Non cancerous link to the source.
Quote: Section 1. Restriction on Entry. (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."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."
So it applies to all H1Bs. Subsection c is limited (but will be interesting to see how it plays out) so I don't bother sharing.
Actual proclamation here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
Much easier for the companies to recommend/insist on folks fly back before the deadline to avoid issues.
※ - https://www.reddit.com/r/immigration/comments/1nlo8jd/h1b_pr...
This is not the part of America that is meant to be great. This is the part of America that needs to be brought in line to whatever storyline Fox and the media sphere on the right is playing.
I mean, why ELSE would the President make such a decree? Obviously because something is wrong. Taking action when it counts.
This is called a corrupt system. It's the intent. Trump will come out with gold visas for companies who pay him whatever favor he wants at the moment.
This corruption is meant to look at like 'just following orders'. You are providing the fascist lubricant by giving it a good faith examination.
Don't do that.
We are on our way there.
h1b requires that one company signed as responsible sponsor on form i129. they are the ones on the line for the payment.
ICE black shirts make it more uncertain on enforcement, but there's still laws.
Getting into the country before the deadline is the only safe way to avoid the uncertainty and ensure you don’t get stranded out of the country or in an airport for days or weeks while the process is developed.
This hastily constructed and implemented executive order is a terrible way to run a country
And they decide if you keep your job.
ICE is about to have a ginormous work force
They’ll snatch whoever
I myself am and live in a so called "shithole country ". But specially because of my Technical skills, I've got plenty of opportunities over here. I would never think on living in the USA. Even though I easily could via TN visa. But it's clear US people dont want me living there.
The calculus on immigrating to the US today is clearly negative, but many people immigrated 5/10/20+ years ago before all this shit and have lives there. They did not know any of this would happen.
I'd rather just have waited until an injunction or something next week. The guidance from my company is either make it back before the deadline, or stay where you are until further notice.
I understand your position, but it's a bit of a privileged one. Not everybody will have that option.
Scheduled landing or historical landing time? Flightera.net will show you landing times for 2 years of flights
The voters apparently wanted more of this per the Nov 2024 elections, when we still had a credible election process.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/06/us/politics/p...
>More than 89 percent of counties in the United States shifted in favor of former President Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election, according to a New York Times analysis of election results.
I find it likelier that people’s preferences simply changed.
All 7 swing states went to Republicans due to fraud, and it just so happens that everywhere else also went more Republican.
Or all 7 swing states went to Republicans because voters voted more Republican throughout the country?
Note that not voting is the same as voting for the winning party.
Democrat leaders did not promulgate memes that there was something fishy about the Nov 2024 election results.
Land doesn't vote. People vote. What percentage of the population live in those 89% of counties?
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voter-turnou...
The extremeification of American politics by the right has totally crippled the state. Business can sometimes come in an extract wins for itself, but everyone else loses. The political gamesmanship begat by Hastert rule, where wins must never be bipartisan wins, has decayed the government, betrayed the nation.
I'm so so tired of such loud utterly decoupled unhinged sedition, against the state against reality.
My favorite recurring threads these days is a simple one: society that wants to keep functioning has to disincentivize baldfaced lying, especially by authorities
The right is pretty uniquely anti government, is enraptured by conspiracy theories and madness. Reagan strongly dismantled belief in the government. More recently we've had mass movements like the Tea Party. It was overwhelmingly people from the right who threatened, dozed, and otherwise scared the living shit out of FEMA agents trying to provide help after Helene and Milton.
It's good to criticiE the government, to want and demand better. But that's not what we are seeing from both sides. We're seeing the wholesale hegemonic suicide, the destruction of the advanced economy that has so far distinguished and given America it's power and respect, by a party that has been cheering on anti government & decoupled unhinged conspiracies and which has stoked anger and destruction for decades.
It can go two ways! But the whataboutism doesn't impress me in the least. There is overwhelming lopsidedness, of those who care and are empathetic and want better, stacked against negative creeps draining this land.
Complaints about "the whataboutism" is a strawman, to distract and deflect.
Sure there's some violent the other way too, some Chinese Robber Fallacy. But it's vanishingly small, it's not systematic, it's not the nature of the non-right at all, unlike what the right how the right has been agitating itself, pushing itself towards stochastic terrorism. There's a whole delusional crafted reality telling America my god Antifa is raging through the streets, wanton violence everywhere, you are under attack! But crime stats are way down, and from here in DC and from what Chicago tells me, it's all pure fabricated nonsense, deranged madness, terror-mongering.
I don't see both sides resorting to political violence. It's absolutely core to look at the character of the parties. Dems have tried again and again for bipartisanship, to be inclusive of of both parties. Lawful respectful hopeful charcacter abound, respect for civility & wanting good for all. Those basic traits are so vanishingly rare on the right, who has been terror-mongering & trying to shock their gullible marks into never realizing they are being preyed upon by their party, that their party is getting their interests again and again and doing everything it can to benefit the ultra-wealthy.
Lets be clear - the election was won on inflation. While a lot was said about 47th's previous record it was often brushed aside with - Sure, this was said last time too and he didn't do any of this. Its the same thing all over again, people crying wolf etc. There was even consternation about Project 2025 and many well minded people didn't believe it would be enacted.
Now the approval rating on handling of economy continues to fall day by day. Immigration was the strongest suit at +10 is now under water at -4.5.
That means while voters might have wanted something to be done about immigration but they might not wanted more of this. This will become clear only during the midterm elections. With all the efforts being made to gerrymander and gain as many seats as possible, it is good guess to say GOP also realize that people didn't want more of this - and the only way now is to hold on to power by any means necessary.
So, that it allows others to say - This government was elected in Nov 2024 and if they are doing this terrible thing then surely people have voted for this.
They saw a man (and party) make baseless accusations to overturn an election, openly support a terrorist attack on the government, and campaign on freeing those terrorists and punishing those who went after the terrorists.
And they decided this man was better than a woman, especially a black woman. Because he was a man. I’ve been told this even by a few older women, that a woman leader didn’t sit right with them. And they were non white immigrants!
This is all ignoring the myriad sex crimes, fraud, and general lack of integrity of the man.
Like them or not, Republicans have done an excellent job of nominating and running an electable candidate even if he was not embraced by the establishment. Democrats had a chance at this in 2016 and went with Hillary and the rest is of course history.
The qualifying factor being that the candidate was a man.
I do think that no one would accept this kind of mismanagement if it were to affect them.
Let's say by executive order they make tax day Feb 1st on January 30th. And everyone who's late will pay a hefty fine. See how that would go....
This is no way to make policy, no matter the form of government
A non-functioning democracy would be if the people voted this way and mass deportations didn’t happen. Like how immigration went up in the UK after Brexit.
That’s a fine position to have. But be candid that you’re arguing for anti-democratic institutions. It’s the same reasoning why, at the time of the founding, states restricted the franchise to property owners.
One reason we are in the current situation is because we have discarded these checks and balances, allowing for the president to behave more like an autocratic monarch. If the other branches of government were performing their constitutional function, and if the executive observed the norms it's supposed to that's when you would have a democracy not just in letter but in spirit.
(Ironically I myself am an immigrant and a naturalized citizen, yet I find I know more about American civics than most US-born.)
Look, it’s hardly settled that “democracy” is a good thing. The founders didn’t think it was—they restricted the franchise to property owners, and provided for indirect election of the president and appointment of senators by stage legislatures. Just be candid about what you’re arguing, because these distinctions matter. Jacksonian Democracy has a theory of how decisions are legitimized—by the support of the masses. If you believe that the government should sometimes do something different than what the masses want, then you need to articulate a theory for who should make those decisions and what confers legitimacy on those decisions.
canada is a monarchy and a democracy.
usa is a union of republics and a democracy
they are different dimensions
> No, democracy is supposed to be two wolves and a sheep voting on who to eat for dinner.
The senate is exactly the sheep. That the senate is now controlled by the sheep is also wild. The senate is what gives a person in Wyoming has 4x the voting power of someone in California. The senate was designed so that the less populous states (the sheep) don't get rolled. That the senate is majority minority is wild.
The Senate is orthogonal to our discussion. It implements the federalist structure of our government, representing the states themselves. That’s why the state legislatures originally appointed Senators. We have muddled up the system through direct election of senators and should probably repeal the 17th amendment.
The senate is explicitly created to give more power to minorities.
It is not orthogonal. The senate is EXACTLY the mechanism to ensure majoritarian rule is not at the expense of the minority.
The direct election vs not is not consequential. The consequential part is that states get two senators regardless of population.
Democracy is a governmental system where political power is vested in the people. It is characterized by competitive elections and the safeguarding of human rights[1].
It is by definition undemocratic for two wolves and a sheep to vote for who to eat for dinner. It is undemocratic to have gerrymandering. It is undemocratic to have uncompetitive primary elections. It is undemocratic for the police to quell protests. It is undemocratic to have state-backed propaganda, censorship, and misinformation.
Maintaining a democracy necessitates maintaining its institutions. An authoritarian one-party state does not magically become democratic just because it has an election or manufactures support for its project. Elections are an insufficient condition for democracy.
Other than that, yeah.
How do you think the people on the other side have felt till now?
The checks and balances only acted as a way to hide the true nature of government.
QE should have caught that bug before it went into production
It sounds like a contradiction, but it's not, because the critique of a democratic society doesn't have to be limited to a decision process that leads to certain behavior, but both to the problem that triggered it and the solution that the system had produced.
Over democracy: no danger for it to swing into fascism or autocracy.
Over autocracy: bad governments can be replaced.
Additionally, in practice, it should feel the same that we were having for ages when liberal parties were on power. (Proof?)
Probably this is the mythical "better than democracy" form of government that we are all waiting for?
Thoughts?
I hate to break it to you, but fascism is not the only form of autocracy.
While dramatic change to H1b wasn’t specifically on Trump’s platform, unlike mass deportations, which was second, it’s within the spirit of the dramatic change Trump promised: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform.
We rely on things other than democracy to protect minorities. Institutions, laws, restraints on power; things the committed democrat believes are unjust constraints on the Will of the People.
This is another Bernie Sanders policy. Bernie is also a populist.
The differences between them are mostly "two-sides of the same coin"
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/op-eds/h1-b-visas-hurt-one-ty...
I didn't see that on Bernie's website.
The Republican party had been farming this hate in its talk radio cage, and only extracting its energy to support the status quo. Social media came along and opened the door to the cage, while Trump led it out with open arms. The spiral of harmful policy <-> more blind anger is now moving faster and faster.
Notice how these policies are focused on making pain for the individual visa holders, not the companies employing them. This $100k/H1B thing was the very first bit I've seen from this Trump term that I thought sounded halfway reasonable. But then rather than an announcement ahead of time with a clear implementation date, allowances for current H1B residents to either find amenable companies or prepare to leave, etc - it's just pure immediate pain for the individuals. Including making them more indentured as I'm sure many employers will tell employees that they're not going to pay the $100k fee so their employment effectively ends if they leave the country for any reason. (and also at this point who doesn't expect the policy to be relaxed in 3-12 months for politically-favored bigcos?)
It's just like the LG factory raid - attacking the individual workers in a show of performative cruelty, rather than focusing on the company. Trump has already been talking about creating programs to allow illegal labor to continue in "critical" industries such as landscaping, construction, farming, etc. Because when the rubber meets the road those are his own interests, even if his primary business has moved on to taking bribes in shitcoins.
He did not represent American interests. He hollowed out this country and sold us up the river.
Lots of bad decisions were made over the last few decades, now we are living in the result.
Again, the resources I found in a quick search state about 5M slaves in Rome, and buying freedom was uncommon.
Worth reading about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour, it's not just the practice of chattel slavery, and various forms are still legal in the US.
How did we get to a point where people casually call H1B tech workers often earning $120K or more “slave labor”?
Or give me your definition of slavery.
But you dilute the meaning of the term 'slavery' when you apply it to someone who has a 100% legally protected right to leave their place of employment and country at any time, without having to pay anything but the cost of a ticket. If an H1B employer holds a worker's passport and makes them work in slavery-like conditions, then that's illegal. If an employer treats an H1B like an indentured servant and makes them pay off the cost of their hiring and immigration, then that's illegal. It does happen in the US, which is bad. It happens far more often to immigrants in places like Dubai, whose conditions often are slavery.
Slavery is really fucking terrible. There is a reason we react so strongly against it. By saying H1B === slavery, you're being intellectually dishonest or using black-and-white thinking.
Dead wrong. Pay many years of one's and one's family life.
What is your point? Do you want to continue to debate the wisdom of diluting the meaning of the word 'slavery'?
This creates an incentive for H-1B workers to tolerate working conditions that American workers wouldn't.
And while yes, if have an ongoing green card process which takes 12-18 months, you may have an incentive to stick around to see it to completion, anyone who has their I-140, does not actually “lose their place” in the green card process. They can file for a new I140 and retain their place in the queue by retaining the priority date from the previous application.
If you think US citizens don’t stick around for a bit in a shitty job for a variety of reasons, then you’d be lying. People (including US citizens) don’t just quit jobs whenever they want without a plan like you’re making it sound. At least not ones that carry a reasonable wage, health insurance and other benefits. Again, all with the caveat of me not talking about consulting firms, which obviously don’t exactly have the best workplace environments.
That’s doing a lot of heavy lifting, which is what I meant by depending on where they are in the process.
You have 2 employees at the same company in a bad job market.
If employee A gets laid off or fired, he has enough savings for a 2 year job search and can pay for COBRA for 18 months.
If employee B gets fired or laid off, he has 60 days to find a job and make it through the hiring process.
There’s been 1 round of layoffs and there are rumors there might be another. The boss asks both of them to put in extra hours, which one is more likely to say no?
And FYI, you have 60 days to search for jobs but you can convert to B visas and continue your job search for another year. USCIS has clarified that, so H1Bs are also not that constrained as you’re making it out to be.
A large percentage of American workers have a spouse who also works full time whose health insurance they can switch too. If a company fires an H-1B employee they can also withdraw their I-40, which means their spouse will lose their work authorization.
>Paying COBRA for 18 months is wildly expensive
It's $400-$700 a month on average for an individual. More expensive for people with families, but as I discussed above in the majority of families, both parents work.
Someone here on a visitor visa also doesn't qualify for any ACA subsidies that an American scraping by on contract work while job searching would qualify for.
At a population level, if you divide people into 2 groups. And you add significant extra consequences to being fired to group B, group B will work harder to avoid being fired all else being equal.
The stress level related to immigration status, whether or not it was worth risking a change, etc, was way higher.
Lets agree - some H1B was exploited by sweat shop consultancies who pay less than Americans. And this might be incredible for Americans looking for work.
But in what world does this kind of policy implementation is justified? How is this a functioning bureaucracy in a functioning democracy where people can suffer like this?
No, it won’t, jobs (especially local jobs) aren’t a fixed commodity that are going to get filled. This will kill jobs overall, and result in more of the jobs (including jobs that didn't take H-1Bs to fill but were associated with businesses that had such positions) that remain being outside of the US as a direct result, and those direct US job losses will knock-on effects that will kill even more US jobs.
A presidential candidate should be able to campaign on "normal foreign relations", "independent authorities", "functioning government", "decorum in politics", "balanced budget", etc. shouldn't they? Maybe 10 years ago that would seem like obvious things you wouldn't mention. But now you should be able to win an election on _only_ that.
Change "Some" to "All major employers". I worked at a fortune 500 company in IT and all they hired were H1B employees over the past 15/20 years. The last raise we got that was above inflation and health insurance increases was before 2000. I left 2 years ago and after I left they fired almost everyone in the IT Dept I was in and replaced them with H1B.
So I hope this sticks. Plus remember, H1B people should make a fair wage too, all too often their salary is set by their contracting firm and is far far lower then what we got.
There are many people on H1B's whose employers will not have a problem paying a $100k fee, but there are also many other firms that will not pay.
But regardless, I sincerely hope this policy sticks without any loopholes. This policy will only incentivise companies to move more of their operations to other countries and only keep the bare minimum in US to keep their US business thriving.
This visa is very two faced. One hand, it's been used to import some really smart people into the United States who have gone on to do incredible things. Other hand, it's been used for job replacement by workers who can do the job but were "too expensive".
My original comment about being two faced I still stand by.
Or goto Canada and pay even more than the U.S. in taxes and take-home much less.
Who wants these 500k/year salaries in the U.S. anyway?
There are so many active H-1B visa holders, now everyone is just anxious. The rules can start for new visa applications. For existing holders, there should be a time period where people can figure out if the employer is even able to pay.
If this stays in effect for existing visa holders and the employers cannot pay in time or wants to change the contract, the individuals and their families are stuck. Plus, employees probably lose their job if employer cannot pay the fees.
POSIWID
This is what the system wants
Having to say to 'UPR' and other anti-atlantist militants 'you were absolutely right' was difficult I will admit.
Never heard of either of these 2 terms. What are these?
Anti-atlantist might also be read as Anti-Atlanticist or Anti-Western. Probably some form of pro-Russia or pro-China sentiment in this context.
Even if you like this policy as an end goal, the implementation is pants on head stupid.
This is a large net negative for 3 sectors that I can currently think of:
- American (software) tech workers - Healthcare - Research / Postgrad
Medicine and Research are fairly self explanatory, however, why the American software tech worker?
Let's say you're Microsoft, you have large offices all over the world - instead of hiring in the US and making those departments in US offices bigger, you're going to instead hire in probably the following places:
- UK - Australia - South Asia
It means less focus in the US which eventually will just become sales and marketing only with perhaps some smaller department sized tech jobs.
Another great Trump strategy that appears to be helping the poor whites but actually shafts them.
A sudden $100,000 per year increase on every H1B salary is a big deal.
To send you back where you came from (severance).
To send you somewhere where you have the ability to keep doing what your doing.
Some may fork out the fee for a year for exceptional staff, thats about it.
Anyway, forget the tech sector. The impact to the health care sector is even worse.
When you say South Asia could you expand on what specific countries you mean? I think South Asia could mean a few things to a few different people which is why I ask.
> It means less focus in the US which eventually will just become sales and marketing only with perhaps some smaller department sized tech jobs.
As an American I'm curious about this, can you expand on how this will happen or how you think it might happen? If I recall correctly the figure for active H1B visa holders in the United States is under 1 million, so are you asserting that those visa holders all or mostly leave the United States and then the tech jobs that remain will be small in number are most folks working at companies like Google or Microsoft will just be working in sales and marketing? If that's not what you meant to say could you expand?
I was in the process of moving one engineer from Dubai to Manchester, probably all in the process is £20,000-£30,000 overall, spread over several years.
South Asia is India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Predominantly this is India and Pakistan though.
> As an American I'm curious about this, can you expand on how this will happen or how you think it might happen?
Best guess, those software engineering departments with predominantly South Asian engineers will cease to exist, they'll buy real estate in London/Sydney which is a much better long term investment because London prices always go up.
Severance is also REALLY easy in the US compared to countries where actual labour laws exist.
Sales and Marketing will stay, they probably need that American presence, they don't need that in software engineering because the Internet exists.
I was reading just the other day that some US companies have been spending lavishly on office space in the City of London [1].
[1] No paywall https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/apple-citadel-and...
For the UK this is amazing news, it also allows for places like Birmingham and Manchester to get a significant boost.
India is real but every company is already there and very little real high end R&D is happening there - it’s all mostly basic outsourcing. I doubt H1B situation changes anything here frankly.
Otherwise it's just a dictatorship of the majority, which it is now.
There are a fair bit of international flights in the 10-12 hour range. Add some time to pack, get to airport, baggage check, get through security & how the flight times line up and this seems calculated in a way that is precisely not doable. Never mind people not perpetually online and only seeing this a couple hours later
Meanwhile there is to my knowledge no reason why this couldn't have been 48 hours. Still fast, but doable for anyone suitably determined.
This should be a bill introduced in Congress, discussed in committee, voted on, and enacted with a date months in the future when it goes into effect, so that people, companies and government agencies can prepare and plan ... you know like an country with laws and procedures.
We have laws against that. But they were ignored.
> "It's not our guy's fault for going after these people, it's your guy's fault for letting so many in"
They are just rationalizing their hate.
I think data availability has been poor during the Trump administration, but from public numbers that I could find for spring of this year, it's not clear that even with all the raids the Trump administration is actually deporting more people than prior administrations ... but perhaps the goal is to keep more people in detention.
https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/immigration-enforcem... https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2019/table3... https://usafacts.org/answers/how-many-people-were-deported-f...
Hanlon's razor. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Regardless of what you think about the wisdom of the policy itself, implementing it rapidly is...probably not the best decision. But it's also par for the course for this administration.
It's not clear to me that this is an intended consequence of the policy change, or just Microsoft's attorneys being conservative in the face of chaos. A plain-text reading of the EO does not support the interpretation that people with existing H1B visas would be subject to the restrictions, but rather, seems like an ambiguity in the wording that a conservative lawyer could interpret in that manner:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
> Section 1. Restriction on Entry. (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 administration has a pattern of implementing policies this way, regardless of domain.
How is this adequately explained by stupidity? Sincerely, I truly cannot imagine anyone in the US government is stupid enough to think "15 hours is enough time". This is like, 3rd grade levels of thought.
Read the EO. There's literally nothing in the EO stating that pre-existing visa holders are subject to the new rules. Someone else is interpreting the EO, and you're assuming that their opinion is the correct interpretation.
How are you interpreting "on entry"?
> ...except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000
Again, just doing a plain text reading, this seems to be intended to apply to new applicants, but they didn't explicitly spell it out. It's the sort of thing that would be debated endlessly in the rounds of legal review that accompany a...more traditional...change to law, but when done quickly via EO tends to get overlooked.
Where the supplement would obviously be for the existing ones
>“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains."
sauce: https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-v...
The fact that this administration routinely implements policies of all types in this way suggests that rambunctious implementation is the default explanation for any particular outcome.
Neither do you.
Hanlon's razor is a good baseline when you have no information pointing to either option.
But when you have an administration that climbs onto a podium and announces they want to traumatize people, that's a pretty direct admission of malice in my books. You're free to conclude we're just seeing a string of repeated stupidity, but frankly I think it's incredibly naive to still given them the benefit of doubt.
When you find yourself violating a philosophical razor, it's a strong indication that you should question your priors.
How does that result in a fee for re-entering on a valid existing visa? Is this less about formal policy and more about Microsoft hedging against the possibility of chaotic and arbitrary enforcement? Which seems not-unlikely when a large bureaucracy has a rule change dropped on it with 24 hours to implement…
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trumps-unusual-nvid...
Even if he does, there is damage here that will not be undone.
We need to stop treating this monster like a wayward child.
I'm Brazilian, I work in the US on H1-B. I'm on vacations in Brazil with my wife and kids, one in school age.
I also came to renew my visa stamp, as I had my extension approved not long ago. My visa is valid from September 21st, so, same day as this proclamation takes effect. And I can't go back before that because my visa is not valid.
My flight was scheduled for tomorrow, and I would land in US by Sep 22nd. Of course, I rescheduled that to not lose my ticket.
I left food in the freezer, car in the garage, and my son is missing classes. And all my family's stuff in the house. Now, I have no idea what will happen, I can't go in to get my things. At least the company is giving support, and I couldn't be more thankful.
But the thing that makes me sadder is the blatant racism towards my Indian friends, reddit and x was swarmed by an army of people that was enabled to call them... whatever they want... It's a good time to be offline now.
The H1-B program has its problems, and I understand the whole frustration with the job market, but this is not they way to solve anything.
Lot of people share the sentiments but afraid to post because they are labelled as racist.
want to take a wild guess why this is? and not against any other nationality of immigrants in tech?
> i am telling myself that people who were posting those things are small in numbers.
Have you heard about the term "the silent majority"?
"On vacation" makes it sounds like workers were just off "having fun" (which of course is their right), but as your story illustrates, many immigrants are required to leave the US for their visa renewals. To be forced to leave the country and then be barred from return by an sudden change in the rules is the most unjust cruelty.
As an American, I'm deeply ashamed by this. I hope you and your family are able to return home soon. Thank you for sharing your story.
With immigration are unquestionably tough decisions, tradeoffs, philosophies on the issue, and demographics in general. It gets heated, fast. I know I'm biased, but I wish trust had not degraded to such an extent you could believe people could deal with these topics in good faith.
But how can anyone support this kind of craven policymaking where uncertainty and cruelty are features and not bugs? Just shock and awe and deafening silence.
That's what's so dishearterning. Is that who we are now, or is this just a timely excuse to be who we always have?
America knows what it wanted and it got it.
But a lot of skilled labour left anyway. Partly because the general atmosphere got unpleasant. But also highly paid people have spouses, children, parents and other relatives. Once you are told you barely cleared (very high) criteria, you can be pretty sure your retired parents won't, if ever you need them to move in with you.
So the effect may well be that the kind of people whose productivity and tax bracket makes a 100k fee justifiable simply choose to go elsewhere.
Especially when the administration makes their contempt for any rights they have so obvious.
But when you're insecure the feelings you get from the latter are more comforting in the short term.
HN's insistence on decorum is just really poorly suited to the moment.
The immigration system should be designed to block retired parents from moving country to live with their working age adult children who have migrated.
One reason to have immigration is to improve a country's dependency ratio: the ratio of working age population to children and retirees.
The ideal immigrants are young well-educated parents that can stay in the workforce for 40+ years with healthy children that are just about to enter the school system.
That way the receiving country didn't need to invest in educating the parents originally, don't need to pay the healthcare costs of very young infants, and it provides the best possible addition to the the receiving country's demographic structure so the host country benefits from a whole working life of tax payments and all the value created by their work output.
The economic case for even skilled immigration is far less compelling for a receiving nation without such restrictions on immigrating retirees.
Should the country receiving the immigrants let elderly grandparents be cared for by their own country's pension and aged-care and healthcare industry, instead of burdening the receiving countries?
Absolutely unequivocally yes.
The grandparents can always come visit on tourist visas and the immigrants can visit their original country too.
I seem to recall the notion that elderly people are normally isolated, atomized wards of the “aged-care industry” as a relatively recent innovation, no? Versus people seeking to bring elderly relatives to reproduce the sort of multigenerational households that more traditionally handled aging care, and that do that today in other parts of the world?
Nations are able to afford it with a healthy dependency ratio, but with the Baby Boom generation leaving the workforce, it will no longer be possible.
A young family who have recently migrated are saving for a house and college, to make them pay for a decade of end-to-life treatment (cancer treatment, dialysis) at United States price ranges is unaffordable even for very high income earners.
Remember the two parents have four grandparents, and two children (the receiving country would love for them to have a third).
That said, I am open to a special visa with a million dollar escrowed deposit per elderly parent to cover their healthcare. Without extreme restrictions they are bound to become a healthcare burden on the system.
I was of the impression that, in the US at least, such immigrants might be allowed to purchase Medicare if they’d been here for a long time and worked/paid payroll taxes for many years—but that they certainly wouldn’t qualify to get it for free in the way native-born people do. Native-born people with 10 years of formal employment, anyway.
Not sure how that works with Medicaid—it sounds like [1] some states have chosen to implement that in ways immigrants can access if they come in on green cards and spend their working lives in the US, paying in to the system—but that seems to me more like a local policy choice than a primary feature of the immigration system.
For that matter, in your formulation, should the working-age immigrants themselves, who permanently resettle and work their whole life in the US, be denied access to old-age benefits when the time comes?
[0] https://www.kff.org/faqs/medicare-open-enrollment-faqs/enrol...
[1] [PDF] https://www.health.ny.gov/health_care/medicaid/publications/...
Oh, I wasn't familiar with the 'public charge' requirement of the US immigration system. That's excellent in principle, and wonderful if enforced adequately.
> Not sure how that works with Medicaid—it sounds like [1] some states have chosen to implement that in ways immigrants can access if they come in on green cards and spend their working lives in the US, paying in to the system—but that seems to me more like a local policy choice than a primary feature of the immigration system.
Yes, agree that's not a feature of the immigration itself but a local policy choice. Some states are very lax with Medicaid qualification rules eg, California recently expanding coverage to illegal immigrants with loosened criteria that legal immigrants won't qualify. I recall changes were made in response to federal tightening of rules. It's still a bad policy, but a local one.
> For that matter, in your formulation, should the working-age immigrants themselves, who permanently resettle and work their whole life in the US, be denied access to old-age benefits when the time comes?
No, one principle is they have paid into the system for a long period of time then they should of course be able to access benefits.
The other principle is by that time they are ready to retire they will certainly permanent residents but hopefully citizens, so not seen differently than other citizens.
Even moreso with arbitrary rule changes with zero deadlines meaning they can't even necessarily fly back in emergencies without risking losing their status in the US?
Based on my reading of the law, you can overstay a tourist visa and receive Medicaid coverage in California relatively quickly.
(But that's a different discussion)
Are those the people Europe and the US are look to immigrate?
GP mentioned “abandoning your parents” when you immigrate as if that’s absurd. In reality it’s the most normal thing imaginable.
I know hundreds of people who live outside their home country and I can’t thing of a single one of them who took their parents with them. When does that ever happen?
My wife "abandoned" her entire family to come to America at 18, didn't speak a word of english, had a suitcase and barely enough money to survive a week.
She doesn't regret it and her family doesn't think they were abandoned.
This "abandoned" idea is great example of a poor idea that goes into policy that doesn't match reality.
That's what I'm responding to. That the first immigrants to America came under very different circumstances. Circumstances that wouldn't get them into America today.
Abandoning your parents isn't absurd when you don't have other good options. It's also not the most normal thing imaginable. Would you abandon your parents and go to another country if they can't join you at all?
We want the "best and brightest" but we also want them to have to abandon their parents to do it? Many of the best and brightest have other options.
For the most part it was companies looking for gold, furs etc, with the support of their governments. Companies founded the colonies and trading posts for the benefit of the stockholders and the governments. The consideration of colonists was a distant third. When the supply of easy marks dried up they turned to indentured labour and then slavery.
> a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.
It’s hard to separate what’s supported by the public and what are random hobby horses of the far right once they get in power.
Because the US has historically been relatively more positive to immigration I am skeptical that we would see the same reaction as in the UK or other countries in the long run (in the short term, it’s all a sht show)
https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigratio...
Don't forget to quote the parts that contradict your statement:
> After climbing to 55% in 2024, the percentage of Americans who say immigration should be reduced has dropped by nearly half to 30%. Sentiment is thus back to the level measured in 2021, before the desire for less immigration started to mount. Meanwhile, 38% now want immigration kept at its current level, and 26% say it should be increased.
Overall, this poll paints a picture of moderation from a period of anti-immigrant sentiment, not of a population that has "swung in favor of immigration", as you assert.
(It also has nothing to do with H1B visas specifically. As far as I can tell, it's almost entirely about illegal immigration.)
It would also be nice if the poll probed as to the reasons for why people hold certain opinions. My guess would be the numbers are changing partly due to political backlash and not due to some economical or social insight.
The good thing about this poll is that the same questions are asked over time. So likely the trends are real. It's just hard to get a more nuanced understanding.
Almost every question was about illegal immigration. They ask some top-level questions about overall immigration, then ask a series of other questions about illegal immigration, border enforcement, etc.
There are questions about people present in the US illegally but not about people being allowed to come to the US illegally.
When I say illegal immigration I'm mostly thinking of the question of whether people should be allowed to come into a country illegally and generally immigration laws that govern people immigrating to the country. The question of how to deal with people who are present, maybe for a long time, in the country illegally is a different one. But I can see how in the US those are sort of mashed together. There's an obvious relationship, e.g. if you say that someone present in a country illegally should be allowed to stay and become a citizen that basically means new people arriving (let's say as tourists or not entering via official entry points) can just stay and become citizens. But I think in the US it's generally debated as two separate questions, i.e. people that are present (especially for a long time, families, etc.) should have a path to become legal immigrants. I'm not here to really debate this but more to point out those are somewhat different questions.
Let's review everything just to make sure we're not missing anything:
"Thinking now about immigrants — that is, people who come from other countries to live here in the United States — in your view, should immigration be kept at its present level, increased or decreased?" -> legal immigration (presumably, or at least ambiguous)
"On the whole, do you think immigration is a good thing or a bad thing for this country today?" -> legal immigration (again, presumably)
"Please tell me whether you strongly favor, favor, oppose or strongly oppose each of the following proposals. " -> This one is more of a mix but the question of whether people support illegal immigration isn't really addressed. There are questions about how people who are present in the US illegally should be treated and about things like border security which has some tangents to illegal immigration (presumably a border is there to stop illegal immigration, but also to stop smuggling and other reasons, but why not just ask if people want open borders?)
"Figures represent percentages who favor or strongly favor each policy." -> similar to the above, dealing with the question of those present in the US illegally not the question of more people coming into the US and whether that should be via current legal means or "open border everyone is welcome with no process".
"Do you strongly approve, approve, disapprove or strongly disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the immigration issue?" -> not really clear enough but feels like another permutation of the above. dealing with people present illegally and not general immigration policy questions (who should be able to come and who shouldn't).
Much has been said about Trump, but his main quality is this: he's a foot-gun artist.
Could only find 2019 data:
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/h-1b...
Of course, nothing has changed for the illegal ones: they haven't (and won't) see the increased burden of legal migration of which they are oblivious. Overall things are only getting worse, and I hate that there's no attempt to having a honest and transparent debate and discourse on the matter.
The UK has had a "brain drain", but it's as much UK citizens as migrants. Economic migrants migrate.
> But also highly paid people have spouses, children, parents and other relatives. Once you are told you barely cleared (very high) criteria, you can be pretty sure your retired parents won't, if ever you need them to move in with you.
Skilled immigration is sold in almost all of the West as a necessary demographic cure. The classic "we're getting older and there is a labour shortage of working age people". The retired parents were never a part of the deal, and are of no interest to almost any Western country. Obvious given that it completely annihilates the justification for bringing people in in the first place.
So if these skilled workers aren't moving to the UK because they can't bring their retired parents, then presumably they aren't also choosing the US, Canada, Germany, etc., given the same situation.
Canada does have a family reunification program but it is not only spectacularly unpopular among the Canadian public and likely to fade away, it allows for a tiny number per year.
They are, certainly at least in Germany there are special provisions for that.
Chain migration is an anti-immigration argument in the US - even if some particular immigrant is highly-skilled and would benefit the US from being a legal resident, that immigrant's family is probably not as impressive. Nonetheless, once the government gives legal residency to the highly-skilled immigrant, they will be highly motivated to try to get the rest of their family to the US as well. So the US should be careful about granting legal residency even to prospective immigrants whose credentials make them individually look good.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
You are wrong. For the Skilled Worker route, the minimum salary threshold is 41k per year, with some special jobs at 33.4k.
> "homeopaths" and "reiki healers"
You are wrong. There are SOC codes for things like "Therapy professionals". They give examples like acupuncturists, art/drama/music therapists, chiropractors/osteopaths, nutritionists, sports therapists/massage therapists. No "reiki healers", though.
> The skilled worker visa only requires B1 English
You are technically right, but are ignoring the larger context. Jobs open for Skilled Worker migrants have to be RQF 6+, which usually means the worker has to perform at the level of a university graduate. So, while the language requirement is B1, the skill requirement is non-trivial.
> You have no idea what you're talking about.
Ironic.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skilled-worker-vi...
And I only picked those two because they were particularly egregious. The list is full of jobs for which it's absurd to suggest we need to fill from abroad: are we really suffering for a lack of recruitment consultants? Human resources officers? Can no-one can find a homegrown Brit who's able to work as a restaurant manager?
As for the salary threshold, you're right: the basic threshold is £41k, although it can be as low as £25k (not £33.4k) in some circumstances: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skilled-worker-vi...
I'd argue that £41k is still too low. It's barely above the median UK salary - we can't find anyone in the top ~50% of people who can do these jobs? And it doesn't even make you a net contributor (from what I can tell that threshold is around £50-55k, although for many of these "skilled" workers it's much higher as they bring dependents.) Nevertheless I'll accept a partial L.
Regarding English, maybe I'm wrong about the precise requirements, but I've worked with software professionals in London, here on a skilled worker visa, with whom I was barely able to communicate, so clearly we're doing something wrong.
In any case, my thesis still stands: there have not been "very high" criteria to migrate to the UK recently, in fact quite the opposite, and if you don't believe this then I suggest you go outside and look around.
Foreign students were also encouraged to study here and remain after studying. Initially even family reunion immigration was encouraged, although that's changed now.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/5579/live/8ea3a...
The UK has been playing this game for centuries - bringing in cheap foreign labour on the quiet, then using that as political leverage with "We will protect you from the foreign invasion" messaging.
They were the most pro-immigration government in British history, by far.
High-skilled immigration - not so sure about this.
The UK was 94% white as recently as 1991 and was 99% white in 1951. What cheap labor was being imported in the centuries prior?
-
Smart professional people desire non-hostile space where they can build a life. When a Russian scientist or Iranian doctor left their countries for London or Paris, they were't calculating for a net income increase, they were running away from an environment that didn't show a promise to allow them realize themselves. Lot's of white collar people are paid well below what they will make if they learn a JS library or do construction work because of their desire to fulfill themselves in a peaceful life and be respected. It is kind of similar to game devs being paid very little in respect to the complexity of the programming they do. If you break that magic, they aren't going to stay.
I'm surprised how divisive such a decision seems to be considering our current reality of a contracting industry (employment wise)
And how many times have we heard that you can’t time the market
Can you call the bottom ?
The average tech immigrant is not particularly more bright then the average native dev, and the truly outstanding ones can still be given entrance just my paying 100k - which should be entirely neglectable for world class talent.
The same song, a tariff on talent
If Indian developer cannot obtain a visa in Microsoft they will simply recruit the same person to the office in India.
And for anyone who is supporting this - Sorry to burst your bubble but just like everything done by this admin so far it is not going to tide over the American job problem.
First, Secretary of Homeland Security has a discretion. It means companies can graft/lobby him to get exception. Maybe shops like Infosys might not get one but Tesla can get one under the garb of supporting American manufacturing.
Second, companies are going to find ways to get that exception. Consulting shops can always open a subsidiary with all American front and lobby for exception.
Third, consulting shops can always bill their customers - maybe partial amounts - that is American companies. Or they can encourage to offshore even more. "You can now save $X + 100k if you offshore".
So and so forth. You need a thoughtful policy not a blunt instrument like this.
"punishing 100 innocents to full extent of the law and then justify the action if 1 criminal is presented?"
There is no denying H1B has issues and people are angry. But it has its uses like the doctors or specific skillsets. It is like punishing 100 guilty while persecuting 1 innocent. That is not what a proper law is supposed to do but this administration and its supporters lack empathy.
The punishment of 100 criminals is cited as a justification for wrongfully prosecuting an innocent individual.
ChatGpt can help with the language.
And, economically, I think it'll be fine. Won't it be great for the rest of the world to share in the economic success of the US? I'm looking forward to a day when most nations have their own bay area.
I don't know what dogwhistle this is supposed to be.
There's no "cognitive load" in things other people do that you aren't involved with.
I took my daughter to shop for clothes at Target. She picked out an outfit and wanted to try it on but it was in a pack and needed to be separated first. I found a clerk and asked her to separate it. But, the clerk didn't speak English - only Spanish. So, she took me to another clerk. But, that clerk also didn't speak English - only Arabic. And, neither could talk to each other.
If that's not societal "cognitive load", what is it?
These are just the harmless occurrences. I could go on to much more alarming examples, but I won't.
Please India/China/Europe, build tech empires to rival ours. We will all benefit.
China is already doing it though.
Is this satire or just solely based on feelings? The rate of legal immigration hasn't changed significantly since 1990 (35 years ago) when it had a huge spike (during Bush1); it then spiked again during Bush 2.
For comparison, here are the immigrant pcts for top 20 most populated countries:
India (0.3%), China (0.1%), United States (15.2%), Indonesia (0.2%), Pakistan (1.7%), Nigeria (0.6%), Brazil (0.7%), Bangladesh (1.7%), Russia (5.3%), Mexico (1.3%), Ethiopia (0.9%), Japan (2.8%), Philippines (0.1%), Egypt (10.0%), Vietnam (0.3%), DR Congo (1.0%), Iran (4.2%), Turkey (8.1%), Germany (19.8%), Thailand (5.0%)
I understand that lots of people want to live here, but we're not just going to crash our country for some extra GDP. You guys can have all the mega global corps.
And who's to say that a country can't sustain a high foreign-born population without authoritarianism? Germany's is even higher, and the US maintained a comparable level for 70 years in the 1800s. That seems like a wild claim.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45313510 and marked it off topic.
At least for now, who knows if that'll change down the road.
Some further googling led me to "totalization agreements" and then it's per country.
It looks like India (for example) may not have such an agreement, but say Austriallia has it. That to be said, it's all news to me, so might be completely wrong here
Btw, I've changed the HN title to reflect the article's title now. Submitted title was "Visa holders on vacation have 15 hours to return to US or pay $100k fee". I don't know if the article said that when you submitted it (news outlets sometimes update article titles as more information emerges), or if you rewrote the title, but if it was the latter, please don't do that—it's against HN's guidelines. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45313274 in this thread
US Gov acknowledges that 100K fee does not apply to existing H-1B visas holders [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45318060 - Sept 2025 (43 comments)
Microsoft memo advises H1B employees to return immediately if currently abroad - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45314906 - Sept 2025 (108 comments)
New H-1B visa fee will not apply to existing holders, official says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45316226 - Sept 2025 (3 comments)
Also recent and related:
Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305845 - Sept 2025 (1675 comments)
The H-1B Visa Program and Its Impact on the U.S. Economy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45309740 - Sept 2025 (51 comments)
> … the effective date of this proclamation, which shall be 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2025.
That doesn’t leave much time. I would have expected that current visa holders wouldn’t fall under this rule. Shouldn’t it be a legal standard not to apply new rules retroactively?
There are no legal standards anymore, when everything is at the whim of one single person.
It should. But the in the American empire you better pray they don't alter the deal any further.
I do think we need a visa category for people who have completed an education in the US. Yes, there's OPT for certain fields for F1 visa holders but it's not enough.
But all that's a part of broader immigration reform that simply won't happen, particularly in this political climate.
As horrible as this all is for those affected, particularly for people who have been waiting patiently in line for 10-20 years, it's also true that:
1. There absolutely is H1B visa abuse, specifically by the bodyshops like Infosys and Tata;
2. H1Bs are used to suppress wages for the entire workforce; and
3. In an era of permanent layoffs and high unemployment in the tech sector, preference should absolutely be given to existing US permanent residents and citizens. That's the declared intent of the H1B program but the reality hasn't really worked that way.
The employers have brought this on themselves and ordinary people will suffer because of it. I do think that if you layoff more than 2% of your staff in any given year, you should be unable to sponsor any visa for a period of 2+ years.
There's already enough of a problem of foreigners enrolling in low-quality or even basically-fraudulent American higher education programs, specifically because their goal is to do whatever they can to get legal residency in the United States rather than gain an education only available in the US or contribute to American intellectual life. Such a visa category would exacerbate this problem.
¢¢
–– Citizen, former Data Center Electrician (still blue collar — I'll eagerly do the work if paid citizen-wages!)
What was the wage you were last offered?
Citizenship is a requirement for us blue collar union hacks. So is proper compensation (we're not tech gods but we eat good, too, and clearly aren't disposable==benefits/pension).
Welcome to reality, and welcome back home.
Meanwhile, big tech is sitting on piles of money. I think startups and scale ups will suffer a lot here.
https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html
Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
Labor Power is Suppressed
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
These are all elements of fascism, and is directly on display. We are living in a country being invaded by fascists from within the republican party.
And to my knowledge, no fascist government willingly cedes power. All have required extreme violence (aka war) to oust them. And most also have done so with Communist and Socialist allies (see Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, et merde).
In a way, it might be safer for the H1B's abroad to stay away. Wish I had an exit plan as well.
Isn't this making labor more powerful since it's restricting competition from overseas?
Disassociating the employee with special skills from the sponsoring company would do a load better. Right now, the current H1B sponsorship creates a form of indentured servitude, which is horrific.
Now, sure, H1B should be gated similarly to Green Card status, as in there is a need for people of those skills. Right now, H1B serves as a way to depress wages for the rest of us. If anything, H1B should be significantly higher to show "these skills are highly in need", but instead, average H1B wages are 100k/yr.
Reforms are completely needed. But slapping a 17 hour 'show up or you'll be sorry' is NOT it.
- There is no doubt a large volume of abuse by tech consulting companies. It's likely even worse than it looks, because the H1Bs in the U.S. are to support even larger teams offshore. I don't understand why we can't just blacklist these companies.
- Some of medium-skill hires, e.g., did a 2 year MS degree from random university in the U.S., are also a bit sus, in my opinion.
- I'll bet several of Zuck's recent $10M Superintelligence Team hires were at least briefly on an H1B before getting their EB-1A Green Cards.
- Same for a lot of faculty in computer science -- you can get an EB-1B Green Card quickly, but you have to spend some time on an H1B. You cannot convert directly from a student visa. The O-1 exists, but is not on most people's radars in academia. I think likely because the legal fees are prohibitively expensive. (I have heard $40K+)
I wish we could ban offshore IT consultancies dumping "talent". Unfortunately politicians will not support such ban, because those consultancies help corporate donors keep the wages down. If the government banned suppliers who use offshore consultancies from bidding for government contracts those outfits would disappear overnight.
Also, HN is hyper focused on tech consulting. H1Bs are used by doctors too especially in rural America. Doctors apply for J1 waiver and then get H1B for work. From what I have heard some places the only available doctor is an immigrant on H1B. This is going to devastate medical teams.
> 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.
Congress shouldn’t be writing this sort of broad language into its laws. Congress has delegated a ton of power to the executive and now Trump is going to pressure test it. The current Supreme Court will decide this clause is wide enough to drive an iceberg through.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182?utm_source=ch...
If it ends, it ends. There’s plenty of American CS graduates desperate for jobs here at home too. Tired of hearing stories about people who have been unable to land any kind of CS job due to low hiring and AI making them irrelevant. We need to support these people and H1B programs absolutely don’t help. I hope the foreigners will understand, and not take it too personally.
edit: but also, if you’re an H1B who gamed the system through consulting agencies to beat the lottery, screw you. Your fraud has taken opportunities from both, Americans and legit H1B applicants.
Of course us foreigners take it personally... Are you serious? How is this understandable?
Americans got so obsessed with being a “nation of immigrants” they elevated actual immigrants to higher status than American citizens themselves.
Obviously personal opinion but I don't think gutting H1B will lead to more jobs for americans or just more jobs in general. I can't predict the side effects, but I doubt the tech industry is going to stay the same
My roommate in 2018 was an Indian here on an H1-B. He was working for a large consulting firm. (You've heard of it.) I don't recall his title but it was sort of an SRE/infrastructure position. He was a relatively conservative guy himself, in terms of his views, and a huge fan of America. He delighted in being here. He bought a brand new Mustang because it was the iconic American car. We weren't particularly close friends, but we got along okay.
In the spring of 2018, he went back to India for the first time in several years, for about a month. His return flight date came and went and I didn't hear from him until the next day: He was back in India. He'd landed in Chicago, and CBP had pulled him aside. They said his documents were flawed and he was to be deported. They said he had lied about where he was moving for his job. When he pointed out that he hadn't, they said, well, your employer didn't tell us everything they were supposed to when you moved.
He asked to see documents he had with him, or call his managers. They said no. He asked for time to go online and get his employment details. They said no. The only options he were given was: 1) Admit he'd lied, and be deported but not banned from the US, or, 2) deny he'd lied, and be deported and banned for five years. Indignant, he refused to "admit" to anything. He was deported. His entire life in the US was summarily destroyed. I spent a great deal of time helping him get his possessions either sold or shipped to him, and on the phone, I had to explain to him that he likely hadn't done anything wrong - it wasn't his fault. This was how our system had been set up to work.
About two years later, a judge concluded that there had not, in fact, been any issues with his employer or him that were material. The deportation was ruled to have been illegitimate. But by that point, he'd been back in India for years, and it was now COVID. He's probably never coming back to the US. We lost our chance to have him, because a couple of individual CBP agents in Chicago made a bad call one day in 2018 and wouldn't take no for an answer.
Even if you believe in controlling and limiting immigration, even if you think that we should only bring the best and brightest and then only in limited numbers, even if you think everyone who crosses the border illegally is a criminal, there is nothing just in what happened in this case. If you are such a person, and you think the people in power are on your side, I urge you to look at what they're actually doing over what they say they're doing. There's no justice in what happened in this case; if even legal immigrants have such limited due process and can have their lives so utterly destroyed, what rights do any of us imagine we have?
A strict definition of "authoritarian" [1] doesn't fit the current US administration at all in many ways, since they've focused their attention on tearing down government, not building it up. In some ways they demand stricter enforcement of (pre-existing!) rules, but in many others they have acted to undermine government authority (e.g. with respect to environmental regulations). Generally the people who decry authoritarianism in the domain of immigration enforcement will turn around and decry loosening of regulations about things that they prefer to be regulated by the government.
[1] "favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom." per Google's definition.
I just gave you a correct definition of authoritarianism, and that isn't it. It's also untrue -- this administration has rather aggressively moved to deregulate a number of areas that prior administrations had regulated. For example, not even a week ago, people here were complaining about the administration's move to deregulate PFAS:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45239803
Say what you will about the wisdom of the change, they aren't replacing that power vacuum with direct executive power. This administration is not canonically left, nor right, and it certainly isn't "authoritarian" by any traditional definition.
As an outsider from Europe, it seems that is pretty much spot on to me. In Europe this probably applies to Hungary as well.
Setting that aside, you will see the that the citation for that definition [2] basically underscores the ambiguity of the term:
> Political scientists have outlined elaborated typologies of authoritarianism, from which it is not easy to draw a generally accepted definition; it seems that its main features are the non-acceptance of conflict and plurality as normal elements of politics, the will to preserve the status quo and prevent change by keeping all political dynamics under close control by a strong central power, and lastly, the erosion of the rule of law, the division of powers, and democratic voting procedures.
I challenge you to defend the proposition that the current administration is attempting to "prevent change by keeping all political dynamics under close control by a strong central power", while simultaneously clearly acting to undermine many parts of said authority. There are actions by every administration that appear to be "authoritarian" when taken in isolation.
The parts about erosion of rule of law, etc. are clearly also applied to the current administration, but again, are mostly debatable -- these EOs are either within the power of the executive under current law, or they're overturned by the courts. I openly grant that our legislative branch has been on a 50+ year mission to abdicate responsibility to the executive, but that's neither exclusive to the current administration, nor is it "authoritarianism" to use the authorities granted to you under the law, and again, it's not unique for US administrations to overstep the law and be pulled back by the judicial.
[1] https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism#cite_note-Cer...
Backing up, my point was that people use this word as an epithet, and have little understanding of any meaning at all, beyond “politician did something I don’t like”. The definition doesn’t fit, because people are just slinging insults.
The problem with picking an alternative definition from Wikipedia, in particular, is that it has absolutely been gamed to fit whatever the Current Thing happens to be. For that reason, you should favor a less chaotic source.
If enough people use the word "authoritarian" like that, then that's what it means.
It’s semantic nihilism in the same sense sense as saying “perpetual motion machines are impossible” is physical nihilism.
If you’re hunting for a contradiction this ain’t it.
- The UK government is busy outlawing free speech, protest and dissent. Because someone threw paint at a plane, you can now be jailed as a terrorist for saying "maybe we shouldn't drop bombs on babies in Gaza". The Labor government is an accident of the right-wing vote being split between the Conservatives and the even anti-migrant even-more-hard-right Reform party that absolutely won't be repeated in the next election;
- France is teetering on the edge of fasicsm as the "centrist" president Macron openly courts the neo-Nazi National Front rather than deal with Melenchon despite his alliance getting the most votes in the last election. It's worth adding that National Front was founded by actual collaborators with the occupying Nazi party in Vichy France;
- Germany has its own Islamophobic anti-immigrant neo-Nazi party that is hurtling towards attaining power: AfD;
- Hungary is already an authoritarian right-wing state.
And literally nobody is working to defuse this bomb by addressing the underlying causes: increasing wealth inequality and declining material conditions, even in otherwise relatively progressive countries like Ireland and Spain.
So what you see and object to in the US is nothing more than Europe's future in 5-10 years if nothing changes.
I guess we'll be seeing someone new and unfamiliar...
(edit: the vendor workers might be in USA on TN status and might be okay for now, I haven't asked)
I guess they really do want foreigners to move out of the US.
Populations of most countries offshore the blame for the lack of economic opportunity or social conditions where they live. I don’t blame the common folk, it’s the leaders and elite of such places who are responsible for their countries relative success or failure.
Because we in the US largely care about making our country better. And pulling the best and brightest out of other countries has historically been considered a good deal for us or even an explicit 'Brain Drain the Soviets' strategy.
This admin and the people in charge today have forgotten about this and now we are left with our multi decade system getting wrecked.
Regarding brain drains, why is it so bad if the best and most productive of another country stay in their home states, or go else where? The fact is that there are a lot of nations which experience relatively low rates of immigration, but are at the forefront of science and tech, such as China or Japan or Singapore. Maybe brain drains are not the main concern here, if anything the idea is a distraction.
Brain drain for others (offensive, hampers Russian technology). Pro-economic position for us (we get trained workers at an improved rate, growing certain sectors of our economy faster than they'd grow naturally).
Its win/win for USA all around.
----------
Now if Russia or China makes life better for their citizens, okay. That's better for the individuals but worse for us. Because now we aren't fixing the various broken bits of our economy (ie: our incredible nursing shortage).
We hopefully have a different ethical structure. Extreme racists are largely a minority in the west, whereas birth naturally defining your life is simply common sense in some of the countries that we accept the most immigrants from. I'd be more inclined to accept people who are escaping that structure (like Mexicans, for example, who are running over the border instead of flying into six-figure jobs), but those who are coming here are from the class who have the most say in the conditions of the poor in their own countries.
The descendants of compradors, still winning, but playing the racist card because they know the US is still sensitive about what they did to black people, and how they never made up for it. Most of the immigrants I know are racist, and will explain why not being racist is stupid, at length.
Wow, okay. How does this work? All such people actually rule those countries? Or their votes somehow counted more than others?
This is not about emigration. Frankly, as a European I would find moving to the US a serious downgrade in living quality.
[edit] also: https://www.theweek.in/wire-updates/international/2025/09/21...
That's why, typically, this would have been reviewed and planned.
I would love to be wrong on that though...
The general public's opinion that it was grossly unjustified and most likely going to be rolled back does not change how clear the initial order was.
The fact that virtually every immigration attorney and firm was on the same page about it goes to show how clear it actually was.
I was about to wistfully wish Biden or Obama pushed for this, but it’s clear they were too deep in the tech industry’s pockets.
Not sure how this administration intends on addressing the off-shore response though.
Giving people 15 hours of notice is incompetent and a dick move.
Instead, the businesses abused and lobbied to keep H1B easy to abuse. Huge dick moves. Plural.
The rank and file contractors suffer and they don’t deserve the chaos, but I don’t feel an ounce of sympathy for the hiring bodies and employers (and the abusive hiring managers).
And this is what they are doing to those people, who followed all the rules, did everything right.
That tells you everything you need to know about the intentions of this admin.
Business uncertainty is off the charts when any administration can change existing policy at a whim and on short notice, for any kind of sunk costs.
The whim makes it uncertain, the short notice makes it unmanageable, and the sunk-cost makes it unavoidable.
It's this uncertainty that fuels government corruption, by creating an undifferentiated need to make nice and comply.
At each step, it will be cheaper for companies to join than to resist, and companies that resist will get oversized responses as a warning to others. That makes joining corruption an economic necessity.
This is how Putin organized and subjugated Russian oligarchs and the elites.
Now instead of 500 applications for 1 interview. Maybe, jobs vs labor will return to a normal balance.
"Clarification" from Press Secretary: https://x.com/PressSec/status/1969495900478488745
1.) This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition.
2.) Those who already hold H-1B visas and are currently outside of the country right now will NOT be charged $100,000 to re-enter.
H-1B visa holders can leave and re-enter the country to the same extent as they normally would; whatever ability they have to do that is not impacted by yesterday’s proclamation.
3.) This applies only to new visas, not renewals, and not current visa holders.
It will first apply in the next upcoming lottery cycle.
Trump has the legal authority to block anyone from entering for essentially any reason (see Trump v Hawaii)
So it doesn't matter much what the white house says today. They are free to change their minds tomorrow. That's part of the strategy, if immigrants are afraid they will be arbitrarily extorted at the border, then only the ones whose employers have bribed Trump will even bother applying
They are more than welcome to roll back this asinine decision, but pretending that everyone else is just mis-interpreting is gaslighting.
Either way, until there is an official, in-writting announcement that can be depended on, no one should be taking the advice of an unnamed White House source.
In any situation, your best bet is to follow the direction and guidance of your own attorney.
Note that Leavitt's words are any more enforceable though.
I'd follow the words of the proclamation/EO over what the mouthpiece says.
Private lawyers don't know any more about this than we do. The administration will do today what the administration decides to do today, not what it previously said it was going to do. At best, the ambiguity will make for a better case that lawyer needs to file eventually. But she's not a mind reader.
There is literally nothing out of this White House you can depend on, even if it is in-writing & signed with the presidents blood. If he feels like it he will ignore it and use mob tactics to get his will through.
They flip flopped on the foreign employees in hospitality and food production. The policies are driven by outrage, crypto purchases and early investors like Project2025 apparently. I don't think that there's any guaranties.
We have seen Trump making decisions that surprised his closest aids.
How about transfers?
Transfers technically count as new visas and need to be petitioned. Will every new employer have to shell out 100K? If that's the case, H-1B holders are now actually indentured servants (they were not previously, no matter how many Redditors claim otherwise) because they are now stuck with the current employer with essentially no ability to transfer or find a new employer in case of a layoff.
It gets harder and harder to have skin pigment, speak another language, or god forbid want to come to the USA under this insane administration.
It is a very clear case of "my way or the highway".
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/H1B...
pavlov•4mo ago
They come up with these rules on a Saturday morning. If you’re a visa holder outside the country and you don’t return to the US by Sunday, you’ll be asked to pay a $100k ransom to re-enter the country where your life and work and children are.
Amazing level of contempt for ordinary foreigners who came into the country legally.
ericmay•4mo ago
phyzix5761•4mo ago
Muromec•4mo ago
This of course creates another problem -- highly paid foreigners price locals out of the housing market, but hej, we can always blame that on refugees, right.
hshdhdhj4444•4mo ago
Wanna raise the salary cutoff go for it.
But the people claiming that there is no salary cutoff and that H1B visa holders are incredibly lowly paid are simply lying.
Like any other rule or law there are people who break the rules and laws. Usually the way they prove the salary is not being met is by pointing to the tiny fraction of people breaking the law.
It’s like saying we should get rid of anti murder laws because murderers exist.
risyachka•4mo ago
Though it is reasonable to ask whatever you want you must understand there are always someone more desperate (and often with higher skills) that will take that job.
So the fact that 10yoe can’t find a job doesn’t mean anything. Usually this is either too many demands from seeker or skill issue.
Or they don’t eant to take lower salary.
If a company was willing to pay 70k for a developer you must be delusional to think they will suddenly decide to pay 100k+ for local talent.
They will just get a remote contractor
tayo42•4mo ago
milch•4mo ago
pavlov•4mo ago
It’s going to take a long time while Microsoft figures out if they will actually pay these fees and which budget it should come out of.
Meanwhile, if you didn’t return by Sunday, you’re locked out of the country and unable to show up for work which will result in your termination fairly soon.
trollbridge•4mo ago
FAANG are by far the largest users of H1-B. They also have billions of dollars and access to excellent lawyers. They can pay up for this; an excellent employee is certainly worth more than $100k per year to them. Think of this more as a tax levied on some of America’s wealthiest businesses.
Workaccount2•4mo ago
more_corn•4mo ago
Aurornis•4mo ago
The H1-B is used across many industries, not just tech.
chatmasta•4mo ago
teeray•4mo ago
Remember too that this coincides with an RTO order for Puget Sound that kicks in roughly the same time.
ericmay•4mo ago
I’m actually curious, have you worked at a large corporation before?
It would be atypical for the scenario you are describing to occur given that there has been a US government policy change that’s of no fault of the employee who is still eligible to work in the United States.
Folks aren’t going to be sitting around on Monday morning saying jeez Billy on the H1B visa didn’t show up to work today and we have no clue why, guess he is fired!
Within business units at this scale there are small, dedicated teams that manage contractors, vendor contracts and licenses, keep track of employees on visas, report that information for compliance purposes, etc, and they are almost certainly communicating with their employees who are currently out of the country to provide arrangements and additional details as things progress.
Muromec•4mo ago
I deeply suspect it will go both ways -- one Billy would be paid for, while the other will be fired for not being able to show up. Not every Billy is on the same good standing with the corp.
ericmay•4mo ago
Muromec•4mo ago
UncleMeat•4mo ago
The issue is "my kids are at home in the US and I can't get home to take care of them because of this sudden policy that nobody knows how to navigate."
ericmay•4mo ago
JBorrow•4mo ago
trollbridge•4mo ago
JBorrow•4mo ago
usernamed7•4mo ago
JBorrow•4mo ago
taminka•4mo ago
[1]https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/o...
JBorrow•4mo ago
duped•4mo ago
cjbgkagh•4mo ago
That said I wonder if it’s more of a power grab with the discretion to grant exemptions being used to strong arm corporations to clamping down on criticism of Israel.
baobabKoodaa•4mo ago
MS with N fewer workers is not going to bring in N*$440K less net income. The incremental income added by an average employee is much less than $440K.
cjbgkagh•4mo ago
Ar-Curunir•4mo ago
cjbgkagh•4mo ago
Point 2 I’m certain exemptions will be granted that will mean in reality the H-1B gets to continue being a horrible problem for everyday Americans and the software industry in general. I don’t want to work in a lemon market and that’s what it has become. And I see this as more of an attack on free speech than an attack on H-1Bs but that shoe has yet to drop. In the meantime they need people to believe the threat is real so the companies will yield to power. The chaos is part of making it believable. If I was on a H-1B and I was too far away to make it in time I probably wouldn’t be too stressed about it but I’d understand why other people are.
cjbgkagh•4mo ago
Igrom•4mo ago
And is it respectable and okay to switch up the law over the weekend if, and just because, the ones who are affected are large companies? Realistically, what's the rush to have the "law" (Congress?) come into effect two days after its announcement, beside making it a shakedown? Remember that policymakers anticipate, or should anticipate, second-order effects. Either Microsoft forks out $100k per employee, or the cost of coping with the new policy is pushed onto the regular Joe. In any case, this produces a sense of crisis and urgency that you'd criticize if it happened at a measly, inexperienced startup you happened to work at.
The law changes three months ahead? Looks like I'll have to cancel my December plans. But when I'm on a holiday? Sure, let me pack my bags, get back to the nearest airport and take the first transcontinental flight. Or maybe Microsoft is flexible enough to have me shoulder the $100K to stay until the end of my holiday?
I'm not sure how openly the measure was discussed beforehand (and on that point: the employees already have visas; why must they return, unless their visa is about to expire?), but it was promulgated _yesterday_.
ericmay•4mo ago
intended•4mo ago
ericmay•4mo ago
intended•4mo ago
ericmay•4mo ago
habinero•4mo ago
ericmay•4mo ago
It’s helpful to not be dogmatic about these things, and even more helpful if you abandon partisanship.
intended•4mo ago
This form of argument, ends up normalizing the Trump presidency with the Biden presidency, which on its own is abhorrent to any scale of comparison.
Leave alone the fact that deciding to exit and leaving execution up to someone else is the quintessential act of sabotage.
Consider that this is less than a year of the Trump presidency.
And this is a sub thread where the comparison to the USSR is sustained.
hshdhdhj4444•4mo ago
How does Microsoft pay the fee?
Which online portal do they go to? What bank account do they wire a check to over the weekend? What reason do they give for the payment? What USCIS code do they enter? What USCIS forms do they fill that USCIS will then snail mail (because they’re still living in the 90s) an I-797A to the employee that they will present at the border for evidence of payment. What address will USCIS mail the document to (which will be a U.S. address) and how does the employee who is currently abroad get that document from their U.S. mailing address to their current location abroad?
When are they gonna write the code for the lookup that the border agents can use to confirm the validity of this form and payment?
Also, how does all this happen over a Saturday and Sunday?
And even if there are answers to these questions where are those answers posted?
ericmay•4mo ago
dvdkon•4mo ago
That's so dumb I can't believe you're suggesting it. In a rule-of-law country, lobbying the president should never be a solution to anything, much less routine bureaucracy.
ericmay•4mo ago
blibble•4mo ago
here's your problem
rajup•4mo ago
ericmay•4mo ago
Set aside this “nudge nudge wink wink” stuff - I’m providing a solution to the acute issue, not a moral judgement.
Looks like it was sorted https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/20/donald-trump-h1b-vi...
habinero•4mo ago
ericmay•4mo ago
jjav•4mo ago
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-unveils-gold-platinum-v...
pclmulqdq•4mo ago
pimlottc•4mo ago
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312877#45313687