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Microsoft memo advises H1B employees to return immediately if currently abroad
https://xcancel.com/onestpress/status/1969374699038675364 https://xcancel.com/onestpress/status/1969374699038675364
- bwestergard 1y ago"creating panic among many - particularly Indian passengers - who even chose to leave the aircraft" Are they are getting off the aircraft because they believe the "fee" will be required of their employment imminently, and that their employer will not pay it, and this will lead to their visa getting cancelled before they could return to the United States?
- bananapub 1y agoIt doesn’t seem very unclear - the president made up a policy it isn’t possible to comply with, since there is no way to actually pay the massive bribe, in addition to probably being illegal, but nonetheless CBP may start refusing entry to people in hours.
- apwell23 1y agowhy do you say its a bribe? where is actual money going?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mothballed 1y agoTo the state coffers where it is money laundered to friends of the political class via favored private enterprises that win contracts for things like building border walls, keeping databases on US citizens, or running detention facilities.
- Freedom2 1y agoIs there any evidence of this? Otherwise please don't post unsubstantiated rumors on this site, it's not what it was made for!
- mothballed 1y agoDo you take contention with the part where I indicate the money paid goes into the state coffers? Or the part that money from the state coffers is then laundered to friends of the political class via favored private enterprises that win contracts? Let us be specific about the part that is the "unsubstantiated rumor", so that I can come up with "any evidence" which is a low bar to pass indeed.
- apwell23 1y agoyou mean there isn't enough money in the coffers already for the 'laundering to friends' that have to create new schemes?
- linohh 1y agoLike many cleptocrats, DJT seems to think that money received by the federal government is somehow his. However I don't think bribe is the appropriate term, it's more of a shakedown.
- toast0 1y agoIMHO, it seems like there's a good chance of confusion and delay when reentering the US in the middle of this kind of change. It would be better to avoid that, if possible. And in the case that your visa does get canceled, it would be easier to fight that from in the US, and if necessary, to wind down your US household from inside the US as well. Everything gets a lot harder if you have to do it from outside the country.
- hypeatei 1y ago> it would be easier to fight that from in the US Would it? Aren't ICE agents showing up to court hearings and deporting people?
- 4ndrewl 1y agoOr that, like the de minimus situation wrt post, there just is no process in place to pay the fee and you're left in a legal limbo, or worse.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- flurdy 1y agoIt seems for the moment they will only check for this new fee on entry at the borders. If the fee has been not paid entry will be denied from tonight. Hence, if you stay in the country nothing will change. And they can wait until this gets played out in the courts, media, congress etc.
- cjohnson318 1y agoSo much for being a safe and lucrative place for all the best minds of the world.
- oldpersonintx2 1y ago[dead]
- numa7numa7 1y agoI could be wrong but I thought O-1 was the genius visa and H1B was the skilled labor visa.
- visa-vasanth 1y ago>> I thought O-1 was the genius visa Yes, you have to be a genius to go through a 1yr online remote masters program which is mostly group work and essentially a fee for undercutting others on the queue: https://www.smu.edu/online/masters/data-science https://www.smu.edu/online/masters/data-science https://pe.gatech.edu/georgia-tech-online https://pe.gatech.edu/georgia-tech-online or
- swarnie 1y agoDoesn't the 100k fee ensure only the best (most worthwhile in a capitalist system) come and you don't end up with mass used to undercut local wages?
- nojito 1y agoThe median salary of someone on H1B is higher than someone not on H1B. If H1B is gone we will see a decrease in wages not an increase.
- Our_Benefactors 1y agoBold claim cotton
- 1y ago
- apwell23 1y agothis site is so much better than X
- rwmj 1y agox.com isn't even accessible from Firefox. It tries to trick you into turning off enhanced tracking protection claiming it is "known to cause issues" (the "issues" presumably being with them invading your privacy).
- delichon 1y agoI just accessed x.com from Firefox 143.0.1, and there was no such message or claim. It just displayed the site without any warning or ceremony. I have not visited the site with this browser before.
- SoftTalker 1y agoIn my experience, it's often blocked if it's embedded in another page. You can visit x.com directly without issues.
- rwmj 1y agoYou probably have enhanced tracking protection turned off. The message appears for me right now (FF 143.0).
- abnercoimbre 1y agoMost people on HN appear to be using it for submissions now, which is a welcome development.
- dang 1y agoAll: please submit the original source and then add a link to alt sources in the comments. I know the twitwall is frustrating (it is to us too) but we want HN posts to link to original sources, and for the site name to the right of the title to reflect that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We're happy to pin the alt links to the top of a thread and/or to move them into the top text, as I did in the current case.
- seneca 1y agoHere's the email from MS, supposedly: https://x.com/onestpress/status/1969444099317981563 https://x.com/onestpress/status/1969444099317981563
- pjdemers 1y agoIt will never last. There is a 0% chance even one company or person will ever pay this fee. Only an act of congress can change visa requirements, and it will never come up for a full floor vote. Ever. So it will be in legal limbo, and therefore can be ignored.
- kg 1y agoThis is why the new 100k policy allows the government the discretion to exempt their friends from the fee. Want H1Bs? Bend the knee.
- silverquiet 1y agoOnly congress can enact tariffs, but we're all paying them anyway.
- _diyar 1y agoI think it's not quite tree due to the Reciprocal Tariff Act. Depends on how you define reciprocal of course. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_Tariff_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_Tariff_Act
- llm_nerd 1y ago>There is a 0% chance even one company or person will ever pay this fee All through Trump's second term, and before, people have said things precisely like this. And here we are. At some point we realize that people just make such confident pronouncements because they think it bends reality towards their hopes. >Only an act of congress can change visa requirements It isn't a visa requirement. It's a processing fee. As of midnight no H1B will be considered without the fee. It is very real, and it is absolutely going into effect. Now places like Microsoft are panicking in the information gap currently, but the admin has clarified that it only applies to new H1B applicants. As to the legal limbo, not only won't there be one, the Supreme Court has rubber stamped just about everything this admin has done. The guy has both houses of congress, the courts, the DOJ, the full apparatus of government...at this point I find it simply amazing that people still dismiss the reality that he basically does whatever he wants.
- joemaniaci 1y agoJesus fucking Christ reading the comments on that thread.
- LetsGetTechnicl 1y agoJust causing chaos and confusion for no reason. Not that it matters, but can he even do this without Congress? One of the most frustrating things is witnessing all the things this admin has done that a normal admin wouldn't be able to do within "rules and norms" like we couldn't even get student loan cancellation under Biden.
- barkerja 1y agoDoes it matter when you have a Congress that does not care what he does?
- doug_durham 1y agoThis isn't law so aren't we a few hours from this being put on injunction? This is just abusive to people who are doing great work and following the rules.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> This isn't law so aren't we a few hours from this being put on injunction? That’s possible; it is also possible that it isn’t. And it is possible that even if it is, we are a few days or weeks away from an appeals court retroactively invalidating the injunction and allowing cancellations of visas based on failure to return when the injunction was in effect, or else “only” with immediate effect when the injunction is lifted. If you are an employer who wants to keep your H-1B employees, you probably don’t want to gamble unnecessarily with this, you want the employees to act in a way which minimizes your risk.
- teraflop 1y agoTrump has been doing many lawless things that the courts might theoretically put a stop to, but I'm not sure this is one of them. The text of 8 USC 1182(f) seems pretty straightforward: > Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. It's a stupidly broad law, but Congress passed it, and now they're too dysfunctional to do anything about it. So I guess we're stuck with it.
- wrs 1y agoNote that the fee can be waived at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security. So, just like the tariffs, one purpose of this change is to give companies the opportunity to come to the White House and ask what favors they can do in exchange for a waiver.
- mapontosevenths 1y agoThis. Their arbitrary nature is designed to consolidate executive branch authority that can be welded as a weapon against corporations that might consider supporting his opposition in the future. It's a classic fascist ploy, and is further proof that executive orders should be banned. In America we do not have kings who rule by decree, or at least we should not..
- dragonwriter 1y agoBanning executive orders is nonsense; you can’t have an executive branch with a head and prohibit the head from giving direction to the rest of the executive branch. Executive orders that violate, or direct the violation of, existing law are illegal (or, at least, without legal effect) to the extent they do that, but whether or not a particular order meets that description is frequently a matter of dispute, which can end up in litigation.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y ago> Executive orders that violate, or direct the violation of, existing law are illegal But now we run into the question of What is illegality without ethical-centric courts?
- dllthomas 1y agoI think we have that question regardless.
- mapontosevenths 1y agoThis actually misses the mark. They don't need simply to be legal, they need to have been based upon an existing law or the constitution to be enforceable. In the US the executive can not create law. That's the theory anyhow. As you mention, the courts now just obey the executive rather than acting as a check and balance as intended.
- monero-xmr 1y agoFinally, the best and brightest minds in the world can stay in their home countries and improve them, rather than brain drain the nation that raised them. What a blessing for those of us who care about the world!
- commiepatrol 1y agoAmen, in fact to help the best and brightest even more I would encourage to enforce this for even existing visa holders. Let the world be a better place sooner!
- sarchertech 1y agoIt's wild to watch the zeitgeist among many programmers swap in real time from being against H-1B visas to pro H-1B visas the second Trump goes after them. It is possible for a stopped clock to be right twice a day. Left and right doesn't have to disagree on literally every single thing. If you're on an H-1B and you get fired or laid off, you have 60 days to find a new job or be deported. That creates an underclass of workers who are willing to put up with much worse working conditions and work longer hours. That drives down working conditions and wages for everyone. A $100k per year fee doesn't fix that, but it does make them so expensive that they are really only viable for $300k+ positions.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> It's wild to watch the zeitgeist among many programmers swap in real time from being against H-1B visas to pro H-1B visas the second Trump goes after them. Trump isn’t going after them, he is converting them into another channel for arbitrary favoritism and graft. Being against the H-1b as a bad system does not conflict with being against the way Trump is making that system worse.
- sarchertech 1y agoSure that's a thing he might do. I think the most likely outcome is that big tech ends up scooping up all the H-1B slots. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not saying people were anti H-1B visa and now they still are, but disagree with Trump's "solution" I'm seeing comments full of "H-1Bs are good actually".
- yibg 1y agoYou can take issues with the current (previous) H1B policy and the new one at the same time. There was abuse of the H1B program, but this new EO also has issues. The biggest one currently is the rollout. There is no guidance, no mechanism to pay the actual fee, no clarity on if it applies retroactively to existing visa holders etc.
- atonse 1y ago
- farseer 1y agoThe big question mark is if this fee would apply to hundreds of thousands of existing H1B visa holders when they need an extension/renewal?
- fcanesin 1y agoyes, and it started from today.
- sailingparrot 1y agoNo, it's for new H1-Bs and renewals, and it starts tomorrow.
- fcanesin 1y agoYou are correct [although what was said at the oval office was different].
- remarkEon 1y agoThere’s hundreds of thousands of H1B visa holders? I thought this visa was for people with some specialized skill that doesn’t exist or is impossible to find in the U.S. Surely there can’t be that many.
- ralph84 1y agoMicrosoft laid off tens of thousands in the last few years. Clearly there’s no “talent shortage”.
- jonathanstrange 1y agoHow do you know the people laid off were talented?
- jleyank 1y agoIf they weren’t talented, I hope the aforementioned layoffs included the nimrods who hired them.
- IG_Semmelweiss 1y agoI assume immigration fees are solely the purview of the executive, is that correct ? I also would think that if this fee is applied to some countries and not others, it would pass muster since its the same as with tariffs - they don't need to be universal (or uniform). I am not clear on the mechanics of this though. Is the fee is annual, one-time or renewal; but i suppose this will be cleared up once the EO is released if it hasn't already ?
- vkou 1y agoLaw requires these fees to be ~essentially the cost of processing. So that EO is almost certainly illegal, and will be litigated.
- jrs235 1y agoAssuming thoughtful intent is in use, perhaps this is a fishing attempt to see what corporations will challenge and litigate; an attempt to identify opposition and to add targets to punish next.
- throwaway95914 1y agoI'm absolutely not a lawyer, so may be mistaken, but the fees for I-129 / DS-160 are not explicitly mentioned anywhere. Instead the fee seems to be an entry fee, which is orthogonal to the actual visa (meaning ; you can have a visa but not be granted entry, or maybe be granted entry under a different program but then with no lawful work permit). Personal Experience: H1B/Work PERM/Personal PERM/EADs/Naturalization
- CSMastermind 1y agoCongress gave the president broad authority to regulate the immigration process. Trump's executive order cites two statutes cited below. I'm not a lawyer so it's possible, even likely that there's something I'm missing but to my laymans reading of the law it would seem to me he has the authority to put basically whatever process he wants into place. Section 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1185(a), states exactly: Unless otherwise ordered by the President, it shall be unlawful—(1) for any alien to depart from or enter or attempt to depart from or enter the United States except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and orders, and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may prescribe; Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f), states exactly: Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
- ed 1y agoThe fee applies only to new applicants, per https://www.axios.com/2025/09/20/trump-h-1b-immigration-visas https://www.axios.com/2025/09/20/trump-h-1b-immigration-visa...
- rendx 1y ago"Section 1. Restriction on Entry. (a) Pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000 — subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (c) of this section." See https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restriction-on-entry-of-certain-nonimmigrant-workers/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest... Nothing in there says it only applies to new applicants.
- IamLoading 1y agoit was corrected by Karoline. Very surprising, when they announced it yesterday, they universally said for all. https://x.com/PressSec/status/1969494255857987597 https://x.com/PressSec/status/1969494255857987597
- rendx 1y agoWell, things are insane these days, but it used to be that you correct a law by correcting the law. I do not see any corrections in the legal text, which should be the only basis. And when it is not, you're not living in a functioning society.
- rsynnott 1y agoI mean, I think ol’ minihands crossed that particular Rubicon some time ago.
- fcanesin 1y agoSummed together with the study visa changes: Thanks Trump for helping solve Brazil's brain drain.
- LogicArsenal 1y agoThis will only encourage more technical jobs to move offshore. We already lost most of our manufacturing capacity to offshore factories. Policies like this will encourage more IT, engineering and research jobs to permanently move to lower cost countries. Why pay 100k to bring the best talent to the US when you can just move the whole team offshore?
- dang 1y agoRelated ongoing threads: US Gov acknowledges that 100K fee does not apply to existing H-1B visas holders [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45318060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45318060 - Sept 2025 (43 comments) Visa holders on vacation have 15 hours to return to US or pay $100k fee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312877 - Sept 2025 (218 comments) New H-1B visa fee will not apply to existing holders, official says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45316226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45316226 - Sept 2025 (3 comments) Also recent and related: Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305845 - Sept 2025 (1675 comments) The H-1B Visa Program and Its Impact on the U.S. Economy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45309740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45309740 - Sept 2025 (51 comments)
- general1465 1y agoSo people are trying to get back to USA while half of Europe has crippled airports thank to cyberattack. Really sucks to have H1B and be outside of USA right now.
- summarity 1y agoFull text of EO: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restriction-on-entry-of-certain-nonimmigrant-workers/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...