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New H-1B visa fee will not apply to existing holders, official says
- sciencesama 1y agoStill too much confusion!
- frogperson 1y agoThe policy makers act like spoiled children. Always demanding instant gratificatio with little to no forthought for the future or the consequences. Its not effective leadership.
- rolph 1y agoits called populism, AKA fling it at a wall see if it sticks, then guess again. https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/01/21/theres-a-term-for-trumps-political-style-authoritarian-populism/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/01/21/theres-a-term-for-trump...
- nxobject 1y agoWell, good luck cap-exempt employers…
- mgh2 1y agoMakes sense, you don't want to affect already working high skill foreigners, because this will have immediate, massive disruptions on the tech industry.
- QuadmasterXLII 1y agoclarifying this point many hours into the 24 hour get home window does not make anything resembling sense.
- cmxch 1y agoOr you can proceed anyway and accept the damage as a bulwark against circumvention.
- DarkNova6 1y agoIf you get deported into a prison camp by accident, the same officials will write a letter of formal apologies to your loved ones. Well, more tech talent for India and China it seems.
- Arubis 1y agoWhat, in crayon? Expect victim blaming, not apologies.
- DarkNova6 1y agoMore like "sorry, this should not have happened. It still happened, but now we can't do anything. We take full responsibility, but nothings gonna change".
- V-eHGsd_ 1y agoYou had me up until “we take full responsibility”. This administration is much more about darvo response when they’re caught doing something wrong.
- grugagag 1y ago“ DARVO stands for "Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender," which is a tactic used by abusers to avoid accountability by denying their wrongdoing, attacking the victim, and claiming to be the real victim. This manipulation can make it difficult for others to discern the truth and often leads to the victim feeling blamed for the abuse they experienced”
- ochronus 1y agothots and prayas'
- gadders 1y agoYes, where "talent" = generic java developers writing CRUD apps for internal business functions.
- fabian2k 1y agoIt is actually possible to change the rules with sufficient notice period and to write enough details that people have a chance to understand exactly how the rules will change. They're not doing that. This is a choice they are making.
- Havoc 1y agoA continuous series of overreach and calibrate the amount of rollback needed based on response makes sense if you're keen to push things to the limit society will bear without rioting >This is a choice they are making. yup
- rayiner 1y ago[flagged]
- gadders 1y agoYes, the choice is to prioritise American software developers when a lot are out of work. It seems eminently sensible to stop cheap labour from abroad in such a situation.
- andy_ppp 1y agoIf you were being paid to destroy the US this is what it would look like, immigrants built most of the US.
- DarkNova6 1y agoOn the other hand, immigrants are the ones you can exploit the most and use against your own citizens. They are throwing away a resource they still need. But I guess with enough coercive force, it just might work with your own populus too.
- ryaniscool 1y agoSkilled immigrants being important to the country and the H1B visa program being abused by large employers can both be true at the same time. From my own personal experience, most H1B visa holders are competent but not uniquely skilled. This would be stupid five or ten years ago. Right now however, we have enough tech people in the country for the current job market.
- polski-g 1y ago11% unemployment for CS majors. Absolute insanity to be admitting H1Bs for the tech sector right now.
- breadwinner 1y agoAgree, for ordinary CS jobs, there's plenty of workers available right now, thanks to AI. But for highly specialized jobs including AI research, you still need to be able to hire immigrant talent.
- geye1234 1y agoThere's the O-1 for that.
- breadwinner 1y ago
- davidw 1y agoAn important point that emerged is also that the administration - at its discretion - can also waive the fee. Just more corruption and leverage to push companies to do their bidding. Just rancid stuff.
- ochronus 1y agoI wonder what kind of "gifts" companies will need to give the administration to earn such favors
- spwa4 1y agoThis sort of rule is extremely common in EU legislation. GPDR, for example, only allows standing in court for governments. You don't get to sue for your GPDR rights, you can only beg the government if your rights got violated (not the police, not the courts, not parliament, the executive). Or "the minister" as they say here. In practice this means the ministry of justice has an office, which has nothing to do with the judicial system, and you can send a letter to them. Of course this means governments and favored companies are effectively not bound by the GPDR.
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y agoSimple. 'Pixelize' the windows of their HQs to show giant portraits of Trump at night by lighting them up accordingly.
- sigmar 1y agoaxios tries to describe it as "panicky advice," but as written the EO explicitly says H1B holders "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" will be restricted from entering the US.[1] This article isn't really actionable advice when the only attribution is to some un-named "White House official" [1] Section 1 here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restriction-on-entry-of-certain-nonimmigrant-workers/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
- mips_avatar 1y agoIt was interesting how Microsoft basically directly got called out in the white house brief "One software company was approved for over 5,000 H-1B workers in FY 2025; around the same time, it announced a series of layoffs totaling more than 15,000 employees."
- Readerium 1y agoSo was intel in the following sentence.
- breadwinner 1y agoThat would be surprising if developers were fungible. You can have a surplus of web developers (whom you lay off) while at the same time have a shortage of AI talent. Those web developers can't be hired in to the openings for AI talent.
- geye1234 1y agoThat's not what's happening though.
- Den_VR 1y agoAccount managers and sales engineers are the ones I’ve seen laid off. They seem to have kept the licensing specialists they need on calls because nobody understands the convoluted mess they’ve created. So, losing the people we were working with, on top of all the issues with the products themselves, it made going to OpenShift that much easier.
- mips_avatar 1y agoI mean Microsoft laid off 5% of the developers and 30% of the product managers in my org, so they think that they don't need Windows development.
- BurningFrog 1y agoMost MS employees aren't even engineers!
- vsskanth 1y agoStill doesn't clarify what happens to people adjusting their status from F1 to H1B inside the US. Is that a new visa ?
- breadwinner 1y agoYes, it would be a new H-1B visa.
- nextworddev 1y agoThat’s why I told y’all to not freak out… did the tariff reversal not reach us anything
- SpicyLemonZest 1y agoThe tariff "reversal" taught me that public opinion is easy to manipulate. Tariffs are not and were never reversed, this is extremely easy to verify, and yet I routinely encounter people who are certain that they got reversed.
- nextworddev 1y ago[flagged]
- SpicyLemonZest 1y agoNo, they weren't! Imports from the vast majority of countries are currently subject to blanket tariffs within 5 percentage points of the April 2 proposal; some (Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, etc.) have significantly less while others (China, India, Brazil, Switzerland, etc.) have significantly more. Again, no shame for being misled, but it's been wild to see how many people are so extremely confident that this didn't happen.
- nextworddev 1y agoLook at the original proposed tariffs vs now.
- defrost 1y agoA better comment would have less snark and bring receipts ( links to reputable before and after data ) See: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html EDIT: Thank-you for for removing the uncalled for preamble, I look forward to seeing you make your case.
- dh2022 1y agoIn the words of Charles Dickens: Portable property, my good sir. Portable property. (A Tale of Two Cities)
- cmxch 1y agoFix that, and give the limits more teeth. While not ideal, I don’t see the guest worker programs being a good thing unless the affected firms experience (and cannot escape or mitigate) a certain fiscal pain, especially if it involves revenue from global capability centers.
- flashgordon 1y agoAnybody know how it plays out for those who are already on a h1b and are changing jobs? Typically that does not count as a new entry in the lottery but technically is a lottery. Without mobility that is just more indentured servitude. Also its not clear why not just lock out the indian consultancies directly as who these culprits are is pretty clear? Or no? There were also plenty of opportunities to tie a single h1b to one person instead of to a job posting (resulting in 3+ parallel filings).
- jacknews 1y agoI think it should apply to renewals etc as well. It will be quite telling how well-subscribed the upcoming lottery is with this new rule. If H1-B is truly about finding rare talent, it should have limited effect.