Yes, you have to be a genius to go through a 1yr online remote masters program which is mostly group work and essentially a fee for undercutting others on the queue:
If H1B is gone we will see a decrease in wages not an increase.
Not within the same job in the same location they aren't.
If you're on an H-1B and you get fired or laid off, you have 60 days to find a new job or be deported. That creates an underclass of workers who are willing to put up with much worse working conditions and work longer hours. That drives down working conditions and wages for everyone.
The actual data doesn't support this belief. 100% offer market wages and 78% offer higher than market wages.
2. It's a common tactic to employ people on H-1Bs in a lower paying job title while having the perform the work of a higher paying title.
3. You'd need to adjust for average number of hours worked.
Furthermore as we've seen with "return to office", companies are more concerned with having control than with the bottom line. This new dynamic gives them one more thing to hold over H1Bs heads. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of H1Bs increases.
As someone who works with colleagues from India (like, physically in India), I don't see any reason the company keeps me over some other random guy in India, to be honest.
I know as a matter of fact that my company and other companies almost exclusively create new headcounts in India/UK/Germany. US headcounts are only for replacement or as exceptions.
Edited to add: The local Indian economy doesn't sustain those many IBM employees. They are servicing the rest of the world.
The most likely outcome is that body shops can no longer afford H-1Bs, but big tech still can.
Amazon has over 10k H1B workers. Think about how much money it means.
Something like 0.3% of their yearly profit.
They're already paying probably somewhere near $200k a year more. Clearly it's not for no good reason. Clearly there is some advantage to employing them here if they are already willing to pay $200k more than they have to.
An extra $100k doesn't erase whatever that value is. The question is, is employing them here worth $200k to Amazon, but not $300k? Likely the case for some employees, but almost certainly not all.
For publicly-held large tech, the equation isn't about affordability but about maximizing shareholder dividends. Moving jobs overseas has long been the preferred means to that end.
If you have to pay 100k, you might as well hire an American worker. The "shortages" will mysteriously disappear.
And why these countries when I've already said the same about Indians vs. Chinese?
Current setup simply brings in foreign labor so that capitalists can reduce wages and they pocket the profit, while Americans pocket the costs. Not to mention migrating for purely economic reasons is obviously not going to make the locals like you very much.
All through Trump's second term, and before, people have said things precisely like this. And here we are. At some point we realize that people just make such confident pronouncements because they think it bends reality towards their hopes.
>Only an act of congress can change visa requirements
It isn't a visa requirement. It's a processing fee. As of midnight no H1B will be considered without the fee. It is very real, and it is absolutely going into effect. Now places like Microsoft are panicking in the information gap currently, but the admin has clarified that it only applies to new H1B applicants.
As to the legal limbo, not only won't there be one, the Supreme Court has rubber stamped just about everything this admin has done.
The guy has both houses of congress, the courts, the DOJ, the full apparatus of government...at this point I find it simply amazing that people still dismiss the reality that he basically does whatever he wants.
The specific quote can be found in a number of media sources-
"Those who are visiting or leaving the country, or visiting India, they don't need to rush back before Sunday or pay the $100,000 fee. $100,000 is only for new and not current existing holders"
That’s possible; it is also possible that it isn’t. And it is possible that even if it is, we are a few days or weeks away from an appeals court retroactively invalidating the injunction and allowing cancellations of visas based on failure to return when the injunction was in effect, or else “only” with immediate effect when the injunction is lifted.
If you are an employer who wants to keep your H-1B employees, you probably don’t want to gamble unnecessarily with this, you want the employees to act in a way which minimizes your risk.
> 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.
It's a stupidly broad law, but Congress passed it, and now they're too dysfunctional to do anything about it. So I guess we're stuck with it.
Their arbitrary nature is designed to consolidate executive branch authority that can be welded as a weapon against corporations that might consider supporting his opposition in the future.
It's a classic fascist ploy, and is further proof that executive orders should be banned. In America we do not have kings who rule by decree, or at least we should not.
Executive orders that violate, or direct the violation of, existing law are illegal (or, at least, without legal effect) to the extent they do that, but whether or not a particular order meets that description is frequently a matter of dispute, which can end up in litigation.
But now we run into the question of What is illegality without ethical-centric courts?
If you're on an H-1B and you get fired or laid off, you have 60 days to find a new job or be deported. That creates an underclass of workers who are willing to put up with much worse working conditions and work longer hours. That drives down working conditions and wages for everyone.
A $100k per year fee doesn't fix that, but it does make them so expensive that they are really only viable for $300k+ positions.
Trump isn’t going after them, he is converting them into another channel for arbitrary favoritism and graft.
Being against the H-1b as a bad system does not conflict with being against the way Trump is making that system worse.
But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not saying people were anti H-1B visa and now they still are, but disagree with Trump's "solution" I'm seeing comments full of "H-1Bs are good actually".
There was abuse of the H1B program, but this new EO also has issues. The biggest one currently is the rollout. There is no guidance, no mechanism to pay the actual fee, no clarity on if it applies retroactively to existing visa holders etc.
That's entirely true. But that's not what I've been hearing since this EO was announced. I've just heard pro immigration arguments about all the good H-1B visas accomplish with none of the downsides.
I can't speak for others, but for me this seems like
1) a shakedown of corporations and / or
2) a way to ban immigration without being technically a ban
But overall I see this as another anti-immigration "policy" that's coherent with the rest of the anti-immigration policies from this administration. Hence the pro-immigration arguments.
A shakedown of and a head tax on immigrants.
I wonder what's next. Maybe stealing their 401Ks and their SS contributions?
Here's Bernie Sanders comments on the H-1B visa.
"The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire “the best and the brightest,” but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad."
It's right up there with Oregon's old stance on the civil war.
I also would think that if this fee is applied to some countries and not others, it would pass muster since its the same as with tariffs - they don't need to be universal (or uniform).
I am not clear on the mechanics of this though. Is the fee is annual, one-time or renewal; but i suppose this will be cleared up once the EO is released if it hasn't already ?
So that EO is almost certainly illegal, and will be litigated.
bwestergard•1h ago
Are they are getting off the aircraft because they believe the "fee" will be required of their employment imminently, and that their employer will not pay it, and this will lead to their visa getting cancelled before they could return to the United States?
bananapub•1h ago
apwell23•53m ago
toast0•1h ago
hypeatei•58m ago
Would it? Aren't ICE agents showing up to court hearings and deporting people?
rwmj•57m ago
toast0•32m ago
Do you even have standing to sue from abroad about a visa revoked capriciously?
4ndrewl•1h ago
flurdy•34m ago
Hence, if you stay in the country nothing will change. And they can wait until this gets played out in the courts, media, congress etc.