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End the H-1B Program
- mushi_shi 14d ago"let's just have hundreds of thousands of people move into the US every year, surely they are only here temporarily to work and won't effect US citizens housing or jobs prospects". The H-1B program is a disgrace, should be considered treason.
- verdverm 14d agoWho's going to pick the fruits and harvest the vegetables? Those are not jobs Americans want, among many more. Trump is using the system at levels like no one has seen before, perhaps he could set an example "Trump Organization requested record number of foreign workers in 2025" https://thehill.com/business/5603478-trump-organization-foreign-workers-2025/ https://thehill.com/business/5603478-trump-organization-fore...
- mushi_shi 14d agoFamously H-1B jobs /s
- bigyabai 14d agoNot so much that, but doctors, ATC, and other skilled labor the US needs and can't replace with AI. Is it better to scale back hospitals and airports instead of filling those jobs?
- sergiotapia 14d agoThey can be skilled doctors back in their own countries. I want prospects for my children.
- bigyabai 14d agoHere's a prospect for them; war. Do you like that? It's where they're headed, living here. Fact is, your kid could start working 40 hours a week at age 18 for the next 50 years, and still not receive a proper pension. The government won't have any money left for them, and even if they did the economy probably wouldn't be ready to pay it back. Their brilliant future is enlistment in a war half a world a way, to bleed on foreign soil and see their government ignore them. Hope they're planning accordingly.
- ryan_n 14d agoThis is absolutely hilarious and so incredibly misguided... I promise you that Mohamed the neurosurgeon is not the reason your children are not able to become doctors.
- Danox 14d agoSee China, Korea or Japan, Mohammed, who?
- verdverm 13d agoOmar Yahgi, a nobel laureate in chemistry, is moving from the US to China, originally from Jordan https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/science/nobel-winning-us-chemist-will-move-to-china-to-lead-ai-institute.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/science/nobel-winning-us-... Here's one on Japan and foreign workers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734139
- verdverm 13d agoIt's worth noting that we already have a shortage of doctors and many that are choosing not to practice. Radiology is a well known example
- mushi_shi 14d agoThe US would have more doctors tomorrow if they invested in US citizens and not foreign workers..
- bigyabai 14d agoOut of taxpayer's pocketbooks? The Fed isn't running a charity, there's 40 trillion dollars of debt that we all share.
- mushi_shi 14d agoThe country works for the citizens or it isn't a functioning country. They can take the 40 trillion from the people leveraging H-1Bs over domestic labor.
- verdverm 14d agotraining up doctors takes ~10 years the current administration and republican party regularly put down the very institutions needed to do what you want there's a saying about cake that is appropriate here
- mushi_shi 14d agoBetter start tomorrow, and no one but you mentioned the current admin or the republican party. Projecting much? Yes, and the people saying let them eat cake are the same ones promoting H-1Bs, they will end the same.
- verdverm 14d ago> no one but you mentioned the current admin or the republican party does not make it irrelevant, the stance you have is the same they have, while they also have another stance that works directly against it, I don't know your stance on universities the saying about cake I meant to imply was about getting to have it and eat it too, as applied to the party in power holding views that work against each other I personally think that nurse practitioners is something to emphasize, maybe more so than doctors, for the non-emergency medical care that underdeliver for in this country while paying twice as much as the next closest country I'd start with the basics here, reading and math competency levels are largely headed the wrong direction. Mississippi has done wonders for their reading, re: phonics, and I hope other states follow suite
- ckrapu 14d agoConversely, the question should be "Who is preventing American agriculture from mechanizing?" Or, if you are such a pessimist in America's can-do attitude, instead take it from the point of view of market efficiency. If a good cannot be produced cheaply enough for the market to sustain it, the solution is not to modify the social contract and undermine the value of labor for the sake of the good. We have always solved problems by innovation. The surest way to prevent innovation is to continually provide cheaper and cheaper labor. The Roman empire is an excellent example of this. Undoubtedly, these issues are more complex. However, this is such a tired old canard. Wages make labor, scarcity makes innovation.
- verdverm 14d ago> Undoubtedly, these issues are more complex. agreed, two points toward this are 1. American agriculture is largely mechanic already, which removes the labor completely 2. food is non-discretionary, caveats about choices of what king of "food" eg. fast vs healthy
- ckrapu 14d agoThe part of American agriculture which employs illegal immigrants is clearly not mechanized; they are not driving combines and are tending vegetables by hand. Types of food really are discretionary. Beans are an excellent vegetable and can be raised completely without manual labor. Trading salad greens for them would not be an overall nutritional loss. Perhaps the true market price for a head of lettuce should be 1.6x in a properly labor regime. To draw the distinction more clearly, suppose we had zero illegal immigrants working in the field and someone said “let’s reduce the price of some vegetables by a third and create a permanent underclass”. Does that sound reasonable?
- verdverm 13d agoin assuming illegal immigrants, bias may be perceived by others, we have visas for temporary farm workers https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/h-2a-temporary-agricultural-workers https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
- variadix 13d agoSounds a lot like “who is going to pick the cotton?” to me.
- ares623 14d agoif that's treason then what is dismantling US global hegemony?
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- mushi_shi 14d ago> then what is dismantling US global hegemony? Partly it is importing H-1B workers to displace US citizens?
- OsrsNeedsf2P 14d agoThere's fundamentally two schools of thought - those who are Pro and Anti immigration. People's opinions of programs like H1B tend to align more closely to their school of thought than they do any economic or social impact.
- bdangubic 14d agoseveral companies I work(ed) with ended the H1-B sponsorships. now they just outsource the work abroad, much better :) H1-B is smokescreen put in front us to “argue” about and pale in comparison to outsourcing which no one talks about (cause companies pay politicians a lot of money to make sure no one talks about it, like ever…)
- password54321 14d agoSounds like jobs that are the first in line to get automated by AI.
- bdangubic 14d agomay sound that way but they are not, there are many companies that off-shore just about all of their development and QA. so your comment is roughly equivalent to “we’ll all be out of a job soon” (which may very well be the case :) )
- Danox 14d agoWithin the United States, the upper division sales the need for H1B’s to the public within the country and then at the same time do all it can to still sub out everything to cheaper labor countries. The big three countries in competition with the United States, China, Korea, Japan. Do sub out some things, but they do not sub out the core critical part of their industries or allow their companies, to do just about anything they want when it comes comes to pursuing cheaper labor overseas to the detriment of their citizens it is largely a western phenomenon, two of those countries even have strong unions similar to Germany. Who are actually taken seriously. (see what the unions were able to do in Korea for their workers in Korea at two of the memory cartel companies).
- clipsy 14d agoHN posters when the topic is DEI or Affirmative Action: I support pure meritocracy! HN posters when the topic is H1b visas or outsourcing: Meritocracy is horrible and I reject it!
- _DeadFred_ 14d agoWhat is it when HN posters label winning an actually lottery (the H1b lottery) as meritocracy?
- bigyabai 13d agoHypocrisy
- muzaffarpur 13d agoand they would say they voted Donald Trump to bring down inflation. There is no point of engaging with this crowd.
- Synthetic7346 14d agoAs a hiring manager, I would love to hire only citizens, but only the underqualified apply. I guess the qualified citizens all just go the Frontier labs. We don't have the time to train folks, we need them to hit the ground running. Real conundrum tbh
- QuiEgo 14d agoI wish the stated goal of H-1B was "brain drain -> let's attract all the best talent in the world to the US, and keep the US (and US companies) the epicenter of the tech industry, medical industry, research universities, etc.". The stated end-game should be getting the best people in the world to stay in the US and become citizens. I feel like this could be a bulwark against offshoring, and in the big picture, protect US jobs overall. I think the system as-is is fundamentally broken. First and foremost, it needs to include equity when comparing the salary to US persons - H-1Bs are supposed to require "equal pay" to US persons, but they only look at base salary. I also think consultant firms need to be fixed. They need some cap such as "no more than 1 in 10 engineers in your teams may be H-1B. This should include consultants you use - e.x. if a company employs 20 engineers, and they have 10 active consultants, no more than 3 H1-bs across both in-company employees and consultants used. The consulting farms are the biggest abusers by far, and the low hanging fruit to target and fix. If we can't figure some workable way to fix it, just ban consulting companies from having H-1Bs outright. The system is also needlessly cruel to applicants. They should have some long buffer, say on the order of a tourist visa (6 months?) if they lose their job so they have time to try and find a new one before losing status. Can you imagine putting your kids in school and buying a house in an at-will state, on an H-1B? Yeesh.