A real fix would be fantastic.
In tech industry, we already began slowing down H1B hiring after COVID, and remote work only exacerbated that trend (I can't justify spending $150k plus an additional 25-35% in withholdings, medical, and benefits when I can hire 2-3 people with a similar outlay in Praha or Bangalore or Tel Aviv).
At least with H1B hiring, there was some incentive for industries like cybersecurity to keep some engineering headcount in the US. Now I have no reason not to completely offshore to Tel Aviv or Praha becuase the talent is there and not in the US.
This H1B change does nothing to solve the pipeline crisis nor does it solve offshoring (though even with a services tax, I'd be hard pressed to find the same ecosystem in the US like I can in Israel or Poland or even India for significant swaths of cybersecurity).
Finally, charging $100k per year per H1B employee means I can now justify a $1-10M investment in building a GCC abroad in CEE or India and availing tax benefits, subsidies, and tax holidays.
All this did is now incentivize me to push my portfolio companies to move hiring almost entirely abroad and choose a couple of high level PMs and EMs on H1Bs who would be open to becoming a Director of PM or Director of Engineering at a GCC abroad.
On top of that, the cream of the crop you want with a brain drain like academics in STEM fields, nurses, and doctors are sponsored on H1Bs.
America has a pipeline and skills problem in a lot of STEM fields and subfields, and coding bootcamp grads aren't going to cut it.
Cutting down on processing abuse by consultancies is something everyone can get behind, but this is literally the stupidest way to approach that problem.
Basically, back office work offshoring like in the 2000s is dead. Now entire revenue generating or complex IP product lines are being produced by offshore teams.
GCP's Security and K8s portfolio is a good example of that or that team at Facebook's Infra Silicon team in Bangalore.
I can do that in Tel Aviv over a week.
But when the circumstances are that opportunistic actors have been behaving badly for many years and adjusting to small and medium changes in laws that they see coming, Friday night massacres are exactly what's needed. What would be nice (but unlikely) is a similar health care sea change.
> The number of foreign STEM workers in the United States has more than doubled between 2000 and 2019, increasing from 1.2 million to almost 2.5 million, while overall STEM employment has only increased 44.5 percent during that time.
Knowing that STEM employment only increased 44.5 percent doesn't tell you anything about the comparison if you don't know the absolute size. Turns out that there are around 11M STEM jobs in the US [0] so the increase in jobs is actually higher for American citizens (approx 2.7M vs 1.3M for foreign workers).
Maybe the White House needs more numerically skilled people?
If I created 1 nepotistic software job for my kid and 3 jobs for software professionals not related to me, I think very few people would look at that and say "Oh, well three times as many non-nepotistic jobs were created, so we can ignore the one..."
Consider two scenarios:
1. H-1Bs get massively reduced over the next five years. Tech sector crisis ensues due to market shocks. Foreign workers decrease. American workers go up by 25% (~2.5M).
2. H-1B numbers stay as is. Tech sector relatively unperturbed. Foreign workers increase by 50% (~1.3M). American workers increase by 30% (~3M).
Wouldn't you argue that 2 is preferable to 1?
(I'm not saying that a crisis will happen if H-1Bs end, I'm just presenting two scenarios with different relative increases that I believe prove my point)
I think the $100K fee is a good idea. If these H-1Bs are exceptional talent, paying $100k to employ one is truly a bargain.
Its not like it isn't already a work market for talent. $100k is a significant amount of friction to overcome.
Why specifically, should the American employee, American homebuyer/renter, American college student uniquely have to compete with the entire world, when nearly no other countries on Earth have to, especially not at this scale?
You’re conflating cause and effect. The U.S. has had high immigration because it’s exceptional, not the other way around. The U.S. GDP/capita was head and shoulders above everyone except Great Britain by 1801: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/bdvazr/top.... That was before even the German mass migration.
Silicon Valley arose during the 1950s and 1960, during a period of very low foreign born population in California: https://www.ppic.org/publication/immigrants-in-california/
Hanlon’s razor is in that group of things the expert class is supposed to say so the expert class doesn’t use the tools of data on their masters and attempt to convict them. Along with Occam’s razor, correlation does not imply causation, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, data is not the plural of anecdote, let’s agree to disagree, no one can beat the market, and so on.
These all throw out the baby (Iran-Contra, etc) with the bath water (flat earth, etc), tend toward curbing scrutiny, and let someone off the hook. All of these sayings are worth considering, and red flags, at the same time.
They didn’t say that foreign workers got more of the jobs in absolute terms than native workers. That would be truly disastrous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
From the linked article:
> The operation played a crucial role in the establishment of NASA and the success of the Apollo missions to the Moon.
With the current system, you must apply in April if you succeed in the lottery, and then you can start in a few months in October, once per year.
Looks very uncomfortable for those who were about to relocate.
a) Pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000 — subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (c) of this section. This restriction shall expire, absent extension, 12 months after the effective date of this proclamation, which shall be 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2025.
The decision is hiring in the US (visa or citizen) versus hiring abroad.
Given that a large number of EMs, PMs, Directors, and even VPs are on some sort of immigration or work visa, this makes it easier to incentivize you as an employer to move some of them back to India or Czechia to open a GCC. This is what has been happening for the past 5 years now.
On top of that, vast swathes of STEM academia are dependent on H1B. You simply aren't going to find enough American citizens with a background in (say) battery chemistry to become a tenure track professor versus from Korea, Japan, or China.
Now you basically created an incentive for large swathes of junior faculty in STEM subfields to return to Asia, leading to a massive reverse brain drain.
True, but there’s a balance that employers have to maintain to get some in-state advantages from local or state governments for job creation.
That said, it makes more sense for America to get trainers or professors for niche subfields than actual workers so you can create homegrown talent, not sure why that isn’t done more.
People are smoking if they think “talents” would still want to stay in the US given this series of policies (i.e. recent cuts/restrictions on science funding, international students, and visas) from Trump government.
This is a good time for EU to build its own digital economy.
This is ridiculously stupid given how vast swathes of industries we want to redevelop need talent from our partners in the EU, Japan, Korea (still opposed to Hyundai's visa shenanigans, but two wrongs don't make a right - also interesting how HN is so positive about this but so negative about that), etc
Agreed. Rest of the world needs to choke the USA and prevent our talent from improving the US.
Theres no reason to try and help Trump.
ajaimk•2h ago
whatever1•1h ago
psidium•1h ago
cvhc•58m ago
OK, if I consider this interpretation, which of the following do you think will apply to already-approved H-1B petitioners: 1. Existing H-1B holder can amend their already-approved petition by "supplementing a payment" to become eligible for a visa and re-entry. 2. It's not possible to amend an already-approved H-1B petition. So existing H-1B holders can never satisfy the requirement. They cannot re-enter with H-1B visa anymore. 3. This EO is not retrospective. So already-approved H-1B petitioners (with or without visa) are fine.