10 ms·

Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee

alephnerd 4mo ago
This is great news for healthcare, academia, and engineering subdisciplines that don't have the margins to support a $100K per application fee. That said, Trump's announcement has done lasting damage to tech hiring in the US because it's set a price floor for opening a GCC (Global Capacity Center), which subsidizes in the CEE (Central and Eastern EU States), Israel, and India can outcompete most of the US excluding the Bay and NYC where the preexisting ecosystem's network effect negates it's impact.
- snihalani 4mo ago
  What's a GCC/CEE?
- jojobas 4mo ago
  It's awful news for all of these, it vacates any attempts to force these industries to make themselves attractive for Americans.
- horns4lyfe 4mo ago
  So your argument is we have to give American jobs to foreigners here in America or they’ll take them overseas? Pardon me if I’m not convinced
amazingamazing 4mo ago
Why can’t Americans do these jobs?
- genxy 4mo ago
  Because they were laid off?
- Wobbles42 4mo ago
  Being deported if you get fired is a basic job requirement. Keeps people in line. Americans can't compete with that.
  - ericmay 4mo ago
    Well they can compete with that. Being fired means you lose healthcare and much needed benefits and of course a paycheck and all of that stuff, right? If you're going to take this wildly cynical approach you should at least do a more proper comparison....
    - lmm 4mo ago
      > Being fired means you lose healthcare and much needed benefits and of course a paycheck and all of that stuff, right? I think there's some law that lets you stay on health insurance for a few months at least, and you can save up as a countermeasure to the loss of the paycheck. Bad as it is it's not comparable to getting deported after a couple of months.
      - ericmay 4mo ago
        Hard to say how directly they can compare, and it probably depends on the individual situation and of course their line of work and other such items. In the woe-is-me olympics they both seem pretty awful and, one might even say, competitive in terms of how awful they are. Maybe being deported means you go back to France or Canada or something.
      - usefulcat 4mo ago
        > I think there's some law that lets you stay on health insurance for a few months at least Yes, but often you will have to pay the full cost in order to do so, which will be difficult for many people after having lost their source of income..
    - bitmasher9 4mo ago
      I think forcing this comparison shows a lack of empathy for how compromised of a position the H1B really is. If I lose my job I have unemployment insurance, cobra benefits, personal savings, and I don’t require another employer to sponsor my visa. If I lose my job the most likely outcome is I find another one after searching a few months. If someone on an H1B visa loses their job the most likely outcome is they are forced to leave the country.
- seibelj 4mo ago
  They post the jobs in physical newspaper classifieds in the middle of nowhere, and do not post the job on their normal website, because if they posted a real job they would get hundreds of applicants immediately. It’s a fraud but it was tolerated until recently
- alephnerd 4mo ago
  [dead]
- curtisf 4mo ago
  The H1B visa is explicitly designed for high skill (high paying) jobs which companies have (supposedly) demonstrated they cannot find enough citizen workers. There are much simpler mechanisms to making that would make the enforcement mechanism more effective without destroying the economy, like prioritizing them by salary instead of randomly. You could also just have a more proactive government which punishes businesses for abusing the visa category. "Immigrants taking good jobs" isn't an immigrant problem, it's a big-business problem
  - JCTheDenthog 4mo ago
    >There are much simpler mechanisms to making that would make the enforcement mechanism more effective without destroying the economy, like prioritizing them by salary instead of randomly. The Trump admin already did that too: https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-changes-process-for-awarding-h-1b-work-visas-to-better-protect-american-workers https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-changes-pro...
- epistasis 4mo ago
  Anti-immigration policy blocks them from being Americans. I know an awful lot of skilled people that live in the US, pay high taxes, and for whose lives have been thrown into disarray by backwards, anti-immigration policy like this illegal $100k fee, but it's just the beginning of the ways that anti-immigration policy is being used to make the US far weaker, just in order for pyrrhic harm to immigrants. I'm pissed about it.
  - JCTheDenthog 4mo ago
    >Anti-immigration policy blocks them from being Americans. Yes, because the citizens of a country (through their elected representatives) have absolute control over who they choose to allow into their country. Even blocking a brilliant surgeon or inventor, if they so choose. There is no moral right to come to America (or any other country).
    - epistasis 4mo ago
      Saying "I have absolute control" is not a justification for making bad decisions that hurt the US. Furthermore, it was never a question of the US had a right to make these decisions, of course it does. Do you find the argument "I have the right to make any decision I want therefor it justifies bad decisions" convincing? I sure don't.
      - throwaway85825 4mo ago
        Bad decision for who? Their best interest is not your interest, no matter how you browbeat them.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago
        >Saying "I have absolute control" is not a justification for making bad decisions that hurt the US. How is it a bad decision that will hurt the US? Can you make that argument on its merits? No one doubts that there isn't that one genius here or there Last year, right here on HN I saw a headline where the "powers that be" wanted to increase Canada's population to 100 million (they currently sit at 30ish million). Is that a good decision for Canada? Where the fertility rate is so low population is shrinking? Like, do they need another 65 million people? Are there 65 million jobs going undone in Canada right now? Jobs that desperately need doing? The plan's the same for the United States, even if no one was careless enough to blare a similar headline from trumpets.
- reactordev 4mo ago
  We can, that's not the purpose of this.
- JCTheDenthog 4mo ago
  They can, which is why many companies do the bare minimum malicious compliance to claim thet they attempted to hire Americans for these jobs. Things like ads in the local newspaper that 99% of qualified Americans will never see: https://www.newsweek.com/h1b-job-ads-green-cards-targeted-immigrant-workers-2113714 https://www.newsweek.com/h1b-job-ads-green-cards-targeted-im...
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - pton_xd 4mo ago
    Those newspaper tech job ads have been going on for at least the last... 20 years. When you see those, the company already has the role filled, they just need a justification for the visa. "We tried to find a US worker but failed!" Which honestly may or may not be true, I think the ad is just standard procedure at this point.
    - throwaway85825 4mo ago
      Fraud and dishonesty is the SOP. Whole thing needs to be burned down.
      - bijowo1676 4mo ago
        If you are willing to discuss and argue with arguments, I can prove that the whole critique of H1B is nothing more than racism, hatred, and bigotry, from the people who are worst and least qualified to talk about the subject
        throwaway85825 4mo ago
        Surely the malicious compliant job ads are proof positive that everything is above board.
        bijowo1676 4mo ago
- BenFranklin100 4mo ago
  First, I think the H1B does need genuine reform to keep the big companies from gaming the lottery system. Having said that, I’m not sure banning H1Bs or immigrants in general is going to help American workers. Take tech for instance. Many tech leaders are immigrants. If they hasn’t taken in the Jensen Huang’s, Sergei Brin’s, Sundar Pichai, etc… the companies they lead and jobs they created would be elsewhere. It’s amazing how immigrants have shaped the US tech scene: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2026/06/03/immigrants-are-founders-of-most-us-billion-dollar-companies/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2026/06/03/immig... Second, when you ban immigrants/H1B, companies get around the ban by outsourcing to foreign countries. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2017/06/10/if-you-want-less-outsourcing-then-increase-immigration/#7c9509434349 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2017/06/10/if-yo...
  - Dig1t 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - BenFranklin100 4mo ago
      “It was built by Americans and regardless would have continued to be built by Americans.” The xenophobic ignorance of this sentence is breathtaking. America, of all places, is a nation built precisely by immigrants.
      - throwaway85825 4mo ago
        [flagged]
        junofan 4mo ago
        Refugees is maybe more accurate when it comes to country. We sprouted out of the social scene that was displaced by the English Civil War.
        throwaway85825 4mo ago
- dboreham 4mo ago
  TFA is about teachers in Alaska. I'm guessing from a brief skim that no Americans want to be school teachers in Alaska for the money local school boards are offering. This actually highlights two dumb things about the USA: prejudice against immigrants, and unwillingness to fund education.
  - Telemakhos 4mo ago
    This sounds like a self-correcting problem, if you don't allow immigration. Schools will have to pay more for teachers, which will raise salaries for native born teachers, instead of paying a lower rate to someone on a temporary work visa. The matter is a little more complicated than that, because Alaska also has some of the nation's most stringent licensure requirements with no alternative routes for high-demand low-supply subject area teachers. You could probably relax those artificial barriers to employment and get more Alaskans teaching without raising the salary as much as if you kept the licensure requirements. You could also promise student debt relief for teachers who serve in rural areas for a certain length of time.
    - bijowo1676 4mo ago
      >student debt relief It already exists its called PSLF Alaska is already one of the top states for educator pay, and as you know how US government has continioualy failed to solve problems by throwing more money at it, you know more money will simply cause more general inflation and will never solve it. US already spends more for education with worse results
  - trelane 4mo ago
    > unwillingness to fund education. "The United States spent $15,500 per FTE student at the elementary/secondary level, which was 38 percent higher than the average of OECD countries3 reporting data ($11,300). The United States had the fifth highest expenditures per FTE student at the elementary/secondary level in 2019 after Luxembourg, Norway ($18,000), and Austria and the Republic of Korea ($15,900 each)." Source: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
- phendrenad2 4mo ago
  Because in America, the boomers' retirement accounts are partially funded by insane college tuition (through insane college services and textbooks), so college has essentially become a guaranteed debt trap that gives you a lottery ticket to maybe be in the top 1%.
- olyjohn 4mo ago
  Maybe there aren't a ton of people in Alaska?
- protocolture 4mo ago
  They arent capable.
- mplanchard 4mo ago
  Do you want to move to Alaska, and rural Alaska at that (although even “cities” in Alaska are rural by most standards)? You get to be thousands of miles from your existing community, you won’t have a grocery store nearby, there may even be no way to get into or out of your village except by plane. Maybe in the winter you’ll be totally snowed in for weeks at a time. You could offer me twice what I make as a software engineer and I wouldn’t take the job.
variety8675 4mo ago
There must be a better way to prevent the consulting firms from abusing this program
- alephnerd 4mo ago
  There are multiple [0], but the announcement of this policy helped overshadow the announcement of the Trump Gold Card at the exact same time [1]. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312908 [1] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamation-that-adds-100k-annual-fee-to-h-1b-visas-for-high-skilled-workers https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamati...
- JCTheDenthog 4mo ago
  Rigorous examinations for English fluency and for competency in their alleged field of expertise would be a good start. I have several H1B coworkers in the US who barely speak intelligible English, and who barely understand normal conversation let alone anything technical. A blatant example of this that I experienced recently being that several of them could not understand that just because a method in C# is asynchronous does not mean it executes out of order.
  - cguess 4mo ago
    This is a hiring issue, not a legal one. The US has no official language, and no language tests, so requiring English in law would be dicey to put it mildly. What if I'm hiring someone specifically to work at a Spanish language news outlet?
    - DANmode 4mo ago
      > This is a hiring issue, not a legal one. When the law specifically dictates stuff like the talent of the person, I’m not convinced you’re correct.
    - readthenotes1 4mo ago
      [flagged]
ApolloFortyNine 4mo ago
I thought locking down H1Bs actually had bipartisan support? How can you argue there aren't enough jobs, and support H1Bs to fill jobs? I can see Alaska's case since encouraging people to move there very well may be a requirement, but surely there's somewhere between $0 and $100k that would convince someone to move there.
- fhfbfbtbt 4mo ago
  You’re putting words in people’s mouths. The fact that people oppose this solution doesn’t mean they disagree with the problem. We oppose it because it’s stupid; it’s the first solution that a dim-witted eight-year-old would’ve come up with. The program needs to be reformed so it only applies to people with skills that genuinely cannot be found domestically. Given the difference in expected engineering salaries for many citizens/permanent residents and foreigners/temporary residents, $100,000 is not an effective way of making that happen.
  - jojobas 4mo ago
    If you genuine shortage is not worth some 33k a year, it's not a genuine shortage.
  - horns4lyfe 4mo ago
    If people that think like you had actually done something about it, then we wouldn’t be to this point. But at this point the only people taking action are trumps, and if that’s the only solution being offered, it will be taken. The conversation here is mild, get the room temp on this issue outside of lib tech circles and you’ll see
    - mindslight 4mo ago
      So after 4 years, or whenever this con man finally has the decency to keel over, is everyone who supported these performative non-solutions simply to "be heard" (or however else they frame their emotional release) going to own up to the fact that they've burnt all the political capital on the issues they care about? Or are they going to blame their predictable failures on "libuhruls" and go right back to whinging while waiting for the next con man who might pay them lip service?
sergiotapia 4mo ago
[flagged]
jorgen123 4mo ago
For those not reading the linked article, it was not about tech (although valid discussions here). I had not expected this (this is about rural Alaska): > “In some rural districts, visa teachers make up 50% to nearly 80% of the teaching staff. School districts already invest $6,000 to $12,000 per teacher to recruit and sponsor educators through the H-1B visa process. Adding a $100,000 federal visa fee has made it financially impossible for many districts to continue hiring the teachers their students depend on.
- Izikiel43 4mo ago
  Yeah, most of us think of tech, but the program affects doctors, nurses and teachers for rural America.
  - infecto 4mo ago
    Which is sadly very ironic.
  - bijowo1676 4mo ago
    This was the most infuriating part. Big Tech has multiple carveouts to bring tech labor using F1/J1/L1/O1/EB-1 and various other visas, and they wouldn't even feel the 100k fee given their budgets. While non-tech sectors were the ones most affected
    - whateverboat 4mo ago
      Not refuting your point but... Most people who work in tech are not eligible for O1 or EB-1. F1 is a student visa, J1 requires you to go back after finishing your stuff. L1 can actually work but needs to be converted to either H1b, O1 or EB1 at some point soonish.
      - bijowo1676 4mo ago
        Plenty of people in tech work on O1 and EB1. F1 is probably the biggest feeder pool for H1. J1 does not always require coming back, it requires return only when funded by US government program, and return requirement can otherwise can be waived, esp if J1 is unfinished
ttul 4mo ago
There is actually a sensible way to do recruit foreign workers to fill jobs that locals for some reason can't fill, and it's just a few miles up north... Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) is not limited by annual caps or lotteries. You just apply (as a company) by filling in a few simple forms and posting a job in the "Canada Job Bank" for a period of time to demonstrate that you genuinely searched for locals to fill the role and couldn't find anyone suitable. I've hired many people through this program to fill a variety of roles over the years, and all of them eventually became citizens too. Once you're on Canadian soil as a TFW, moving toward permanent residency is not very difficult if you're a skilled worker with enough "points" (based on education, etc.). Some argue (perhaps correctly) that the TFWP suppresses Canadian wages and productivity growth by flooding the labour market with cheap staff from poor countries. And there is likely some truth to that. But when I hear how many hoops my US colleagues have to jump through with lawyers and such to bring skilled employees in, it boggles my mind. If the Americans were to implement a more modern temporary foreign worker program similar to what Canada has, you'd have to imagine the US economy would boom like it never has.
- naturalmovement 4mo ago
  > by filling in a few simple forms and posting a job in the "Canada Job Bank" for a period of time to demonstrate that you genuinely searched for locals to fill the role and couldn't find anyone suitable This is anathema to tech H1B abusers, which is why they post these jobs in obscure print publications no one reads, to deliberately conceal their existence, while meeting the legal requirement. Unfortunately for them, they cannot treat domestic workers as chattel, which is the inconvenient truth in most cases.
  - QGQBGdeZREunxLe 4mo ago
    You're confusing H1B with PERM. H1B has no job posting requirements. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62o-h1b-recruitment https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62o-h1b-recruit...
- horns4lyfe 4mo ago
  There’s nothing remotely sensible about what Canada has done to allow Indian ethnic cartels to take over their job market
apt-apt-apt-apt 4mo ago
Misleading title, implies national but only for one state
- losvedir 4mo ago
  No, the article has an Alaska focus because it's some Alaskan news agency, but I believe it's a nation-wide block. The judge in question is based in Massachusetts. Side note, but I'm sort of surprised that this "level" of judge (I think there's almost 700 of them in the country) is able to block these orders. It seems like almost no executive order is possible if you need a unanimous agreement of 700 people.
  - returningfory2 4mo ago
    Recently the Supreme Court has curtailed these nationwide injuctions: https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/06/supreme-court-sides-with-trump-administration-on-nationwide-injunctions-in-birthright-citizenship-case/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/06/supreme-court-sides-with-...
  - mindslight 4mo ago
    > It seems like almost no executive order is possible if you need a unanimous agreement of 700 people. No "executive order" of the type commonly thrown around these days, sure. It's quite easy for "700 people" to agree on settled law when those people are federal court judges. Where the law is not settled, the President should not be making up dictatorial "executive orders" that are intended to be applied with the force of settled law. Legal ambiguity bears a cost, and that cost should fall onto the government itself rather than people being illegally harmed. With the political mandate for immigration reform, all of these things could have been straightforwardly accomplished through the appropriate avenue of Congress - in fact there already was a bipartisan immigration bill well on its way which was killed! The sensible way to see these brash unilateral executive dictats are for the purpose of creating a mere appearance of addressing the problems, while ultimately just setting the stage for deliberate failure.
- albert_e 4mo ago
  There was a ruling in Boston also, reported separately. > U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston issued the ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenging a fee Trump announced in September https://www.reuters.com/world/trumps-100000-h-1b-visa-fee-is-unlawful-us-judge-rules-2026-06-08/ https://www.reuters.com/world/trumps-100000-h-1b-visa-fee-is... https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/08/politics/federal-judge-voids-trumps-usd100-000-fee-requirement-for-h-1b-visas https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/08/politics/federal-judge-vo...
jameson 4mo ago
It's more alarming that US doesn't have enough skilled teachers in the nation that we have to hire from overseas. Education is an investment to the future generation and must not be overlooked.
- horns4lyfe 4mo ago
  That’s not even remotely the case. We just don’t have enough people willing to move to rural Alaska.
  - throwaway85825 4mo ago
    ...for the given price.
  - jameson 4mo ago
    I'm sure the supply will go up if extra $$$ is paid.
    - SXX 4mo ago
      Except you'll have to spend way more than $100,000 to incentify US citizen from a city to move there and stay. And they not gonna have the same near slave H1B conditions where changing their job is just impossible.. H1B workers in IT even have an option to find a new visa sponsor, but nobody needs foreign teacher with H1B in California or Texas or basically anywhere else.
      - annzabelle 4mo ago
        I have to wonder if some kind of fly in fly out arrangement like is used for a lot of other jobs in undesirable locations would work. I've got a friend who's a nurse/paramedic in an indigenous community in the australian outback, and he works 6 weeks in the community with a per diem and company house, and then has 6 weeks to travel or live in Brisbane between stints. A school could do quarterly swaps of teachers, so there's a Q1/Q3 teacher and a Q2/Q4 teacher each working 9 weeks at a time.
      - 4mo ago
albert_e 4mo ago
Also a ruling in Boston: https://www.reuters.com/world/trumps-100000-h-1b-visa-fee-is-unlawful-us-judge-rules-2026-06-08/ https://www.reuters.com/world/trumps-100000-h-1b-visa-fee-is... > BOSTON, June 8 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Monday struck down a $100,000 fee U.S. President Donald Trump imposed on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, concluding that it constituted an unlawful tax Congress never authorized. > U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston issued the ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenging a fee Trump announced in September that dramatically raised the cost of obtaining H-1B visas, which tech companies in particular rely heavily on to bring on foreign workers.
booleandilemma 4mo ago
[dead]
a34729t 4mo ago
Heaven forbid we could pay better! Something something market signals... not like Alaska is hurting for money.
SilverElfin 4mo ago
The ruling was from a judge on the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and was an Obama appointee. The case was brought by 20 Democratic-controlled states, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell (D). The judge relied on the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Independent_Business_v._Sebelius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Indepen...), which said that Obamacare’s individual mandate was a lawful use of Congress’s authority to enact taxes. And this judge rules that the H1B “fee” is a tax and not a penalty or whatever the administration is calling it. It notes that the defendants (the Trump administration) tried to label it as a “regulatory payment” and not a tax. And the ruling says that the administration’s own labels do not matter, and that the substance of what the fee is does matter, and the substance is that it is a tax. PDF of this new H1B ruling: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.293201/gov.uscourts.mad.293201.106.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.293...
rayiner 4mo ago
I’m going to call this one as likely to be overturned on appeal. The Immigration and Naturalization Act provides: “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.” (INA Section 212(f).) Congress specifically gave the President the power to make findings and impose conditions, and the APA doesn’t apply to the President. The district court side-steps this by saying that the fee is a tax and 212(f) doesn’t delegate taxing power to the President. But that’s a separation of powers problem, not an APA problem. That is, if the fee was actually a tax, it wouldn’t be permissible even if the President had explained it properly as required by the APA. The executive can’t levy a tax by going through the procedural niceties of the APA. The APA angle is a red herring. So the real issue is whether the fee is a “tax” that only Congress can levy. I think it’s a fee, not a tax. The Supreme Court has distinguished between user fees and taxes as follows: “We there described ‘fees’ as ‘bestow[ing]’ a reciprocal ‘benefit on the [payor], not shared by other members of society.’ NCTA, 415 U. S., at 341. By contrast, ‘taxes’ are expected to ‘inure[] to the benefit’ of the wider public. Id., at 343.’” (FCC v. Consumers’ Research: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/606/24-354/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/606/24-354/) The H1b fee falls squarely within what the Supreme Court has called “fees.” The benefit of being able to bring over a particular foreign worker inures directly to the employer filing the visa petition, not the public at large.
- fc417fc802 4mo ago
  I'm in agreement with your position but I'm confused by the SCOTUS criteria for distinguishing taxes and fees. I follow the reasoning that you receive a tangible benefit as an individual for payment of a fee. That much makes sense to me. However what puzzles me is "By contrast, ‘taxes’ are expected to ‘inure[] to the benefit’ of the wider public." Do not fees also benefit the wider public to the extent that they fund the government? I'm failing to see any difference in that regard.
  - 4mo ago
xbar 4mo ago
H1B is a terrible and maximally abused program in its current form. Adding a $100k fee (which I expect eventually to be found to be not-a-tax and therefore legal) is not a fix, it is merely a revenue stream. It needs a couple things: 1. Break current gamification of lottery winners. Probably by requiring a greater diversity in country-of-origin of H1B visas granted annually. Probably involves some kind of % or per country cap. 2. Better wage protection for US workers in the minimum salary requirements. H1B is ostensibly to address skills gaps but is actually an sub-competitive wage scheme. People talk about H1B visas solving certain problems but inevitably the problems it solves is keeping wages low. For instance, imagine if rural teachers were paid like tech workers or crab fishermen. The draw would pull from across the country. Like tech workers and crab fishermen.
- QuiEgo 4mo ago
  - Say that no more than 5% of a company, rounded up, can be H-1b. Ex If you have 1-20 employees, only 1 can be an h-1b. Adjust the % based on how well the policy works. - give companies less power over h-1b holders. Make it last six months or a year after the date they get fired, so they are not so tied down. Don’t make it indentured servitude.
- tencentshill 4mo ago
  ctrl+f "diversity" - DOGE has automatically rejected your petition.
black_13 4mo ago
[dead]
spangry 4mo ago
Why don't they just auction H1B visas? 1. Set a monthly quota (for argument's sake, 5000 a month). 2. Each month the government holds an auction, and businesses that believe they need to bring in foreign labour can bid for however many visas they want. 3. The highest bidding companies get the visas. This way the government can control how many foreign workers come in to the country each year, and the economic rents from bringing in these foreign workers accrues to the public as additional government revenue, rather than as additional profit for corporations. It also means that the limited number of available H1B visas are put towards their highest value use. The company that wants to bring in a highly skilled foreign worker that's worth $500,000 in additional profit to them will be willing to bid up to $499,999 for their visa. The company that wants to bring in another Tim Hortons worker won't be able to outbid them.
- hdgvhicv 4mo ago
  Because the economic rents from bringing in these foreign workers accrues to the public as additional government revenue, rather than as additional profit for corporations.
piloto_ciego 4mo ago
The gnashing of teeth and “you couldn’t pay me enough to live there” comments are EXACTLY why I like living up here. Good. I’m totally fine with whiners self-selecting out of the state. Also? I’ve worked in rural Alaska. It’s not nearly so bad as the people on here would say.
- piloto_ciego 4mo ago
  Worth mentioning that I’m also for no real restrictions on immigration either. Bring on the H1Bs up here, we could use the help.

This is great news for healthcare, academia, and engineering subdisciplines that don't have the margins to support a $100K per application fee. That said, Trump's announcement has done lasting damage to tech hiring in the US because it's set a price floor for opening a GCC (Global Capacity Center), which subsidizes in the CEE (Central and Eastern EU States), Israel, and India can outcompete most of the US excluding the Bay and NYC where the preexisting ecosystem's network effect negates it's impact.

snihalani 4mo ago
What's a GCC/CEE?
jojobas 4mo ago
It's awful news for all of these, it vacates any attempts to force these industries to make themselves attractive for Americans.
horns4lyfe 4mo ago
So your argument is we have to give American jobs to foreigners here in America or they’ll take them overseas? Pardon me if I’m not convinced

amazingamazing 4mo ago

Why can’t Americans do these jobs?

genxy 4mo ago
Because they were laid off?
Wobbles42 4mo ago
Being deported if you get fired is a basic job requirement. Keeps people in line. Americans can't compete with that.
- ericmay 4mo ago
  Well they can compete with that. Being fired means you lose healthcare and much needed benefits and of course a paycheck and all of that stuff, right? If you're going to take this wildly cynical approach you should at least do a more proper comparison....
  - lmm 4mo ago
    > Being fired means you lose healthcare and much needed benefits and of course a paycheck and all of that stuff, right? I think there's some law that lets you stay on health insurance for a few months at least, and you can save up as a countermeasure to the loss of the paycheck. Bad as it is it's not comparable to getting deported after a couple of months.
    - ericmay 4mo ago
      Hard to say how directly they can compare, and it probably depends on the individual situation and of course their line of work and other such items. In the woe-is-me olympics they both seem pretty awful and, one might even say, competitive in terms of how awful they are. Maybe being deported means you go back to France or Canada or something.
    - usefulcat 4mo ago
      > I think there's some law that lets you stay on health insurance for a few months at least Yes, but often you will have to pay the full cost in order to do so, which will be difficult for many people after having lost their source of income..
  - bitmasher9 4mo ago
    I think forcing this comparison shows a lack of empathy for how compromised of a position the H1B really is. If I lose my job I have unemployment insurance, cobra benefits, personal savings, and I don’t require another employer to sponsor my visa. If I lose my job the most likely outcome is I find another one after searching a few months. If someone on an H1B visa loses their job the most likely outcome is they are forced to leave the country.
seibelj 4mo ago
They post the jobs in physical newspaper classifieds in the middle of nowhere, and do not post the job on their normal website, because if they posted a real job they would get hundreds of applicants immediately. It’s a fraud but it was tolerated until recently
alephnerd 4mo ago
[dead]
curtisf 4mo ago
The H1B visa is explicitly designed for high skill (high paying) jobs which companies have (supposedly) demonstrated they cannot find enough citizen workers. There are much simpler mechanisms to making that would make the enforcement mechanism more effective without destroying the economy, like prioritizing them by salary instead of randomly. You could also just have a more proactive government which punishes businesses for abusing the visa category. "Immigrants taking good jobs" isn't an immigrant problem, it's a big-business problem
- JCTheDenthog 4mo ago
  >There are much simpler mechanisms to making that would make the enforcement mechanism more effective without destroying the economy, like prioritizing them by salary instead of randomly. The Trump admin already did that too: https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-changes-process-for-awarding-h-1b-work-visas-to-better-protect-american-workers https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-changes-pro...
epistasis 4mo ago
Anti-immigration policy blocks them from being Americans. I know an awful lot of skilled people that live in the US, pay high taxes, and for whose lives have been thrown into disarray by backwards, anti-immigration policy like this illegal $100k fee, but it's just the beginning of the ways that anti-immigration policy is being used to make the US far weaker, just in order for pyrrhic harm to immigrants. I'm pissed about it.
- JCTheDenthog 4mo ago
  >Anti-immigration policy blocks them from being Americans. Yes, because the citizens of a country (through their elected representatives) have absolute control over who they choose to allow into their country. Even blocking a brilliant surgeon or inventor, if they so choose. There is no moral right to come to America (or any other country).
  - epistasis 4mo ago
    Saying "I have absolute control" is not a justification for making bad decisions that hurt the US. Furthermore, it was never a question of the US had a right to make these decisions, of course it does. Do you find the argument "I have the right to make any decision I want therefor it justifies bad decisions" convincing? I sure don't.
    - throwaway85825 4mo ago
      Bad decision for who? Their best interest is not your interest, no matter how you browbeat them.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago
      >Saying "I have absolute control" is not a justification for making bad decisions that hurt the US. How is it a bad decision that will hurt the US? Can you make that argument on its merits? No one doubts that there isn't that one genius here or there Last year, right here on HN I saw a headline where the "powers that be" wanted to increase Canada's population to 100 million (they currently sit at 30ish million). Is that a good decision for Canada? Where the fertility rate is so low population is shrinking? Like, do they need another 65 million people? Are there 65 million jobs going undone in Canada right now? Jobs that desperately need doing? The plan's the same for the United States, even if no one was careless enough to blare a similar headline from trumpets.
reactordev 4mo ago
We can, that's not the purpose of this.
JCTheDenthog 4mo ago
They can, which is why many companies do the bare minimum malicious compliance to claim thet they attempted to hire Americans for these jobs. Things like ads in the local newspaper that 99% of qualified Americans will never see: https://www.newsweek.com/h1b-job-ads-green-cards-targeted-immigrant-workers-2113714 https://www.newsweek.com/h1b-job-ads-green-cards-targeted-im...
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- pton_xd 4mo ago
  Those newspaper tech job ads have been going on for at least the last... 20 years. When you see those, the company already has the role filled, they just need a justification for the visa. "We tried to find a US worker but failed!" Which honestly may or may not be true, I think the ad is just standard procedure at this point.
  - throwaway85825 4mo ago
    Fraud and dishonesty is the SOP. Whole thing needs to be burned down.
    - bijowo1676 4mo ago
      If you are willing to discuss and argue with arguments, I can prove that the whole critique of H1B is nothing more than racism, hatred, and bigotry, from the people who are worst and least qualified to talk about the subject
      - throwaway85825 4mo ago
        Surely the malicious compliant job ads are proof positive that everything is above board.
        bijowo1676 4mo ago
BenFranklin100 4mo ago
First, I think the H1B does need genuine reform to keep the big companies from gaming the lottery system. Having said that, I’m not sure banning H1Bs or immigrants in general is going to help American workers. Take tech for instance. Many tech leaders are immigrants. If they hasn’t taken in the Jensen Huang’s, Sergei Brin’s, Sundar Pichai, etc… the companies they lead and jobs they created would be elsewhere. It’s amazing how immigrants have shaped the US tech scene: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2026/06/03/immigrants-are-founders-of-most-us-billion-dollar-companies/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2026/06/03/immig... Second, when you ban immigrants/H1B, companies get around the ban by outsourcing to foreign countries. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2017/06/10/if-you-want-less-outsourcing-then-increase-immigration/#7c9509434349 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2017/06/10/if-yo...
- Dig1t 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - BenFranklin100 4mo ago
    “It was built by Americans and regardless would have continued to be built by Americans.” The xenophobic ignorance of this sentence is breathtaking. America, of all places, is a nation built precisely by immigrants.
    - throwaway85825 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      - junofan 4mo ago
        Refugees is maybe more accurate when it comes to country. We sprouted out of the social scene that was displaced by the English Civil War.
        throwaway85825 4mo ago
dboreham 4mo ago
TFA is about teachers in Alaska. I'm guessing from a brief skim that no Americans want to be school teachers in Alaska for the money local school boards are offering. This actually highlights two dumb things about the USA: prejudice against immigrants, and unwillingness to fund education.
- Telemakhos 4mo ago
  This sounds like a self-correcting problem, if you don't allow immigration. Schools will have to pay more for teachers, which will raise salaries for native born teachers, instead of paying a lower rate to someone on a temporary work visa. The matter is a little more complicated than that, because Alaska also has some of the nation's most stringent licensure requirements with no alternative routes for high-demand low-supply subject area teachers. You could probably relax those artificial barriers to employment and get more Alaskans teaching without raising the salary as much as if you kept the licensure requirements. You could also promise student debt relief for teachers who serve in rural areas for a certain length of time.
  - bijowo1676 4mo ago
    >student debt relief It already exists its called PSLF Alaska is already one of the top states for educator pay, and as you know how US government has continioualy failed to solve problems by throwing more money at it, you know more money will simply cause more general inflation and will never solve it. US already spends more for education with worse results
- trelane 4mo ago
  > unwillingness to fund education. "The United States spent $15,500 per FTE student at the elementary/secondary level, which was 38 percent higher than the average of OECD countries3 reporting data ($11,300). The United States had the fifth highest expenditures per FTE student at the elementary/secondary level in 2019 after Luxembourg, Norway ($18,000), and Austria and the Republic of Korea ($15,900 each)." Source: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
phendrenad2 4mo ago
Because in America, the boomers' retirement accounts are partially funded by insane college tuition (through insane college services and textbooks), so college has essentially become a guaranteed debt trap that gives you a lottery ticket to maybe be in the top 1%.
olyjohn 4mo ago
Maybe there aren't a ton of people in Alaska?
protocolture 4mo ago
They arent capable.
mplanchard 4mo ago
Do you want to move to Alaska, and rural Alaska at that (although even “cities” in Alaska are rural by most standards)? You get to be thousands of miles from your existing community, you won’t have a grocery store nearby, there may even be no way to get into or out of your village except by plane. Maybe in the winter you’ll be totally snowed in for weeks at a time. You could offer me twice what I make as a software engineer and I wouldn’t take the job.

variety8675 4mo ago

There must be a better way to prevent the consulting firms from abusing this program

alephnerd 4mo ago
There are multiple [0], but the announcement of this policy helped overshadow the announcement of the Trump Gold Card at the exact same time [1]. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312908 [1] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamation-that-adds-100k-annual-fee-to-h-1b-visas-for-high-skilled-workers https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamati...
JCTheDenthog 4mo ago
Rigorous examinations for English fluency and for competency in their alleged field of expertise would be a good start. I have several H1B coworkers in the US who barely speak intelligible English, and who barely understand normal conversation let alone anything technical. A blatant example of this that I experienced recently being that several of them could not understand that just because a method in C# is asynchronous does not mean it executes out of order.
- cguess 4mo ago
  This is a hiring issue, not a legal one. The US has no official language, and no language tests, so requiring English in law would be dicey to put it mildly. What if I'm hiring someone specifically to work at a Spanish language news outlet?
  - DANmode 4mo ago
    > This is a hiring issue, not a legal one. When the law specifically dictates stuff like the talent of the person, I’m not convinced you’re correct.
  - readthenotes1 4mo ago
    [flagged]

ApolloFortyNine 4mo ago

I thought locking down H1Bs actually had bipartisan support? How can you argue there aren't enough jobs, and support H1Bs to fill jobs? I can see Alaska's case since encouraging people to move there very well may be a requirement, but surely there's somewhere between $0 and $100k that would convince someone to move there.

fhfbfbtbt 4mo ago
You’re putting words in people’s mouths. The fact that people oppose this solution doesn’t mean they disagree with the problem. We oppose it because it’s stupid; it’s the first solution that a dim-witted eight-year-old would’ve come up with. The program needs to be reformed so it only applies to people with skills that genuinely cannot be found domestically. Given the difference in expected engineering salaries for many citizens/permanent residents and foreigners/temporary residents, $100,000 is not an effective way of making that happen.
- jojobas 4mo ago
  If you genuine shortage is not worth some 33k a year, it's not a genuine shortage.
- horns4lyfe 4mo ago
  If people that think like you had actually done something about it, then we wouldn’t be to this point. But at this point the only people taking action are trumps, and if that’s the only solution being offered, it will be taken. The conversation here is mild, get the room temp on this issue outside of lib tech circles and you’ll see
  - mindslight 4mo ago
    So after 4 years, or whenever this con man finally has the decency to keel over, is everyone who supported these performative non-solutions simply to "be heard" (or however else they frame their emotional release) going to own up to the fact that they've burnt all the political capital on the issues they care about? Or are they going to blame their predictable failures on "libuhruls" and go right back to whinging while waiting for the next con man who might pay them lip service?

sergiotapia 4mo ago

[flagged]

jorgen123 4mo ago

For those not reading the linked article, it was not about tech (although valid discussions here). I had not expected this (this is about rural Alaska): > “In some rural districts, visa teachers make up 50% to nearly 80% of the teaching staff. School districts already invest $6,000 to $12,000 per teacher to recruit and sponsor educators through the H-1B visa process. Adding a $100,000 federal visa fee has made it financially impossible for many districts to continue hiring the teachers their students depend on.

Izikiel43 4mo ago
Yeah, most of us think of tech, but the program affects doctors, nurses and teachers for rural America.
- infecto 4mo ago
  Which is sadly very ironic.
- bijowo1676 4mo ago
  This was the most infuriating part. Big Tech has multiple carveouts to bring tech labor using F1/J1/L1/O1/EB-1 and various other visas, and they wouldn't even feel the 100k fee given their budgets. While non-tech sectors were the ones most affected
  - whateverboat 4mo ago
    Not refuting your point but... Most people who work in tech are not eligible for O1 or EB-1. F1 is a student visa, J1 requires you to go back after finishing your stuff. L1 can actually work but needs to be converted to either H1b, O1 or EB1 at some point soonish.
    - bijowo1676 4mo ago
      Plenty of people in tech work on O1 and EB1. F1 is probably the biggest feeder pool for H1. J1 does not always require coming back, it requires return only when funded by US government program, and return requirement can otherwise can be waived, esp if J1 is unfinished

ttul 4mo ago

There is actually a sensible way to do recruit foreign workers to fill jobs that locals for some reason can't fill, and it's just a few miles up north... Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) is not limited by annual caps or lotteries. You just apply (as a company) by filling in a few simple forms and posting a job in the "Canada Job Bank" for a period of time to demonstrate that you genuinely searched for locals to fill the role and couldn't find anyone suitable. I've hired many people through this program to fill a variety of roles over the years, and all of them eventually became citizens too. Once you're on Canadian soil as a TFW, moving toward permanent residency is not very difficult if you're a skilled worker with enough "points" (based on education, etc.). Some argue (perhaps correctly) that the TFWP suppresses Canadian wages and productivity growth by flooding the labour market with cheap staff from poor countries. And there is likely some truth to that. But when I hear how many hoops my US colleagues have to jump through with lawyers and such to bring skilled employees in, it boggles my mind. If the Americans were to implement a more modern temporary foreign worker program similar to what Canada has, you'd have to imagine the US economy would boom like it never has.

naturalmovement 4mo ago
> by filling in a few simple forms and posting a job in the "Canada Job Bank" for a period of time to demonstrate that you genuinely searched for locals to fill the role and couldn't find anyone suitable This is anathema to tech H1B abusers, which is why they post these jobs in obscure print publications no one reads, to deliberately conceal their existence, while meeting the legal requirement. Unfortunately for them, they cannot treat domestic workers as chattel, which is the inconvenient truth in most cases.
- QGQBGdeZREunxLe 4mo ago
  You're confusing H1B with PERM. H1B has no job posting requirements. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62o-h1b-recruitment https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62o-h1b-recruit...
horns4lyfe 4mo ago
There’s nothing remotely sensible about what Canada has done to allow Indian ethnic cartels to take over their job market

apt-apt-apt-apt 4mo ago

Misleading title, implies national but only for one state

losvedir 4mo ago
No, the article has an Alaska focus because it's some Alaskan news agency, but I believe it's a nation-wide block. The judge in question is based in Massachusetts. Side note, but I'm sort of surprised that this "level" of judge (I think there's almost 700 of them in the country) is able to block these orders. It seems like almost no executive order is possible if you need a unanimous agreement of 700 people.
- returningfory2 4mo ago
  Recently the Supreme Court has curtailed these nationwide injuctions: https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/06/supreme-court-sides-with-trump-administration-on-nationwide-injunctions-in-birthright-citizenship-case/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/06/supreme-court-sides-with-...
- mindslight 4mo ago
  > It seems like almost no executive order is possible if you need a unanimous agreement of 700 people. No "executive order" of the type commonly thrown around these days, sure. It's quite easy for "700 people" to agree on settled law when those people are federal court judges. Where the law is not settled, the President should not be making up dictatorial "executive orders" that are intended to be applied with the force of settled law. Legal ambiguity bears a cost, and that cost should fall onto the government itself rather than people being illegally harmed. With the political mandate for immigration reform, all of these things could have been straightforwardly accomplished through the appropriate avenue of Congress - in fact there already was a bipartisan immigration bill well on its way which was killed! The sensible way to see these brash unilateral executive dictats are for the purpose of creating a mere appearance of addressing the problems, while ultimately just setting the stage for deliberate failure.
albert_e 4mo ago
There was a ruling in Boston also, reported separately. > U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston issued the ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenging a fee Trump announced in September https://www.reuters.com/world/trumps-100000-h-1b-visa-fee-is-unlawful-us-judge-rules-2026-06-08/ https://www.reuters.com/world/trumps-100000-h-1b-visa-fee-is... https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/08/politics/federal-judge-voids-trumps-usd100-000-fee-requirement-for-h-1b-visas https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/08/politics/federal-judge-vo...

jameson 4mo ago

It's more alarming that US doesn't have enough skilled teachers in the nation that we have to hire from overseas. Education is an investment to the future generation and must not be overlooked.

horns4lyfe 4mo ago
That’s not even remotely the case. We just don’t have enough people willing to move to rural Alaska.
- throwaway85825 4mo ago
  ...for the given price.
- jameson 4mo ago
  I'm sure the supply will go up if extra $$$ is paid.
  - SXX 4mo ago
    Except you'll have to spend way more than $100,000 to incentify US citizen from a city to move there and stay. And they not gonna have the same near slave H1B conditions where changing their job is just impossible.. H1B workers in IT even have an option to find a new visa sponsor, but nobody needs foreign teacher with H1B in California or Texas or basically anywhere else.
    - annzabelle 4mo ago
      I have to wonder if some kind of fly in fly out arrangement like is used for a lot of other jobs in undesirable locations would work. I've got a friend who's a nurse/paramedic in an indigenous community in the australian outback, and he works 6 weeks in the community with a per diem and company house, and then has 6 weeks to travel or live in Brisbane between stints. A school could do quarterly swaps of teachers, so there's a Q1/Q3 teacher and a Q2/Q4 teacher each working 9 weeks at a time.
    - 4mo ago

albert_e 4mo ago

Also a ruling in Boston: https://www.reuters.com/world/trumps-100000-h-1b-visa-fee-is-unlawful-us-judge-rules-2026-06-08/ https://www.reuters.com/world/trumps-100000-h-1b-visa-fee-is... > BOSTON, June 8 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Monday struck down a $100,000 fee U.S. President Donald Trump imposed on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, concluding that it constituted an unlawful tax Congress never authorized. > U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston issued the ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenging a fee Trump announced in September that dramatically raised the cost of obtaining H-1B visas, which tech companies in particular rely heavily on to bring on foreign workers.

booleandilemma 4mo ago

[dead]

a34729t 4mo ago

Heaven forbid we could pay better! Something something market signals... not like Alaska is hurting for money.

SilverElfin 4mo ago

The ruling was from a judge on the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and was an Obama appointee. The case was brought by 20 Democratic-controlled states, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell (D). The judge relied on the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Independent_Business_v._Sebelius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Indepen...), which said that Obamacare’s individual mandate was a lawful use of Congress’s authority to enact taxes. And this judge rules that the H1B “fee” is a tax and not a penalty or whatever the administration is calling it. It notes that the defendants (the Trump administration) tried to label it as a “regulatory payment” and not a tax. And the ruling says that the administration’s own labels do not matter, and that the substance of what the fee is does matter, and the substance is that it is a tax. PDF of this new H1B ruling: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.293201/gov.uscourts.mad.293201.106.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.293...

rayiner 4mo ago

I’m going to call this one as likely to be overturned on appeal. The Immigration and Naturalization Act provides: “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.” (INA Section 212(f).) Congress specifically gave the President the power to make findings and impose conditions, and the APA doesn’t apply to the President. The district court side-steps this by saying that the fee is a tax and 212(f) doesn’t delegate taxing power to the President. But that’s a separation of powers problem, not an APA problem. That is, if the fee was actually a tax, it wouldn’t be permissible even if the President had explained it properly as required by the APA. The executive can’t levy a tax by going through the procedural niceties of the APA. The APA angle is a red herring. So the real issue is whether the fee is a “tax” that only Congress can levy. I think it’s a fee, not a tax. The Supreme Court has distinguished between user fees and taxes as follows: “We there described ‘fees’ as ‘bestow[ing]’ a reciprocal ‘benefit on the [payor], not shared by other members of society.’ NCTA, 415 U. S., at 341. By contrast, ‘taxes’ are expected to ‘inure[] to the benefit’ of the wider public. Id., at 343.’” (FCC v. Consumers’ Research: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/606/24-354/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/606/24-354/) The H1b fee falls squarely within what the Supreme Court has called “fees.” The benefit of being able to bring over a particular foreign worker inures directly to the employer filing the visa petition, not the public at large.

fc417fc802 4mo ago
I'm in agreement with your position but I'm confused by the SCOTUS criteria for distinguishing taxes and fees. I follow the reasoning that you receive a tangible benefit as an individual for payment of a fee. That much makes sense to me. However what puzzles me is "By contrast, ‘taxes’ are expected to ‘inure[] to the benefit’ of the wider public." Do not fees also benefit the wider public to the extent that they fund the government? I'm failing to see any difference in that regard.
- 4mo ago

xbar 4mo ago

H1B is a terrible and maximally abused program in its current form. Adding a $100k fee (which I expect eventually to be found to be not-a-tax and therefore legal) is not a fix, it is merely a revenue stream. It needs a couple things: 1. Break current gamification of lottery winners. Probably by requiring a greater diversity in country-of-origin of H1B visas granted annually. Probably involves some kind of % or per country cap. 2. Better wage protection for US workers in the minimum salary requirements. H1B is ostensibly to address skills gaps but is actually an sub-competitive wage scheme. People talk about H1B visas solving certain problems but inevitably the problems it solves is keeping wages low. For instance, imagine if rural teachers were paid like tech workers or crab fishermen. The draw would pull from across the country. Like tech workers and crab fishermen.

QuiEgo 4mo ago
- Say that no more than 5% of a company, rounded up, can be H-1b. Ex If you have 1-20 employees, only 1 can be an h-1b. Adjust the % based on how well the policy works. - give companies less power over h-1b holders. Make it last six months or a year after the date they get fired, so they are not so tied down. Don’t make it indentured servitude.
tencentshill 4mo ago
ctrl+f "diversity" - DOGE has automatically rejected your petition.

black_13 4mo ago

[dead]

spangry 4mo ago

Why don't they just auction H1B visas? 1. Set a monthly quota (for argument's sake, 5000 a month). 2. Each month the government holds an auction, and businesses that believe they need to bring in foreign labour can bid for however many visas they want. 3. The highest bidding companies get the visas. This way the government can control how many foreign workers come in to the country each year, and the economic rents from bringing in these foreign workers accrues to the public as additional government revenue, rather than as additional profit for corporations. It also means that the limited number of available H1B visas are put towards their highest value use. The company that wants to bring in a highly skilled foreign worker that's worth $500,000 in additional profit to them will be willing to bid up to $499,999 for their visa. The company that wants to bring in another Tim Hortons worker won't be able to outbid them.

hdgvhicv 4mo ago
Because the economic rents from bringing in these foreign workers accrues to the public as additional government revenue, rather than as additional profit for corporations.

piloto_ciego 4mo ago

The gnashing of teeth and “you couldn’t pay me enough to live there” comments are EXACTLY why I like living up here. Good. I’m totally fine with whiners self-selecting out of the state. Also? I’ve worked in rural Alaska. It’s not nearly so bad as the people on here would say.

piloto_ciego 4mo ago
Worth mentioning that I’m also for no real restrictions on immigration either. Bring on the H1Bs up here, we could use the help.