good immigration policy should serve the existing citizens of a nation.
A city's leadership shouldn't try to look after the city's interest? The answer to that is so obvious, you should look to explaining why it doesn't apply to the elected leadership of a nation.
Why should America’s best and brightest minds have to sacrifice the quality of talent on their teams? Choosing a less qualified candidate because of where the most qualified candidate was born.
How is encouraging brain drain looking out for best interests?
Having a country is now "reverse DEI". Good to know.
Go blow it out your ass
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.
The government can penalize companies for doing so.
Not really.. Corporations have enough holdings abroad to survive and kill a party or two.
Any examples?
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.
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?
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.
Of course you can outsource without offshoring.
Not if you actually want to get the best talent in the world.
The "best talent in the world" should have no problem with that six figure sum, then.
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
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> 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.
> 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
So how did America become a world power before H1B? The U.S. was the world’s largest industrial power by the early 20th century with almost zero skilled immigration. We had restrictionist immigration policies from 1921-1965 and skilled immigration after that was a trickle until the 1990s. Apart from one-off events like German scientists after World War II, immigration was heavily skewed towards poor but hard workers.
Because unskilled work and a gigantic natural resource base was the basis for wealth of the 19th century but that doesn’t hold up anymore?
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".
Those two things are strongly overlapping. People are socialized into the institutions and culture that other countries find difficult to replicate.
Having seen American institutions up close I’m sorry to say that if you subtract the people who have bought into the American dream you’ll find that it’s educational institutions are unremarkable.
There's certainly fewer barriers to offshoring now that employees have insisted there's no benefit to being onsite.
I vote for Democrats. Sad they didn't step up for American tech workers though, and the guy shitting himself did.
why?
Track record of the Democratic party vs the Republican party
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?
Don't give away our job to Indians? I mean what do you want here, it's not a post-grad course. If H1Bs are for "highly specialized knowledge," why the fuck are we taking in Indians at below par cost for American "highly specialized knowledge?"
Why is there not a highly significant fee or compensation threshold to prevent abuse?
But why not? Your [right to a] job isn't something enshrined in the constitution. Congress deemed it appropriate for your job to be given to someone else, for they provide better value than you do. The answer to all your "why" questions is - "Because Congress deemed it so".
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.
When you can’t beat illegal migration, just make legal migration more difficult, works like a charm every time.