5 ms·
Government Proposes New Six-Figure Fee for H1B Visas
- wtfHN26 1mo agoMost likely these companies will set up GCCs offshore. Moving the jobs abroad. Whatever tax and living + lifestyle expenses that USA economy was making from H1B's will be gone. Good for the rest of the world.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- cyanydeez 1mo ago[flagged]
- rayiner 1mo ago[flagged]
- Daishiman 1mo ago> If being in the U.S. didn’t offer advantages they wouldn’t be here to begin with. For companies hiring H1Bs it's about being closer to clients and colleagues and just being managerially far easier than opening an offshore office, but the benefit isn't infinite and once companies have the chops for opening new offices they'll turn down the H1B hiring. The issue for the US is that, are you're saying, "having faith in your own country" only works if you have the process for developing unnaturally skillfull talent, which is just not going to happen once the smart people stop moving to the US as countries have uniformly distributed talent potential.
- hollerith 1mo agoYou seem to have interpreted "have faith in your own country" as "have faith in the people who grew up here" whereas I interpreted it is as more like "have faith that the parts of the country's institutions and culture responsible for its excellent economic performance will continue to prove difficult for other countries to replicate".
- rayiner 1mo agoThose two things are strongly overlapping. People are socialized into the institutions and culture that other countries find difficult to replicate.
- Daishiman 1mo agoHaving seen American institutions up close I’m sorry to say that if you subtract the people who have bought into the American dream you’ll find that it’s educational institutions are unremarkable.
- rayiner 1mo ago> only works if you have the process for developing unnaturally skillfull talent, which is just not going to happen once the smart people stop moving to the US So how did America become a world power before H1B? The U.S. was the world’s largest industrial power by the early 20th century with almost zero skilled immigration. We had restrictionist immigration policies from 1921-1965 and skilled immigration after that was a trickle until the 1990s. Apart from one-off events like German scientists after World War II, immigration was heavily skewed towards poor but hard workers.
- Daishiman 1mo agoBecause unskilled work and a gigantic natural resource base was the basis for wealth of the 19th century but that doesn’t hold up anymore?
- add-sub-mul-div 1mo agoThere's certainly fewer barriers to offshoring now that employees have insisted there's no benefit to being onsite.
- lingua_franca 1mo agoThe government can penalize companies for doing so.
- potatoking 1mo agoNot really.. Corporations have enough holdings abroad to survive and kill a party or two.
- lingua_franca 1mo agoAny examples?
- Daishiman 1mo agoAnything that can't be done by the company will be outsourced to a consultancy. This already happens; a lot of work in Google products is done by external agencies.
- lingua_franca 1mo agoDid Google give work to external agencies because American employees couldn't do it, or because external agencies were cheaper? What happens when they are no longer cheaper w/ the government penalty?
- Daishiman 1mo agoA lot of companies reasonably prefer to outsource software work that they don't deem part of their value-add or core competency for the same reason any other company outsources that kind of work. It may or may not be a cost reason (it usually isn't because contractors are not cheap even outsourced ones), it's mostly because you don't want to increase payroll for these tasks or the tasks are of temporary nature. This is not avoidable, and trying to make it illegal would just kill of American software companies. As an example: a friend of mine worked for a large consultancy that worked on menu screens for gaming companies. The reason for this is that game companies aren't interested in developing specialized UIs for each game but there are outsourcing agencies that already have entire pipelines set up for this and are basically a sausage factory of game menus for most major game engines.
- hn_submit 1mo agoWasn't this struck down because by law the Federal Government can only charge the cost of producing a visa? The amount cannot be arbitrary in any way. Or has the Trump Administration found a workaround for this?
- iAMkenough 1mo agoThe workaround is not caring and doing it anyways, letting the taxpayers pay for endless appeals
- QGQBGdeZREunxLe 1mo agoThere's an attempt under "Cost Basis" to justify the cost. === The proposed ~$8.78B/year in H-1B fee revenue would be allocated roughly as follows: USCIS: $3.00B (34.2%) EOIR / immigration courts: $2.96B (33.7%) DOL: $1.21B (13.8%) ICE: $1.05B (11.9%) State Department: $484M (5.5%) CBP: $76.2M (0.9%) Total: ~$8.78B/year > Notably, only $79.2M of the $8.78B is specifically allocated to DOL's H-1B program.
- throwa356262 1mo agoAll Canada needs to do to become the center of innovation now is to... become 10°C warmer.
- _aavaa_ 1mo agoWarmer would help, but the latitude difference still gets you on sun height and hours of daylight in the winter months.
- throwa356262 1mo agoI dont know, warm weather but not too much direct sunlight could actually be a good thing.
- beAbU 1mo agoIreland nd UK are doing fine and we're farther north than most Canadian cities.
- wetpaws 1mo ago[dead]
- jerlam 1mo agoThey're getting a nice assist from global warming.
- whoamii 1mo agoThis is why their forests are currently burning
- FatherOfCurses 1mo agoIn other words, companies who rely on H1B visas are not donating enough to Trump 2028 or the Republican party.
- budman1 1mo agoElon has been trying, he is not putting in money for the midterms for his health. Tim brought him a statue of gold.... This is not due to bribery. Everyone using H1B have already done the bribing. The Republican base is demanding this. They want jobs for themselves and their kids.
- bellowsgulch 1mo agoI vote for Democrats. Sad they didn't step up for American tech workers though, and the guy shitting himself did.
- the_optimist 1mo agowhy?
- bellowsgulch 1mo agoTrack record of the Democratic party vs the Republican party
- throwawayffffas 1mo agoNo, why are you saying they didn't step up. They lost the presidency, the house and the senate and the supreme court has had a conservative majority since before Bidens term. So what didn't they do, that they could have done?
- stackskipton 1mo agoMost American tech workers, myself included, have been asking for program to be reformed so it’s actually given to highly skilled workers and not used as method of outsourcing in the US. It’s not a new problem but Democrats and non Trump Republicans have done nothing and here comes Trump trying to something. It won’t survive court challenges most likely.
- bellowsgulch 1mo agoDon't give away our job to Indians? I mean what do you want here, it's not a post-grad course. If H1Bs are for "highly specialized knowledge," why the fuck are we taking in Indians at below par cost for American "highly specialized knowledge?" Why is there not a highly significant fee or compensation threshold to prevent abuse?
- 1mo ago
- bubblethink 1mo agoThis is a nice trick. Since SCOTUS barred universal injunctions, the government can implement whatever batshit ideology they want until the case makes its way through the judicial system. Often that is a year or two. And even if it is eventually vacated, like the tariffs or the previous iteration of this fee, the damage is already done, as you cannot go back in time.
- Obscurity4340 1mo agoIrreparable damage for thee, not Mee
- mexicojalisco 1mo agoGood. What’s happening now in the corporate world (and other places) is very distasteful. Americans shouldn’t have to compete against the whole world to get a job in the USA
- iAMkenough 1mo agoWhy not? Let the Free Market decide. If Americans can’t compete on merit, that’s their own fault. We don’t need reverse DEI. I thought the argument and attacks on DEI policies were about not hiring solely based on merit. Now you’re asking for a safe space where unqualified Americans get jobs over more qualified candidates.
- like_any_other 1mo agoHaving a country is now "reverse DEI". Good to know.
- mexicojalisco 1mo agoBecause the country through policy should not act directly against the interests of its citizens. Blue collar is gone and white collar is halfway there. Why even have borders? The government is by the people FOR the people. Not AGAINST the people FOR corporate profits. The h1b is being abused against it’s original intent.
- bubblethink 1mo agoThat's for Congress to decide, not armchair commentators on HN, nor the executive branch.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- cosmicgadget 1mo agoI don't think he is advocating for this but rather juxtaposing it with common right wing talking points.
- runicelf 1mo agoWhen you can’t beat illegal migration, just make legal migration more difficult, works like a charm every time.
- eudamoniac 1mo agoPerhaps the most personally impactful positive change that a president has ever enacted in my lifetime. Bravo. Trump is fucking up a lot, but this is a win for all American tech workers.