13 ms·

Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

140 points by ekropotin 9mo ago

nis0s 9mo ago
There needs to be a moratorium on it, at least for a while.
- aboardRat4 9mo ago
  Why?
  - Mountain_Skies 9mo ago
    Because the excesses are well documented and the proponents of it are constantly disingenuous about the issues that make it widely hated everywhere except in SV and in C-suites. It's at risk of being eliminated completely because those who abuse the system are spoiled brats that melt down over any hint of reform. When reform isn't possible, elimination becomes the only choice to make the excesses stop. Pretending not to understand this only makes it that much more likely that it will be eliminated entirely. The time for getting away with playing dumb is long gone. All it accomplishes is making the program even more hated. The temporary program from three decades ago to bring in some extra help until the industry could ramp up training programs to develop domestic talent isn't temporary after three decades and the industry has made clear as long as it exists, there will be no honest attempts at developing talent instead of going for the lowest cost global source. All of the above will of course fall on deaf ears, with all the usual intellectually dishonest deflections and outright lies being brandied about. This once again guarantees that reform will be impossible and elimination the only solution.
  - calculatte 9mo ago
    Rampant abuse, fraud, nepotistic hiring combined with record high tech unemployment to start.
    - distortionfield 9mo ago
      There is little reason to believe that low hiring will be improved in any significant amount by removal of the H1B pool.
      - calculatte 9mo ago
        Yeah, it should also be combined with the elimination of OPT, H4 EAD, and H1 visas that are harming the STEM industries in the same way to the tune of 6 million jobs. New grads can't compete with the tax benefits provided by hiring OPT workers.
        RealityVoid 9mo ago
        So... Protectionism, right? Stupid me, I thought the US was about competition and boldness, a place where a man can work, be good at what he does and be appreciated for it. But it turns out that for many of you it's about the place you happened to be born.
        remarkEon 9mo ago
        Yes. The purpose of the United States government is to benefit the people already here. It is not reasonable to assume that Americans should have to compete with the labor pool of the entire planet. >But it turns out that for many of you it's about the place you happened to be born. This meme needs to die. It was not some sort of accident that I was born in this country, it was the consequence of generations of conscious decisions and actions. I had a 0% probability of being born literally anywhere else. And as such, it is perfectly reasonable to want my government to prioritize the needs of me and my compatriots over those of others who are not from here.
        RealityVoid 9mo ago
        > Americans should have to compete with the labor pool of the entire planet. You almost always do, with houw our world is set up. No matter what you believe. > it was the consequence of generations of conscious decisions and actions. Oh, yeah, you are worthy, the others aren't. Got it. > it is perfectly reasonable to want my government to prioritize the needs of me and my compatriots over those of others who are not from here. They are not, in fact, prioritizing the needs of your compatriots. They would if they cared about making your country more competitive. But in fact, they are hard at work to alienate your allies, erase your competitive advantages and turn you into a dictatorship. Good luck, you're going to need it. Don't worry, I know us across the pond are fucked too, but at least we are not throwing away our status as a superpower for the dumbest of reasons.
  - yieldcrv 9mo ago
    no OP, but I can answer one way: the US has very many visa programs, including half a dozen to a dozen work visa programs this one particular visa program is politically radioactive, as if it is the only work visa program, and it doesn't accomplish its stated goals in hardly any way until that can be settled I think and the program ironed out, it should be hampered to closed off, a moratorium I would like to see the H1B program used to its original (and still codified) standards - highly in demand professionals that couldn't be sourced in the US so easily and are exceptional. The minimum wage for what such a professional would be paid was set in the 1980s, to $60,000 for someone with a master's degree, when it was exception. This minimum would be around $156,000/yr today. Okay, let's do that, that makes sense if its politically radioactive to even just suggest that, all the more reason for a moratorium on that program, to me
    - QGQBGdeZREunxLe 9mo ago
      It's poorly labelled. Highly in demand professionals are eligible for O1. H1B is the base work visa for those that aren't covered by a trade deal or haven't completed a US university program, or have and completed OPT.
    - bialpio 9mo ago
      For reference, I was an H-1B holder. My starting salary (straight out of college after finishing my master's) in one of the big tech companies was $95k base pay, this was 13 years ago. From my perspective, the visa program worked as intended.
      - pandaman 9mo ago
        It was not intended to hire fresh grads with zero experience though and your example shows that it had already been broken 13 years ago.
      - yieldcrv 9mo ago
        In what way do you think it worked as intended? 13 years ago you should have been ineligible by both base salary and scarcity, until you were a senior architect in some specific niche and commanded a greater base salary Or on a different work visa Exhibit a b and c I’m not saying you aren’t supposed to be here, I’m saying fix that program. The US shouldn’t be training talent and kicking them out. We should be training and keeping talent. H1B doesn’t do that well either.
  - intermerda 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - calculatte 9mo ago
      [flagged]
    - arresin 9mo ago
      This is such bizarre sick talk. Only in the west do we suffer this. It’s really weird and a holdover from a really strange time in the 60-70s.
  - nis0s 9mo ago
    I am looking at the problem from a population and industry level, and so my apologies if I am not looking at it from the individual’s perspective. The first issue which stands out to me is that the world at-large doesn’t create enough jobs in industries where highly-skilled Western educated workers can work. In fact, low-skilled Western educated workers don’t have many prospects at a global stage either. So Western-educated workers (either immigrants or citizens) are stuck in Western nations due to several factors, including pay ranges, work conditions, and quality of life reasons, like access to a clean and safe environment, or a working justice system. The quality of life reasons and pay ranges are the main attractors for immigrants as well, which is why some nation-state economies have remittances as a key component of their GDP. On top of that, some nations have sacrificed building an education and employment infrastructure in favor of building what are essentially factories for producing workers for Western nations. This also has the side effect of keeping the quality of life of these countries suppressed because people who would voice the most discontent simply leave. So, I’d say the second reason immigration visas need a more nuanced approach is because they hurt the development of other countries, unless those countries set up remittances or job contract pipelines. But even so, there’s no guarantee that the baseline quality of life will improve even as GDP sky rockets. If you look at where people work, and how they’re the happiest working, it’s when they can find something modest which affords them a reasonable quality of life in their local environment. Great examples of this include many East Asian and Northern European countries. The key difference here is that these countries prioritize building benefits for their populations via education and workforce training and development. Unlucky people in any country will hope to immigrate to change that aspect of their life, which is a failure on the part of their home nation, not the individual. Some nations have prioritized infiltration of large cap Western companies primarily for strategic geopolitical reasons, and that’s the third reason why I think immigration visas need a more nuanced approach. Lastly (because I am secretly an idealist), I’d like large cap companies to be responsible with the great power they wield. Large cap companies have a global reach, and so can upset the local economies of any country by interfering with the work of small to medium sized businesses. Imagine if Google decides that it will set up shop in South Africa because the U.S. curtails all H1B hiring. Some people in South Africa will benefit, but the overall effect will be that the majority of the population will desire to shift its behavior so the individual can work at the best possible economic opportunity. While that sounds like an ideal scenario to a Western-educated liberal, consider that many businesses in local communities will lose out on potential high-skilled workers. The ecosystem of workforce development and employment needs to balanced against community development. Large cap companies subvert the function of local communities by shifting the calculus to economic optimization, whereas healthy and thriving communities have other goals as well. Populations as a whole have lost sense of purpose because the main reason most people work is so that they can stop working. But globalization perverted that mindset by prioritizing the needs of large corporations over the needs of local communities. People still want to stop working, but they don’t know how to reach that goal. This problem exists because more than half the countries in the world have sacrificed their own development in favor of developing workers for large cap companies in Western countries. Bit of a hastily typed ramble, but I hope the gist of it is clear enough.
IlikeKitties 9mo ago
[flagged]
- intermerda 9mo ago
  Around 2016-17 I read on a well-known white supremacist site about how people like Trump and Tucker Carlson are going to be so much more effective at achieving their goals than someone like David Duke who state those goals explicitly. Not in their wildest imagination would they have expected this level of success. Congratulations to you and those folks.
  - dyauspitr 9mo ago
    It’s been so successful that stuff out of trumps mouth now aligns pretty closely with what David Duke was saying then.
- vivzkestrel 9mo ago
  why do you make it sound as if it is a bad thing? it all depends on how this is implemented. if you take every tom dick and harry from india, you are obviously going to run into issues. why not set a high bar for it
  - IlikeKitties 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - tomhow 9mo ago
      > Because german politicians are incapable of implementing an immigration strategy that isn't absolutely, undeniably retarded. Please don't fulminate or post ragey flamebait and offensive epithets on HN. HN is for people who have higher standards than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: We've warned you several times about this kind of commenting and you've posted similarly inflammatory comments in the past week or two, so we've banned the account.
decimalenough 9mo ago
This has no hope at all of passing. Marjorie Taylor Greene is on Trump's shit list after daring to demand the Epstein files too loudly, and she's introducing these bills on her last day in Congress as a symbolic gesture to her base.
- cosmicgadget 9mo ago
  And potentially as a parting shot at Trump.
mattnewton 9mo ago
Not only are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I feel like the current rhetoric in the US doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the metaphorical baby anymore. The strongest advantage of the US has always been the ability to absorb global talent. I don’t think that is a popular view anymore, and we are instead stuck talking only about stopping abuse that is ultimately still bringing skilled workers to the US.
- calculatte 9mo ago
  I think anyone working with the global talent can tell you there are absolutely no controls around measuring their quality. The skilled talent simply isn't skilled at all. They are willing to engage in kickback schemes. Even the O1 "genius" visa is being given to onlyfans models. Immigration is completely broken and it's by design.
  - leptons 9mo ago
    Your take only applies to recent developments. For the entirety of the H visa program, it has brought in very valuable talent, which stayed here to generate incredible wealth for the country. "onlyfans" is a recent thing. The kickbacks are a relatively new thing. Sure immigration is broken, but that's what happens when the government is intent on breaking the country.
    - seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
      Onlyfans is a recent thing, but the First Lady had an EB-1 Einstein visa when she was posing for…interesting photos.
      - Muromec 9mo ago
        You mistyped Epstein visa
      - omnimus 9mo ago
        The fact that these visas are abused by people in power is completely different and in the end minor issue. I would bet vast majority of EB-1 are pretty out of the ordinary. This is just derailing the discussion. Visas for privileged individuals bad = immigration bad.
pcurve 9mo ago
Many large fortune 500 companies have already opened up large offices in India to perform core business operations, so this won't have the intended impact. That ship has sailed. All this is going to do is accelerate the trend. That will continue to play out until it doesn't make financial or competitive sense to do so.
- JuniperMesos 9mo ago
  Indians who work for multinational companies in India don't vote in American elections.
prmoustache 9mo ago
[flagged]
- gip 9mo ago
  This comment is totally unnecessary. There are tons of skilled American engineers who aren't extremists / activists.
  - Larrikin 9mo ago
    "/ activist" Where did that polite term come from when referring to white supremacists?
- IlikeKitties 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - prmoustache 9mo ago
    > There are literally no other choices when you need to employ someone. The other choices find work rather easily already and don't need this kind of protectionsim.
gary_0 9mo ago
"Killing the golden goose" is the phrase that has come to mind repeatedly in the past few years. As someone living in a country that has been brain-draining into the US for decades, I'm quite perplexed at all this. It looks like the next Andrej Karpathy (born in Czechoslovakia, educated in Canada) will be taking their talents somewhere besides the US in the future. Maybe they think they can just cherry-pick the geniuses and leave "the rest" but that's not how it works; skilled experts don't just suddenly appear out of the vacuum, you need a pipeline with a wide mouth. It wasn't perfect but the US had the world's best genius pipeline, and it has already been largely torn down.
- QGQBGdeZREunxLe 9mo ago
  The question I think is more interesting is why can't Canada retain talent?
  - m00dy 9mo ago
    The question I think is more interesting is why can't Europe retain talent?
    - RealityVoid 9mo ago
      Because of the salaries. They are much higher in the US. Also, the SV bay area has an absurd concentration of talent that you probably can't find anywhere else. Having a head start from anyone else helps. But don't worry, I'm sure that in the current climate Europe will be able to gather and retain talent. I personally would be much more happy to work for lower pay than contributing to the prosperity of such a predatory country. Funny thing, I considered working in the US a couple of years ago but 2 reasons made me give up. The emigration felt hard and confusing as if they didn't want people there. And second, my wife was afraid of the gun violence in the US.
      - seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
        Chinese salaries aren’t bad in tech, especially compared to Europe/Japan/Taiwan but even when compared to Canada. It’s pretty clear where talent could go in the future at least if Europe doesn’t up its game.
dyauspitr 9mo ago
More than 50% of our unicorns have first generation immigrant founders. All the standard anti immigrant rhetoric ends up falling flat so it’s just straight up racism now.
SilverElfin 9mo ago
Half of the Fortune 500 is founded by immigrants or their kids: https://fortune.com/2025/07/30/latinos-immigration-economy-julian-castro-carolina-martinez-cameo/ https://fortune.com/2025/07/30/latinos-immigration-economy-j... And H1B workers are paid slightly more on average, not less, than citizen workers. Not to mention that if you account for the cost companies pay to deal with the immigration process (lawyers, fees, etc) they end up being a lot pricier. The new hatred towards H1B is part of a broader shifting of the Overton window. First hate illegal immigrants. Then ones on visas. Then naturalized citizens. And soon they come to a place where they can deport 100 million, their actual racist goal that the DHS tweeted recently: https://xcancel.com/DHSgov/status/2006472108222853298 https://xcancel.com/DHSgov/status/2006472108222853298 Meanwhile China just launched their new K visa to soak up all the amazing talent the new far right America is pushing away.
- ljsprague 9mo ago
  Immigrants move where the money is.
- gorbachev 9mo ago
  If the majority of H1-B workers were white, none of this would be happening.
  - happytoexplain 9mo ago
    This is a (very effective) distraction. The fact that culture and race have so much correlation is perhaps the most intimidating hurdle to civilized problem-solving we've ever been presented with as a species.
whyenot 9mo ago
If skilled workers can't come here, then the businesses who need them will just open up satellite shops there. Not an opinion on H-1B, just an observation.
- palmotea 9mo ago
  > If skilled workers can't come here, then the businesses who need them will just open up satellite shops there. Not an opinion on H-1B, just an observation. They're already doing that, because if the workers stay there, the businesses can pay them much, much less than if they bring them here on an H1-B. And it seems like that's much more common now, since the pandemic further normalized remote work.
RealityVoid 9mo ago
I would be incredibly curious if the mods could look into the stats of these political threads. I personally feel they are being manipulated at least through the voting system if not through active bot influence campaigns. It might be me being emotional about this and about seeing a country I looked up to becoming what it's becoming, but I just can't comprehend how some of the people in this otherwise great community can look at this and think it's the direction they want for their country.
- happytoexplain 9mo ago
  It's nuts - but I can only speak with anecdotes. The Americans around me are desperate to pull absolutely any lever that will slow the death of the American dream, and at this point even the "light" version of the dream is dying (work hard, be smart and a little lucky, spend on an education in a strong field, get a family and small property). Stats and experts be damned - that's what desperation is. In the specific case of those around me, they are seeing huge numbers of Indian tech workers, local and offshore, displacing them. That would just be normal competition, except that they are all of the same foreign culture, which makes them an easily identifiable "out group". Multiplying the indignity and perceived "un-American-ness", they exhibit attributes like nepotism, sycophancy, ineffective communication, and a willingness to work longer hours for less pay while producing horrible work. And these attributes are perceived by as desirable to unscrupulous short-term-thinking leadership. Of course this may exacerbate the problem (more offshoring).
  - hippo22 9mo ago
    It's not "normal competition" to be displaced by immigrants in your own country. Allowing that is simply allowing the capitalist class to assault and weaken the labor class.
    - Muromec 9mo ago
      >It's not "normal competition" to be displaced by immigrants in your own country Is it? It's just free market deciding you are not needed. What's the problem with that? Are you against the free marker or something?
willvarfar 9mo ago
This is going to be an interesting take but I think it is plausible that we'll see a quiet growth in American tech companies having even bigger offshore campuses instead. Google Zurich or Google London could grow, Google does hardware in Taiwan and Apple and Intel do hardware in Israel, and pretty much all the big tech companies have the biggest chunk in Hyperbad. The withdrawal of the H1B means companies can't compete on offering them to attract talent, but that talent still wants to work somewhere and companies can instead complete on the perks they offer at those offshore places. Things will get interesting if Europe can become the place that US tech companies offer visa support for people to move to though.
- cmxch 9mo ago
  And with these new structures, new penalties for their existence will follow. Properly executed, those offshore structures will have to incur losses to exist, or will no longer exist.
  - sifar 9mo ago
    History indicates regulation always trails corporate accountants.
- gorbachev 9mo ago
  It's already happening. Every major tech company is investing in engineering presence outside of the US. My employer sent out a company-wide email late last year outlining an aggressive growth strategy in two new tech hubs in Ireland and India, and encouraging employees to apply for open roles in those locations.
bjourne 9mo ago
Every state has the right to regulate its labor supply. In fact, that is how society got better. Unions setup oligopolies to ensure workers were fairly compensated. Unlike other commodities, labor cannot be traded on a free market because if you can't sell your time you'll starve and become homeless. And if supply and demand is a thing, it seems that restricting supply favors the sellers. The US has no shortage of labor. However, it is terribly allocated. Like "baggers" for groceries, old people (that should have retired long ago) working as "greeters", and thousands of Uber drivers working 12+ hours/day cause cities are so badly designed that you need taxis to get around. People whose only job is to put out cones on the street to force cars to slow down when the light is green... So much wasted labor. Why not try and "upgrade" these people through education (which tech companies should pay for in taxes) so that they can work more qualified jobs? Then the US wouldn't need to import qualified labor.
- cmxch 9mo ago
  You make the erroneous assumption that these people are defective and are default not qualified. Retraining has been tried and has failed every time when taken at scale. Just have the tech firms and the like cut huge, straight, salary replacement checks to the citizens who they harm.
  - com 9mo ago
    I ran a corporate networking team in the 2000s with two of the five network engineer team members, being two years out of retraining (they were welding specialists in the former local shipbuilding industry). Non-white collar supervisory and work ethic issues, but excellent work in general. Had an issue with the team on-call car getting bullet holes once (suspect some drug dealing on the side, long story!) but excellent colleagues in general. I've worked with a lot of retrained and second-career people and I can't sing their praises enough.
SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
I understand headlines can't be infinitely long, but it seems critically important to note that this bill is being introduced by a disgraced Congresswoman hated by both parties now on literally her last day in office. Nothing wrong with taking a good excuse to argue about immigration, but this is not a bill that will ever be taken up.
10xDev 9mo ago
Unfortunately there are consequences for its abuse. Is eliminating it the right consequence? Who really knows but it should have never been abused especially in favour of one particular country that is taking over tech. People talk about brain drain but people do go back home and they are opening more offices back at home.
- Tadpole9181 9mo ago
  And does this bill also establish consequences for offshoring work to third party contracts or satellite offices in other countries? No. So it solves nothing and just makes things worse.
pjmlp 9mo ago
This is only increase offshoring even further, unless the new administration now finds a way to tax VPN connections between company sites.
Yizahi 9mo ago
All power to the Americans of course, but this sounds incredibly dumb. Cutting legal and skilled immigration and doing nothing about illegal immigration? That will surely help the people. /s
reop2whiskey 9mo ago
[dead]
palmotea 9mo ago
Literally who cares? Most bills that are introduced go nowhere, and this one was introduced by a congresswoman who recently resigned (Marjorie Taylor Greene). But what Congress really needs to do is introduce an onerous tax on offshore labor, that's a much worse problem.
- SilverElfin 9mo ago
  > But what Congress really needs to do is introduce an onerous tax on offshore labor, that's a much worse problem. This is called a tariff and is the same as raising taxes on every American.
  - palmotea 9mo ago
    > This is called a tariff and is the same as raising taxes on every American. Come on, what are you going to do next? Mic drop "I, Pencil"? Libertarian rhetoric is tired and old, and doesn't adequately address present-day concerns. It's not the 90s anymore, get with the times. FYI, free market economics has taught me to love the idea of tariffs, other similar taxes, and trade barriers. I'm glad those ideas are back on the table, and I hope they can be more competently executed after the current administration ends.
    - SilverElfin 9mo ago
      Labeling something as “libertarian” isn’t an argument. But a tariff is a tax. Which means you are proposing to take money from others to subsidize people who aren’t able to compete on their merit. Why should they be subsidized? If they can’t make it in STEM they are free to get a different job. But vilifying Indians and Chinese and other immigrants, who have made our companies and economy strong, all over a small 60k visas a year, is irrational.
      - palmotea 9mo ago
        > Labeling something as “libertarian” isn’t an argument. The label wasn't an argument. You're repeating the same tired old shit, like it's new and no one's ever heard of it. We've all heard it, it's old. It sounded good in the 90s, but it ain't the 90s anymore. It sounded plausible when the competitor was the Soviet economy, but that's not true anymore, either. Been there, done that. > But a tariff is a tax. Taxes aren't bad. You're talking about taxes like I'm expected to recoil from them in horror. > Which means you are proposing to take money from others to subsidize people who aren’t able to compete on their merit. Why should they be subsidized? What do you mean merit? Do you mean giving the best deal to the wealthy who'd just as well sell their countrymen up the river for an extra buck in their pocket? Being totes ok with a lower standard of living to make that deal happen? If you think "the market" is the only judge that matters, or a fair judge, you've got problems. > But vilifying Indians and Chinese and other immigrants, who have made our companies and economy strong, all over a small 60k visas a year, is irrational. If you think that's mainly what's going on, you're either blind or playing the misdirection game.
pjjpo 9mo ago
A representative thrown out of her own party lays out some meme bills. Why so serious batman?
daft_pink 9mo ago
Seems very unlikely as MTG is crazy

140 points by ekropotin 9mo ago

nis0s 9mo ago

There needs to be a moratorium on it, at least for a while.

aboardRat4 9mo ago
Why?
- Mountain_Skies 9mo ago
  Because the excesses are well documented and the proponents of it are constantly disingenuous about the issues that make it widely hated everywhere except in SV and in C-suites. It's at risk of being eliminated completely because those who abuse the system are spoiled brats that melt down over any hint of reform. When reform isn't possible, elimination becomes the only choice to make the excesses stop. Pretending not to understand this only makes it that much more likely that it will be eliminated entirely. The time for getting away with playing dumb is long gone. All it accomplishes is making the program even more hated. The temporary program from three decades ago to bring in some extra help until the industry could ramp up training programs to develop domestic talent isn't temporary after three decades and the industry has made clear as long as it exists, there will be no honest attempts at developing talent instead of going for the lowest cost global source. All of the above will of course fall on deaf ears, with all the usual intellectually dishonest deflections and outright lies being brandied about. This once again guarantees that reform will be impossible and elimination the only solution.
- calculatte 9mo ago
  Rampant abuse, fraud, nepotistic hiring combined with record high tech unemployment to start.
  - distortionfield 9mo ago
    There is little reason to believe that low hiring will be improved in any significant amount by removal of the H1B pool.
    - calculatte 9mo ago
      Yeah, it should also be combined with the elimination of OPT, H4 EAD, and H1 visas that are harming the STEM industries in the same way to the tune of 6 million jobs. New grads can't compete with the tax benefits provided by hiring OPT workers.
      - RealityVoid 9mo ago
        So... Protectionism, right? Stupid me, I thought the US was about competition and boldness, a place where a man can work, be good at what he does and be appreciated for it. But it turns out that for many of you it's about the place you happened to be born.
        remarkEon 9mo ago
        Yes. The purpose of the United States government is to benefit the people already here. It is not reasonable to assume that Americans should have to compete with the labor pool of the entire planet. >But it turns out that for many of you it's about the place you happened to be born. This meme needs to die. It was not some sort of accident that I was born in this country, it was the consequence of generations of conscious decisions and actions. I had a 0% probability of being born literally anywhere else. And as such, it is perfectly reasonable to want my government to prioritize the needs of me and my compatriots over those of others who are not from here.
        RealityVoid 9mo ago
        > Americans should have to compete with the labor pool of the entire planet. You almost always do, with houw our world is set up. No matter what you believe. > it was the consequence of generations of conscious decisions and actions. Oh, yeah, you are worthy, the others aren't. Got it. > it is perfectly reasonable to want my government to prioritize the needs of me and my compatriots over those of others who are not from here. They are not, in fact, prioritizing the needs of your compatriots. They would if they cared about making your country more competitive. But in fact, they are hard at work to alienate your allies, erase your competitive advantages and turn you into a dictatorship. Good luck, you're going to need it. Don't worry, I know us across the pond are fucked too, but at least we are not throwing away our status as a superpower for the dumbest of reasons.
- yieldcrv 9mo ago
  no OP, but I can answer one way: the US has very many visa programs, including half a dozen to a dozen work visa programs this one particular visa program is politically radioactive, as if it is the only work visa program, and it doesn't accomplish its stated goals in hardly any way until that can be settled I think and the program ironed out, it should be hampered to closed off, a moratorium I would like to see the H1B program used to its original (and still codified) standards - highly in demand professionals that couldn't be sourced in the US so easily and are exceptional. The minimum wage for what such a professional would be paid was set in the 1980s, to $60,000 for someone with a master's degree, when it was exception. This minimum would be around $156,000/yr today. Okay, let's do that, that makes sense if its politically radioactive to even just suggest that, all the more reason for a moratorium on that program, to me
  - QGQBGdeZREunxLe 9mo ago
    It's poorly labelled. Highly in demand professionals are eligible for O1. H1B is the base work visa for those that aren't covered by a trade deal or haven't completed a US university program, or have and completed OPT.
  - bialpio 9mo ago
    For reference, I was an H-1B holder. My starting salary (straight out of college after finishing my master's) in one of the big tech companies was $95k base pay, this was 13 years ago. From my perspective, the visa program worked as intended.
    - pandaman 9mo ago
      It was not intended to hire fresh grads with zero experience though and your example shows that it had already been broken 13 years ago.
    - yieldcrv 9mo ago
      In what way do you think it worked as intended? 13 years ago you should have been ineligible by both base salary and scarcity, until you were a senior architect in some specific niche and commanded a greater base salary Or on a different work visa Exhibit a b and c I’m not saying you aren’t supposed to be here, I’m saying fix that program. The US shouldn’t be training talent and kicking them out. We should be training and keeping talent. H1B doesn’t do that well either.
- intermerda 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - calculatte 9mo ago
    [flagged]
  - arresin 9mo ago
    This is such bizarre sick talk. Only in the west do we suffer this. It’s really weird and a holdover from a really strange time in the 60-70s.
- nis0s 9mo ago
  I am looking at the problem from a population and industry level, and so my apologies if I am not looking at it from the individual’s perspective. The first issue which stands out to me is that the world at-large doesn’t create enough jobs in industries where highly-skilled Western educated workers can work. In fact, low-skilled Western educated workers don’t have many prospects at a global stage either. So Western-educated workers (either immigrants or citizens) are stuck in Western nations due to several factors, including pay ranges, work conditions, and quality of life reasons, like access to a clean and safe environment, or a working justice system. The quality of life reasons and pay ranges are the main attractors for immigrants as well, which is why some nation-state economies have remittances as a key component of their GDP. On top of that, some nations have sacrificed building an education and employment infrastructure in favor of building what are essentially factories for producing workers for Western nations. This also has the side effect of keeping the quality of life of these countries suppressed because people who would voice the most discontent simply leave. So, I’d say the second reason immigration visas need a more nuanced approach is because they hurt the development of other countries, unless those countries set up remittances or job contract pipelines. But even so, there’s no guarantee that the baseline quality of life will improve even as GDP sky rockets. If you look at where people work, and how they’re the happiest working, it’s when they can find something modest which affords them a reasonable quality of life in their local environment. Great examples of this include many East Asian and Northern European countries. The key difference here is that these countries prioritize building benefits for their populations via education and workforce training and development. Unlucky people in any country will hope to immigrate to change that aspect of their life, which is a failure on the part of their home nation, not the individual. Some nations have prioritized infiltration of large cap Western companies primarily for strategic geopolitical reasons, and that’s the third reason why I think immigration visas need a more nuanced approach. Lastly (because I am secretly an idealist), I’d like large cap companies to be responsible with the great power they wield. Large cap companies have a global reach, and so can upset the local economies of any country by interfering with the work of small to medium sized businesses. Imagine if Google decides that it will set up shop in South Africa because the U.S. curtails all H1B hiring. Some people in South Africa will benefit, but the overall effect will be that the majority of the population will desire to shift its behavior so the individual can work at the best possible economic opportunity. While that sounds like an ideal scenario to a Western-educated liberal, consider that many businesses in local communities will lose out on potential high-skilled workers. The ecosystem of workforce development and employment needs to balanced against community development. Large cap companies subvert the function of local communities by shifting the calculus to economic optimization, whereas healthy and thriving communities have other goals as well. Populations as a whole have lost sense of purpose because the main reason most people work is so that they can stop working. But globalization perverted that mindset by prioritizing the needs of large corporations over the needs of local communities. People still want to stop working, but they don’t know how to reach that goal. This problem exists because more than half the countries in the world have sacrificed their own development in favor of developing workers for large cap companies in Western countries. Bit of a hastily typed ramble, but I hope the gist of it is clear enough.

IlikeKitties 9mo ago

[flagged]

intermerda 9mo ago
Around 2016-17 I read on a well-known white supremacist site about how people like Trump and Tucker Carlson are going to be so much more effective at achieving their goals than someone like David Duke who state those goals explicitly. Not in their wildest imagination would they have expected this level of success. Congratulations to you and those folks.
- dyauspitr 9mo ago
  It’s been so successful that stuff out of trumps mouth now aligns pretty closely with what David Duke was saying then.
vivzkestrel 9mo ago
why do you make it sound as if it is a bad thing? it all depends on how this is implemented. if you take every tom dick and harry from india, you are obviously going to run into issues. why not set a high bar for it
- IlikeKitties 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tomhow 9mo ago
    > Because german politicians are incapable of implementing an immigration strategy that isn't absolutely, undeniably retarded. Please don't fulminate or post ragey flamebait and offensive epithets on HN. HN is for people who have higher standards than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: We've warned you several times about this kind of commenting and you've posted similarly inflammatory comments in the past week or two, so we've banned the account.

decimalenough 9mo ago

This has no hope at all of passing. Marjorie Taylor Greene is on Trump's shit list after daring to demand the Epstein files too loudly, and she's introducing these bills on her last day in Congress as a symbolic gesture to her base.

cosmicgadget 9mo ago
And potentially as a parting shot at Trump.

mattnewton 9mo ago

Not only are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I feel like the current rhetoric in the US doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the metaphorical baby anymore. The strongest advantage of the US has always been the ability to absorb global talent. I don’t think that is a popular view anymore, and we are instead stuck talking only about stopping abuse that is ultimately still bringing skilled workers to the US.

calculatte 9mo ago
I think anyone working with the global talent can tell you there are absolutely no controls around measuring their quality. The skilled talent simply isn't skilled at all. They are willing to engage in kickback schemes. Even the O1 "genius" visa is being given to onlyfans models. Immigration is completely broken and it's by design.
- leptons 9mo ago
  Your take only applies to recent developments. For the entirety of the H visa program, it has brought in very valuable talent, which stayed here to generate incredible wealth for the country. "onlyfans" is a recent thing. The kickbacks are a relatively new thing. Sure immigration is broken, but that's what happens when the government is intent on breaking the country.
  - seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
    Onlyfans is a recent thing, but the First Lady had an EB-1 Einstein visa when she was posing for…interesting photos.
    - Muromec 9mo ago
      You mistyped Epstein visa
    - omnimus 9mo ago
      The fact that these visas are abused by people in power is completely different and in the end minor issue. I would bet vast majority of EB-1 are pretty out of the ordinary. This is just derailing the discussion. Visas for privileged individuals bad = immigration bad.

pcurve 9mo ago

Many large fortune 500 companies have already opened up large offices in India to perform core business operations, so this won't have the intended impact. That ship has sailed. All this is going to do is accelerate the trend. That will continue to play out until it doesn't make financial or competitive sense to do so.

JuniperMesos 9mo ago
Indians who work for multinational companies in India don't vote in American elections.

prmoustache 9mo ago

[flagged]

gip 9mo ago
This comment is totally unnecessary. There are tons of skilled American engineers who aren't extremists / activists.
- Larrikin 9mo ago
  "/ activist" Where did that polite term come from when referring to white supremacists?
IlikeKitties 9mo ago
[flagged]
- prmoustache 9mo ago
  > There are literally no other choices when you need to employ someone. The other choices find work rather easily already and don't need this kind of protectionsim.

gary_0 9mo ago

"Killing the golden goose" is the phrase that has come to mind repeatedly in the past few years. As someone living in a country that has been brain-draining into the US for decades, I'm quite perplexed at all this. It looks like the next Andrej Karpathy (born in Czechoslovakia, educated in Canada) will be taking their talents somewhere besides the US in the future. Maybe they think they can just cherry-pick the geniuses and leave "the rest" but that's not how it works; skilled experts don't just suddenly appear out of the vacuum, you need a pipeline with a wide mouth. It wasn't perfect but the US had the world's best genius pipeline, and it has already been largely torn down.

QGQBGdeZREunxLe 9mo ago
The question I think is more interesting is why can't Canada retain talent?
- m00dy 9mo ago
  The question I think is more interesting is why can't Europe retain talent?
  - RealityVoid 9mo ago
    Because of the salaries. They are much higher in the US. Also, the SV bay area has an absurd concentration of talent that you probably can't find anywhere else. Having a head start from anyone else helps. But don't worry, I'm sure that in the current climate Europe will be able to gather and retain talent. I personally would be much more happy to work for lower pay than contributing to the prosperity of such a predatory country. Funny thing, I considered working in the US a couple of years ago but 2 reasons made me give up. The emigration felt hard and confusing as if they didn't want people there. And second, my wife was afraid of the gun violence in the US.
    - seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
      Chinese salaries aren’t bad in tech, especially compared to Europe/Japan/Taiwan but even when compared to Canada. It’s pretty clear where talent could go in the future at least if Europe doesn’t up its game.

dyauspitr 9mo ago

More than 50% of our unicorns have first generation immigrant founders. All the standard anti immigrant rhetoric ends up falling flat so it’s just straight up racism now.

SilverElfin 9mo ago

Half of the Fortune 500 is founded by immigrants or their kids: https://fortune.com/2025/07/30/latinos-immigration-economy-julian-castro-carolina-martinez-cameo/ https://fortune.com/2025/07/30/latinos-immigration-economy-j... And H1B workers are paid slightly more on average, not less, than citizen workers. Not to mention that if you account for the cost companies pay to deal with the immigration process (lawyers, fees, etc) they end up being a lot pricier. The new hatred towards H1B is part of a broader shifting of the Overton window. First hate illegal immigrants. Then ones on visas. Then naturalized citizens. And soon they come to a place where they can deport 100 million, their actual racist goal that the DHS tweeted recently: https://xcancel.com/DHSgov/status/2006472108222853298 https://xcancel.com/DHSgov/status/2006472108222853298 Meanwhile China just launched their new K visa to soak up all the amazing talent the new far right America is pushing away.

ljsprague 9mo ago
Immigrants move where the money is.
gorbachev 9mo ago
If the majority of H1-B workers were white, none of this would be happening.
- happytoexplain 9mo ago
  This is a (very effective) distraction. The fact that culture and race have so much correlation is perhaps the most intimidating hurdle to civilized problem-solving we've ever been presented with as a species.

whyenot 9mo ago

If skilled workers can't come here, then the businesses who need them will just open up satellite shops there. Not an opinion on H-1B, just an observation.

palmotea 9mo ago
> If skilled workers can't come here, then the businesses who need them will just open up satellite shops there. Not an opinion on H-1B, just an observation. They're already doing that, because if the workers stay there, the businesses can pay them much, much less than if they bring them here on an H1-B. And it seems like that's much more common now, since the pandemic further normalized remote work.

RealityVoid 9mo ago

I would be incredibly curious if the mods could look into the stats of these political threads. I personally feel they are being manipulated at least through the voting system if not through active bot influence campaigns. It might be me being emotional about this and about seeing a country I looked up to becoming what it's becoming, but I just can't comprehend how some of the people in this otherwise great community can look at this and think it's the direction they want for their country.

happytoexplain 9mo ago
It's nuts - but I can only speak with anecdotes. The Americans around me are desperate to pull absolutely any lever that will slow the death of the American dream, and at this point even the "light" version of the dream is dying (work hard, be smart and a little lucky, spend on an education in a strong field, get a family and small property). Stats and experts be damned - that's what desperation is. In the specific case of those around me, they are seeing huge numbers of Indian tech workers, local and offshore, displacing them. That would just be normal competition, except that they are all of the same foreign culture, which makes them an easily identifiable "out group". Multiplying the indignity and perceived "un-American-ness", they exhibit attributes like nepotism, sycophancy, ineffective communication, and a willingness to work longer hours for less pay while producing horrible work. And these attributes are perceived by as desirable to unscrupulous short-term-thinking leadership. Of course this may exacerbate the problem (more offshoring).
- hippo22 9mo ago
  It's not "normal competition" to be displaced by immigrants in your own country. Allowing that is simply allowing the capitalist class to assault and weaken the labor class.
  - Muromec 9mo ago
    >It's not "normal competition" to be displaced by immigrants in your own country Is it? It's just free market deciding you are not needed. What's the problem with that? Are you against the free marker or something?

willvarfar 9mo ago

This is going to be an interesting take but I think it is plausible that we'll see a quiet growth in American tech companies having even bigger offshore campuses instead. Google Zurich or Google London could grow, Google does hardware in Taiwan and Apple and Intel do hardware in Israel, and pretty much all the big tech companies have the biggest chunk in Hyperbad. The withdrawal of the H1B means companies can't compete on offering them to attract talent, but that talent still wants to work somewhere and companies can instead complete on the perks they offer at those offshore places. Things will get interesting if Europe can become the place that US tech companies offer visa support for people to move to though.

cmxch 9mo ago
And with these new structures, new penalties for their existence will follow. Properly executed, those offshore structures will have to incur losses to exist, or will no longer exist.
- sifar 9mo ago
  History indicates regulation always trails corporate accountants.
gorbachev 9mo ago
It's already happening. Every major tech company is investing in engineering presence outside of the US. My employer sent out a company-wide email late last year outlining an aggressive growth strategy in two new tech hubs in Ireland and India, and encouraging employees to apply for open roles in those locations.

bjourne 9mo ago

Every state has the right to regulate its labor supply. In fact, that is how society got better. Unions setup oligopolies to ensure workers were fairly compensated. Unlike other commodities, labor cannot be traded on a free market because if you can't sell your time you'll starve and become homeless. And if supply and demand is a thing, it seems that restricting supply favors the sellers. The US has no shortage of labor. However, it is terribly allocated. Like "baggers" for groceries, old people (that should have retired long ago) working as "greeters", and thousands of Uber drivers working 12+ hours/day cause cities are so badly designed that you need taxis to get around. People whose only job is to put out cones on the street to force cars to slow down when the light is green... So much wasted labor. Why not try and "upgrade" these people through education (which tech companies should pay for in taxes) so that they can work more qualified jobs? Then the US wouldn't need to import qualified labor.

cmxch 9mo ago
You make the erroneous assumption that these people are defective and are default not qualified. Retraining has been tried and has failed every time when taken at scale. Just have the tech firms and the like cut huge, straight, salary replacement checks to the citizens who they harm.
- com 9mo ago
  I ran a corporate networking team in the 2000s with two of the five network engineer team members, being two years out of retraining (they were welding specialists in the former local shipbuilding industry). Non-white collar supervisory and work ethic issues, but excellent work in general. Had an issue with the team on-call car getting bullet holes once (suspect some drug dealing on the side, long story!) but excellent colleagues in general. I've worked with a lot of retrained and second-career people and I can't sing their praises enough.

SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago

I understand headlines can't be infinitely long, but it seems critically important to note that this bill is being introduced by a disgraced Congresswoman hated by both parties now on literally her last day in office. Nothing wrong with taking a good excuse to argue about immigration, but this is not a bill that will ever be taken up.

10xDev 9mo ago

Unfortunately there are consequences for its abuse. Is eliminating it the right consequence? Who really knows but it should have never been abused especially in favour of one particular country that is taking over tech. People talk about brain drain but people do go back home and they are opening more offices back at home.

Tadpole9181 9mo ago
And does this bill also establish consequences for offshoring work to third party contracts or satellite offices in other countries? No. So it solves nothing and just makes things worse.

pjmlp 9mo ago

This is only increase offshoring even further, unless the new administration now finds a way to tax VPN connections between company sites.

Yizahi 9mo ago

All power to the Americans of course, but this sounds incredibly dumb. Cutting legal and skilled immigration and doing nothing about illegal immigration? That will surely help the people. /s

reop2whiskey 9mo ago

[dead]

palmotea 9mo ago

Literally who cares? Most bills that are introduced go nowhere, and this one was introduced by a congresswoman who recently resigned (Marjorie Taylor Greene). But what Congress really needs to do is introduce an onerous tax on offshore labor, that's a much worse problem.

SilverElfin 9mo ago
> But what Congress really needs to do is introduce an onerous tax on offshore labor, that's a much worse problem. This is called a tariff and is the same as raising taxes on every American.
- palmotea 9mo ago
  > This is called a tariff and is the same as raising taxes on every American. Come on, what are you going to do next? Mic drop "I, Pencil"? Libertarian rhetoric is tired and old, and doesn't adequately address present-day concerns. It's not the 90s anymore, get with the times. FYI, free market economics has taught me to love the idea of tariffs, other similar taxes, and trade barriers. I'm glad those ideas are back on the table, and I hope they can be more competently executed after the current administration ends.
  - SilverElfin 9mo ago
    Labeling something as “libertarian” isn’t an argument. But a tariff is a tax. Which means you are proposing to take money from others to subsidize people who aren’t able to compete on their merit. Why should they be subsidized? If they can’t make it in STEM they are free to get a different job. But vilifying Indians and Chinese and other immigrants, who have made our companies and economy strong, all over a small 60k visas a year, is irrational.
    - palmotea 9mo ago
      > Labeling something as “libertarian” isn’t an argument. The label wasn't an argument. You're repeating the same tired old shit, like it's new and no one's ever heard of it. We've all heard it, it's old. It sounded good in the 90s, but it ain't the 90s anymore. It sounded plausible when the competitor was the Soviet economy, but that's not true anymore, either. Been there, done that. > But a tariff is a tax. Taxes aren't bad. You're talking about taxes like I'm expected to recoil from them in horror. > Which means you are proposing to take money from others to subsidize people who aren’t able to compete on their merit. Why should they be subsidized? What do you mean merit? Do you mean giving the best deal to the wealthy who'd just as well sell their countrymen up the river for an extra buck in their pocket? Being totes ok with a lower standard of living to make that deal happen? If you think "the market" is the only judge that matters, or a fair judge, you've got problems. > But vilifying Indians and Chinese and other immigrants, who have made our companies and economy strong, all over a small 60k visas a year, is irrational. If you think that's mainly what's going on, you're either blind or playing the misdirection game.

pjjpo 9mo ago

A representative thrown out of her own party lays out some meme bills. Why so serious batman?

daft_pink 9mo ago

Seems very unlikely as MTG is crazy