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H-1B Visa Changes Approved by White House
- piombisallow 1y agoIF implemented in a sane manner, I don't see how this is worse than a lottery based system.
- jajuuka 1y agoInstead of it being fair to everyone in the pool it now gives an advantage to the wealthy to buy their way into a H1B. Seems significantly worse.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- horns4lyfe 1y agoIt’s by salary. Individuals don’t pay for it, the company sponsoring them does. Did you even read the article?
- rayiner 1y ago> The proposed weighted-selection concept echoes a 2021 DHS plan under President Donald Trump's first administration that had sought to rank and select petitions by wage tiers (OES wage levels IV down to I), an approach that the Trump administration argued would prioritize higher-paid, highly skilled hires. That earlier plan faced opposition, was withdrawn by the Biden administration and saw related regulations blocked in federal court. This seems like a no-brainer. Why did Biden withdraw the rule?
- Moomoomoo309 1y agoI think the whole "blocked in federal court" part is why.
- dec0dedab0de 1y agoProbably because someone told him to. That someone was likely using H1b visas to save money instead of because of an actual need.
- animitronix 1y agoThat's what they all do. The whole H1B program needs to be shelved.
- fredfoobar 1y agoDo you have examples of these people who are saving money using H1B?
- dec0dedab0de 1y agoabout 12 years ago I worked at a very large non-tech company that had outsourced to contractors to work on some code. They had a room in the basement for about 20 kids on H1B visas that were clearly right out of college. This was in a major city that had plenty of jr developers around, they just would expect more money. I forget the contractors company name but they came up on HN at the time for being abusive towards their employees who risked deportation if they stood up for themselves. If I find specific examples I'll add them later, but you can probably just search hn for h1b.
- fredfoobar 1y agoI'm sure it's ok to give out specifics of something that happened 12 years ago, what makes you think this sort of stuff is still happening?
- Izikiel43 1y agoWas Biden actually running things or was it a Weekend at Bernie's presidency? I don't know if we'll ever know, by the end of it he was very out of it.
- justanotherjoe 1y agoI'm not sure I get it. So you want to have higher positions filled by h1b holders? The quota will be maxxed anyway. I don't have issues with that, personally.
- bubblethink 1y agoBecause the executive doesn't have the authority to do this. Trump also ultimately didn't do it. I don't recall if he lost the suit or withdrew it voluntarily. The new court is different and submissive, so it'll likely get through this time.
- upmind 1y agoDid they release the salary levels/corresponding weightings?
- upmind 1y agoCan they not increase the amount of visas they can give out?
- zem 1y ago[flagged]
- ljsprague 1y agoAmerica's a nation; not an economic zone.
- zem 1y agoit's a nation whose current immigration policies are largely driven by racism. h1b visas tend to largely go to people from countries the current administration considers undesirable, so the chances of them increasing the allocated number are extremely low.
- ljsprague 1y agoCan you point to another nation whose immigration policies are driven by anti-racism?
- zaptheimpaler 1y agoYes it's a nation not an ethnostate. Americans are united by shared values and attitudes not skin color.
- ljsprague 1y agoWhat if shared values are correlated with shared ancestry.
- s0sa 1y agoOnly color that matters here is green
- xnx 1y agoWhy not auction H-1B visas? Isn't that typically the most efficient/optimal way to distribute a limited resource?
- HardCodedBias 1y ago100% should be the way it should be done. If there is surplus to being physically in the US, then the US should gain some of that surplus. Let the market decide. The H1B isn't charity, it is a work visa for specialty occupations.
- o11c 1y agoThe status quo is that the H-1B is a charity, given out to companies who don't want to pay what their workers are worth.
- fredfoobar 1y agoDo you have examples of these? they'd be easy targets to be sued for breaking the labor laws.
- Rebelgecko 1y agoThe WITCH companies are commonly held up as examples
- fredfoobar 1y agowho is contracting to those WITCH companies?
- Rebelgecko 1y agoNot sure, sorry!
- oldpersonintx2 1y ago
- lesuorac 1y agoDo keep in mind. H-1B is for when you cannot find an American to fill a role so somebody comes into the US on a visa to fill that slot. O-1 [1] is a for when somebody non-American has a lot of skill and is allowed to immigrate into the US to perform it. I still think H-1B visas should require some kind of additional fee proportional to training an American to fill that role. Afaik, most of the H-1B visas are just abuse where you hire somebody at a low wage than you'd need to for an otherwise legal resident so there needs to be some kind of higher opportunity cost to the company. [1]: https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/o-1-visa-individuals-with-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
- 30minAdayHN 1y agoI agree with your broader point about companies abusing H1-Bs. But I'm not sure if the abuse happens through hiring at lower wage. For example, if you look at FANG, they pay as much for an H1-B as they would pay any other employee. Where is this perspective that you can hire someone at lower wage because they come with H1-B? Would love understand the loophole.
- mgh2 1y agoAre the H1B salary reports self-reported by company, employees or are actual numbers based on W-2s, tax filing?
- tyre 1y agoFrom my experience hiring as an EM at one company (Stripe) immigration status does not factor into offers. You’re competing for this talent against every other company. If they’re good, you (and others) want to hire them. Again: data set of one, at a high-paying company who generally has a strong ethical bent. There seem to be a lot of other experiences with the system.
- mgh2 1y agoThis is what policy says, but behind doors it is completely different: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gonza-penovi_a-recruiter-playbook-just-leaked-and-it-activity-7315647808093470720-NdkF?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAPUX-kBJrldwhg3-01ijvQnOfQmap9v0dM https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gonza-penovi_a-recruiter-play...
- ipozgaj 1y agoAny change that hurts WITCH (Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, HCL) is a good change. If they just plain banned those five, there probably wouldn't even be a lottery.
- fredfoobar 1y agoI think this is true as well.
- geodel 1y agoHearing from multiple sources that there is big uptick in "offshore / global development centers" in India to support US companies who are currently using H1B in sizable numbers. With the increasing standardization of application stacks, automation, AI (seems mostly just hype), companies are thinking even if they need developers in larger numbers they can most definitely do with cheaper offshore developers. So US government, offshoring nation's government and American companies and their vendors are ironically on same page that H1B is going out. Even if they have different benefit or loss with current system.
- master_crab 1y agoYup this is definitely happening. However, I’m not sure how effective it ultimately is. India is an incredibly inconvenient time zone for US based operations. And salaries are creeping up in Bangalore (the preferred city for this stuff).
- ramshanker 1y agoDelhi-NCR welcomes those finding it difficult in Bangalore. Already home to 1 offices of few biggest names in US. [Disclaimer: My City]
- aaronbaugher 1y agoIf it were highly effective, it already would have replaced importing the workers, since it's cheaper to hire them over there. But I've seen multiple companies go big on offshoring and then scrap it after a few years and hire domestic again because it went poorly. There may be a new surge of interest in it if importing people gets harder, but I don't suppose it will go much better than it did before.
- TimPC 1y agoRanking by Salary probably makes the most sense if you're going to cap the numbers you want the most productive people who contribute the most to the tax base.
- rahulgoel 1y agoWelcome change. I studied engineering at a U.S. university, came here 10 years ago, and still did not make it through the lottery (while the ones gaming the system did).
- insane_dreamer 1y ago> [Microsoft] applied for 9,491 H-1B visas during the last fiscal year, all of which were approved. The company has laid off nearly 16,000 people in total this year, out of a 228,000-strong global employee base. It shouldn't be able to get new H-1B's if it's laying people off. Hard to believe that the new H-1B hires are more qualified than the people that were laid off. At the same time we see articles about how after being told to get a STEM degree, new CS grads can't find jobs.[0] I sympathize with those in India wanting to get a higher pay job in the US, but it does perpetuate abusive behavior by companies (who have that employee under their thumb because their visa is tied to their employment), and it makes things much harder for new grads in the US (especially given college tuition costs) to get jobs. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/coding-ai-jobs-students.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/coding-ai-jobs...
- partiallypro 1y agoObviously not all of those laid off met the new criteria for what Microsoft, et al were/are looking for, but there's no way you convince me that -probably- a majority of them do. The system is so ripe for abuse. I'm not sure I agree fully with the "if you're laying off people, you can't do X" aspect, but I do think sometimes it is cheaper for companies to lay people off, especially those with certain benefits, and hire immigrants than it is to move the original employee around the company. This very obviously happens, all the time. While I understand from a purely capitalistic view that it makes sense, but Microsoft and others are multi-trillion/billion dollar companies, and they are skimming every last dime while also hurting Americans. The system needs heavy reform, this current change isn't close to enough. To me the rightward shift, especially among college aged men, is partially because of things like this. You can preach that the "replacement theory" is all nonsense, but if you're trying to convince people that have seen their friends or themselves literally replaced at the job with non-Americans...well, it's obvious they are going to start to lean into those ideas. So much of the right-wing surge could be thwarted by simple policy reforms and it seems like no one wants to do it, or is too beholden to corporations, etc to do it. It's a bit baffling. I've always said politics is a pendulum and it should come as a shock to no one that a problem that is constantly ignored or written off will eventually swing back hard the other way. I think we're seeing that. I think that's why compromise is more important than purity a lot of the time. Unfortunately there will not be much compromise for a long while now.
- ojosilva 1y agoOff-topic, the article looks like AI slop: "Why it matters?" "What happens next?" Either AI is now running Newsweek, which is something we could even come to expect from a decaying magazine, or journalists are writing like that to compete with AI and/or sound natural to what readers come to expect lately. Really concerning.
- ojbyrne 1y agoMy experience is if there’s no typos, it’s probably AI. I don’t see any typos.
- jmyeet 1y agoI'm torn on this. I do think it's good to curb abuse by the Indian bodyshop companies like Infosys. They spam the system with applicants to the point that they get more than their fair share of visas for what turn out to be relatively low-paid jobs with fairly horrible working conditions. At the same time, that couldn't happen if we didn't have the artificial per-country limit on employment-based green cards. This will hurt new grads and non-engineering STEM applicants though. But part of all thyis should be that if you did layoffs in the last 12 months (maybe even 2 years), you don't get to apply for H1Bs. Oh and any system that uses artificial performance metrics to force people out should also count as layoffs. By this I mean that some companies will require a quota of 5-15% of the workforce to get subpar ratings and, in the current environment, that means more likely being put on a PIP and fired within months. If the goal is 5-10% of the workforce every year to be ushered out on PIPs, that's a layoff.
- aprilthird2021 1y agoA fairly sensible and nuanced take, imo. Thanks for sharing
- 486sx33 1y agoH-1B visas should not be given to software devs. They can work from anywhere with just a laptop and starlink.
- ProllyInfamous 1y agoAnd yet they are the primary recipients [0] >"There aren't any tech jobs in this city..." [0] http://www.h1bdata.info http://www.h1bdata.info
- seany 1y agoThe legislature is in the right set to eliminate h1bs.. why don't we?
- esafak 1y agoCitizens gripe about H1B, but getting visas or naturalized is getting harder ever year.
- anon291 1y agoWhich is fine... The purpose of the United States is not to be easy to become a citizen of but to better the lives of the people living here. No one is owed a visa or citizenship.
- selkin 1y agoEmma Lazarus would beg to differ.
- anon291 1y agoThat's great. As an American, she can disagree and vote accordingly. By our constitution, no one is owed citizenship. It's a irrevocable courtesy extended based upon following our laws.
- selkin 1y agoYou must’ve slept through both civics and history classes. The 14th amendment to the US constitution grants unconditional (and thus, irrevocable) citizenship jos soli. Naturalization indeed is mandated by the nationality law and not the constitution, yet it ain’t a courtesy. There’s a list of requirements, which once fulfilled mandate the US to grant a person a citizenship. As for revoking US citizenship, this just not a thing: a person can rescind their own citizenship, but this requires a deliberate action from the person rescinding it. And naturalization can be deemed void, which is not the same as revoked, as it requires a failure in the granting, not a decision after it. Furthermore, the UN declaration of human rights (ratified by the US, and drafted by one Eleanor Roosevelt), mandates that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality". So no, it ain’t courtesy. It’s a universal right, that is ratified in the US constitution, US nationality law, and multiple court decisions. As for Emma Lazarus, she died in 1887, thirty three years before the US constitution was amended to stop denying voting rights from women.
- sashank_1509 1y ago[flagged]
- boredatoms 1y agoBig tech offers equity too though
- alephnerd 1y ago> Big tech pays lesser than I expected: I thought they would average at 200k, not 160k H1Bs aren't just for Engineers - PMs, TPMs, Accountants, PMMs, and other roles can get H1B visas as well. Maybe filter based on the BLS code to get more granular info into what is causing outlier skews.
- thebytefairy 1y agoYes, in addition to the fact that big tech pays equity, and more senior people probably end up on green cards, so it skews junior.
- anon291 1y agoHonestly using an H1B for an accountant or pm seems wrong. These are jobs Americans can do. Accounting can be done remotely as well if it really needs to be
- cvwright 1y agoAmericans can do software development as well
- anon291 1y agoSome particular fields of software development require experts in that field that cannot be replaced by anyone with a CS degree.
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
- rizs12 1y agoTime to smash offshoring too. Any American company that offshores jobs should be delisted from all American stock exchanges and banned from doing business in the United States.
- gregw2 1y agoI'm not sure how you implement this such that it couldn't quickly be worked around.
- iamcreasy 1y agoIsn't this already done during LCA filing?
- hshdhdhj4444 1y agoThe H1B visa doesn’t compete with American workers as much as it does with the same people working in their home countries. Especially in today’s extremely remote friendly environment (and H1B visas outside of maybe biomed research tend to be concentrated in remote friendly fields), if a company cannot hire a candidate on an H1B visa, and the candidate has to return to their home nation, why wouldn’t the company not be thrilled to hire the exact same person abroad for a fraction of the cost? And with RTO failing miserably, and with nearly everyone on HN assuring us that WFH is as good, if not better, than RTO, it’s not like them working abroad is gonna be materially different from them working in a U.S. city.
- duxup 1y agoIt should be based on the salary paid to the employee ... but that article / proposal is suspiciously short on the actual weighting info ....
- anon291 1y agoFour Indian companies take a large portion of the visas. These companies are using very sketchy practices and should be investigated. If just left to American companies, the entire quota would not even be hit.
- g_langenderfer 1y agothis is solved so simply. Find the 90th percentile pay for the position, set that as the minimum for H-1b.
- AbstractH24 1y agoI’m no fan of most of what this administration does, but in the abstract I don’t think optimizing giving visas to the highest paying workers is the worst idea. Keeps the as many dollars in the American economy as possible while incentivizing the upskilling of American citizens to meet demand for low wage roles. Would be better to do it based on pay relative to the line of work, but that would be very easy to game. IT people working in fast food would be classified as fry cooks making $150k.
- yalogin 1y agoThis solves the exploitation of H1B visas. However this tilts the scale towards the bigger companies. The small upstart cannot compete with Facebook or Tesla. I guess there is always someone disadvantaged with these proposals. Let’s see how this works and hopefully we have enough will to tweak it later