Canada is jumping on this opportunity to invite the US tech workers who are frustrated with US H1B visa restrictions and GC backlog by offering an express permanent residency in 10 days
The economics don’t make any more sense for Canada or the EU than they do for the US. The the new $100k H1B fee was imposed because companies have a huge financial incentive to import semi-skilled workers from lower-wage markets rather than hire domestically. Canada and the EU face the same problem. In tech, it's about the kinds of work inexperienced/cheap developers are often doing: assembly line, JIRA-ticket-taker type development.
This is especially impacting Indian tech workers in the US [1] since these are often the types of roles that InfoSys and other foreign tech consulting firms are staffing. The new $100,000 fee to sponsor an H1B visa has made it difficult to justify hiring foreign tech workers when most of the time they are just going to be using American LLMs to do their work anyway.
The foreign tech workers that are worth the $100,000 fee are still easily getting their visa sponsored.
fwiw the h1-b workers I encountered in bigtech were totally on-par with their US citizen equivalents in both coding and english communication. many teams were about 50/50 in my office (SF, non-HQ).
my current talent/placement company works mostly with AI startups who are usually too early to support visa requirements [0]. being able to support the lead-time and planning for international applicants is a huge advantage later stage companies have in terms of being able to scoop up talent at reasonable prices. big loss for the local ecosystems if these jobs move across the border imo.
Yeah, it is not much worth because issue is not that top talent on H1 matches local talent but how average is the rest but get brought to US in name of high skill immigration.
The debate by supporters is set like: Look at these 5 top guys they are best in class in every aspect so why shouldn't they be here. And now don't look over there 500 guys which are business analyst, basic enterprise coders, testers application support engineers lest question maybe asked how come they are considered highly skilled.
Ironically, if it's true that the jobs are being off-shored, rather than on-shored and filled by locals, this would be beneficial for the countries who currently find themselves in a brain-drain spiral (be it India, Ukraine, etc.). It would result in a more tech and economically balanced world rather than having two lobes (USA and China). People would say that it's a detriment to the US's future --but those are often the most critical of US hegemony.
The Indian offshore firms are scrambling because of the opposite happening. If all this work was just flooding to India then the panic that’s happening there over the industry imploding wouldn’t be occurring.
The sort of work traditionally handled by cheap offshore labor is now the sort of work most ripe for replacement by AI. So it’s burning the candle from both ends. The low value stuff is getting replaced by AI and not sent there and the high value stuff struggles to get delivered by cheap labor because the play was always cost of and not the quality of the talent.
US has shipped all manufacturing jobs to Asia, including China and got the Rust Belt in exchange (and huge corporate profits). and China is now a manufacturing powerhouse.
Partly that push was created by the labor unions, who pushed the cost of doing manufacturing business far above what was profitable and feasible.
When the environment becomes hostile to conducting business, then jobs will leave and local industries atrophy.
How was the environment that enabled businesses to lower their cost by admitting China in WTO hostile to conducting business?
BTW - with or without unions manufacturing was profitable in the US before NAFTA and China entering WTO. So your narrative that manufacturing was dying because of labor unions does not hold much water.
Patently false narrative, equivalent to saying all americans are fat - both are extremely cheap uneducated arguments.
Every single H1B I worked with was brilliant in their field - and paid extremely well often in excess of $400K. I know several that are earning well past $500K. If you claim these are generic Jira pushers, well you are showing ignorance.
The $100K fees isn’t material to them but the whole vitriolic nonsense poured around what they do and just rolling their work in mud - well that’s where they just move and take their 50 ppl organization with them.
The H1B coworkers I work with really go the entire spectrum. The laziest programmers I met are H1B. And there are also some pretty smart ones that I learned a lot from and I continue to learn from.
To say that the H1B are all brilliant is hyperbole.
Canada was already much cheaper than the US for tech. I was shocked to find out how little colleagues in Canada in the same role are paid relative to peers in the US.
If the issue was cost the jobs would already be in Canada. If the issue was cost the jobs would also have already been offshored.
The issue is on attracting the best talent and here, despite doomsday predictions to the contrary, the US continues to lead. The $100k fee is nothing to bring in top talent. Top talent was competing against Indian offshore companies scooping up thousands of visas for iffy-at-best talent.
The cold reality is many folks in tech on this visa were mediocre talent at best coming out of degree mills or body shops, in roles that could easily be filled domestically if there wasn’t inexpensive overseas labor willing to work for less.
Folks casually leave out the bit that all that iffy talent was crowding out far better talent looking to come to the US but couldn’t because they didn’t get picked in the lottery. This raising of the entry bar is freeing up space so the best folks have a better chance.
Agree with it or not that’s what these changes are aiming to fix, and there’s little evidence this will just send all the jobs to Canada.
Canada historically is also one of the worst places to work in tech. Maybe it’s changed but I remember a decade ago tech jobs were paying a 1/4th of what they were in NYC/SF.
If pay and money is the only thing you care about then yeah. But for the rest of us, none of the places are "the worst place to work in tech" as long as you're in the northern hemisphere. Take a look at what the pay is in Chile if it's so scary to you.
Nope, cost of living is what matters and at least at the time major Canadian metros were as if not more expensive than SF/NYC and got you a 1/4th of the pay. I am sure that’s attractive to some but sounds pretty miserable. Chile I imagine has pretty good cost of living economics. Anecdotally most of my friends in Latin and South America live upper middle class on software salaries.
> Anecdotally most of my friends in Latin and South America live upper middle class on software salaries
And your North American friends do not? Please.
The commonality is that software engineers all across the globe live pretty great, compared to their local peers. But of course, compare them to inflated NYC/SV salaries and everything looks like peanuts.
Sure. My point was historically Canada was pretty bad from a QOL perspective. Low salary and high cost of living. Not sure what you are trying to argue but have at it!
Trying to help you understand that Canada does not have "low salary" just because it's lower than NYC/SV, since apparently your software engineer buddies live an upper middle class life on software salaries, how "low" can it be then, especially if the cost of living is so high? Something doesn't make sense here.
Money is just a tool to get what you actually want, the goal itself shouldn't be "more money", unless you want to miserable, because that hole you feel never gets filled by shoveling more money down it.
More money generally equals more freedom, even if you don't know what you want specifically, but you're ultimately talking about a bigger, unrelated issue.
I've been working in Canada for US companies for decades, and pay-wise, it's gotten a lot better, though there's still a big difference. Never been tempted to move though.
Good to hear. I just remember looking at big tech postings at the time with salaries around 60k but then looking at rents that were more expensive then SF and thinking no way.
Canada was bad for tech specifically because of H1B.
Now that H1B pathway is being blocked, Canada can build an alternative tech center and ecosystem. They can do it, Canada has very strong CS programs and is a birthplace of AI and deep learning
My uncle is a skilled immigrant to Canada (electrical engineer) and was never able to find an engineering job. They live in an immigrant-heavy subsidized housing neighborhood full of people in the same situation.
Plus one. My parents experience as well in Montreal. My dad could not understand why Canada bothered to move him and his family and the keep him on welfare. BTW - life on welfare in Canada was 5 times better than life as an electrical engineer in România. My parents never stopped thinking it was a really good idea to migrate to Canada.
He tutors math and science, my aunt (who also has a graduate degree) works in a daycare. Canadian welfare is also quite generous.
Their son is doing well, but I don’t see how it makes economic sense for Canada at that point. It boils down to a circuitous and expensive way to direct government dollars to smart people who are likely to have smart kids. You could save yourself a step and just give lower income kids in Canada IQ tests and throw money at the promising ones.
The US says they don't want them, the point of the article is the new visa requirements (surprise) aren't converting into hiring US citizens but instead pushing the roles offshore.
Well yes, what difference does it make to bring people over to the US vs them doing the work overseas?
Bringing people over has negative consequences in the US (housing demand goes up; water demand goes up; power demand goes up) and in the person's home country (money doesn't flow to the local country; good people leave who should be staying and building their own country).
the candidate for Canadian PR has to secure a job offer beforehand, so the Canada's plan is that US tech workers move their US jobs to Canada, and big tech employers expand their existing tech offices in Canada, rather than being forced to shell out $100k to Donny.
Why should US employers be forced to pay $100k to Donny or compromise for substandard smaller labor pool in the US and bear increased costs?
Put another way: why should American employers be forced to hire Americans? If the labor pool is indeed substandard, they arguably have a vested interest in improving the quality of that labor pool rather than simply giving up on it. The $100k (and it's consequences) are putting a finger on the scale in a nationalist manner to prefer local products. It's tariffs for people.
It comes down to whether you have a globalist or nationalist mindset. Depending on which, you will come to a different conclusion about what to think. Should a government prioritize the individual success of citizens of its country, or the profitability of companies domiciled there (and therefore overall national economic performance)? Which approach, which tide lifts more boats by a meaningful amount? Which comports with a government's stated duties?
Employers have only one job: to maximize profits, thats it. It is not employers' fault that US is unable to train tech workers, despite spending $30-40k per pupil in school system only to end up #27 in PISA ranking.
The problem with all anti-H1B discourse is Lump Of Labor fallacy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy ). The loudest people are the least educated about the consequences of blocking high skilled immigration.
Economics is generally not a zero sum game. At least according to what they taught me in Econ 101, on a macroeconomic scale skilled workers tend to increase job availability. They spend a larger portion of their income on services, which has a positive multiplier effect.
> skilled workers tend to increase job availability
Who'd imagine squeezing the middle class would backfire epically? Compensation hasn't reflected the GDP per capital increases for the majority of the workforce. I don't think even the productivity increases from personal computers in the end of the 1970's have trickled down.
Most of the 'squeeze' comes from things like housing and health care. The former driven by NIMBYs pulling the ladder up after them in so many desirable places.
The subcategory of NIMBY hate regarding overdevelopment of existing communities (as opposed to things like datacenters, multi-home owners concerned about investment, etc etc) is mostly hatred of the average citizen, which is not a great category of people to decide to hate. 90% of people would react the same ways in the same situations.
The obvious problem is that you can only develop a "desirable" area so much before you have fundamentally altered it. When there is a perception that the demand is driven in large part by people moving into the country, rather than by being born, that naturally engenders bitterness. When there is a perception that there are plenty of other areas available for development, which would then become desirable over time, but the developers want money and the government is focused on short-term goals, that further engenders bitterness. This is all very natural, and doesn't necessitate people to be unreasonably NIMBY to oppose it. Again, most people would.
It's not hate, it's just something that changed in the US in about the 1970ies. In the past, you'd have a booming area and people would build homes as a result and things weren't perfect, but kind of balanced out in terms of housing.
A huge amount of housing demand comes from immigration. You can't call people who like their neighbourhoods "NIMBYs" for not wanting their nice area to triple in population to solve a problem. They aren't the problem. The demand is the problem.
So lack of supply isn't the problem, it's the people who want a place to live who are the problem? Would you make this same argument if the increased demand was from people being born rather than immigration (because it is both)?
I think if you want to be able to block your neighbors from building denser housing on their property then that should only be enforceable if it was agreed to by everybody in advance when they bought the place (e.g. via an HOA contract or some similar type of restriction on the property deed). Otherwise this is tantamount to allowing Walmart to get a vote on whether to allow Target to set up next door.
> So lack of supply isn't the problem, it's the people who want a place to live who are the problem? Would you make this same argument if the increased demand was from people being born rather than immigration (because it is both)?
I totally agree it's both, although most first world populations have low birth rates (until you add in generational immigration from high birth rate cultures), so slow building works well.
Actually you can blame them because it was the done thing throughout US history to build more homes when people moved to an area. And there is nothing more American than moving to a place with better opportunities or amenities. "The pursuit of happiness" and all that.
Actual immigration from outside the US is a vanishingly small part of our housing problems, just as immigrants do not actually "eat the cats and dogs".
Where I live in Oregon the conflict is almost entirely about other Americans moving here vs those pulling up the ladder - which doesn't, of course,stop anyone from moving here, it just means only the wealthy can, rather than teachers, nurses, firefighters and so on.
> Who'd imagine squeezing the middle class would backfire epically? Compensation hasn't reflected the GDP per capital increases for the majority of the workforce. I don't think even the productivity increases from personal computers in the end of the 1970's have trickled down.
Why would investments by employers result in higher compensation for employees?
It's really dismaying how many people on this site seem to think immigration and the job market are a zero sum game... and that hasn't changed 12 years after I wrote this:
While the U.S. capricious immigration policy gives an opportunity for Canada, it only gives it one particular opportunity: that of hiring educated, high-potential, but inexperienced immigrant workers.
The thing about potential is that it needs to right environment to be realized. Canada still has two hurdles to create that environment:
- Access to capital, either in the form of risk-tolerant VC funding or established companies willing to invest significantly in R&D. Those are not quick to move over the border.
- A critical mass of _experienced_ talent. Entrepreneurs and high-agency ICs who've seen what it looks like to build a successful startup and capable of replicating it. Those don't have much incentive to move over the border either.
The U.S. has hundreds of startups that later became unicorns. The employees of those startups are typically the key members that drive the success of new ones. For Canada, the only name that easily comes to mind is Shopify.
In my experience, people who didn’t make it in the H-1B lottery go to Canada, try the L-1 and come back to the United States. It’s good for Canada to offer a work permit so quickly, but I’m just not seeing people willing to obtain permanent residency in Canada. After all, for the same job, the pay in Canada is way worse. In fact I’m seeing Canadian citizens come to the U.S. to get a big salary bump while doing the same job.
> After all, for the same job, the pay in Canada is way worse.
OTOH, you have free universal healthcare - and, the best part is that everyone in Canada gets it. You also have gun-free schools, abortions are considered healthcare, and, on top of all that, a sane government and a population that's considered pathologically nice to each other.
Honestly, I'd take the pay cut (in fact, I did - but I live in Ireland instead).
I mean Canada has jumped so many times in last 8-10 years with these express residencies, hiring H1B laid off workers, grabbing people who are stuck with travel restrictions to US I'd have thought they be half way to the moon.
In any case I wish well to people in Canada and Europe and people who are looking to move there. More spreaded opportunities lead to better outcome for everyone including US even if it does not look like one.
Canadian salaries are terrible once you realize that the cost of living in Canada is just as high or even higher than the US, which is why a lot of Canadian engineers left for the US
This just isn't true. Yes, ratio of salary to cost of living is better in the US, setting aside the precarious immigration process, political instability, high rates of gun crime, lack of healthcare, etc. I left this reply to someone else claiming the same thing:
You can easily look up the cost of living for e.g. Vancouver:
> Cost of Living Including Rent in San Francisco, CA is 57.8% higher than in Vancouver
> Rent Prices in San Francisco, CA are 91.7% higher than in Vancouver
We spent a ton of time and effort trying to find anyone to our standards, never able to find enough. H1B (and other work visas) were generally better and more Sr compared to locals we found. They got paid as much or more than everyone else.
When we had great people we could not get here we would instead build a team overseas, taking a bunch of other jobs with them.
I think that both you and the grandparent comment are correct at the same time. It feels like there is a strong dichotomy between how H1B visa is treated across different realms of tech.
I have been working in big tech for a decade, and have a few friends working in the more technical financial firms (think more TwoSigma/HRT/Citadel, not JPM/GS), and my experience matches yours. Every H1B I knew at the companies I worked at was absolutely not hired as a cost-cutting measure. It was just simply difficult to find people who could qualify. And god knows we tried, I remember my team interviewing roughly 50 people just to fill a position of just a baseline decent dev (not a rockstar math olympics winner with multiple groundbreaking publications; though that would've been nice). And absolutely none of them were underpaid either, they were on the exact same comp range for the level, with plenty of them topping out the range. In fact, they actually ended up costing more to the employer than a local would, due to having to deal with immigration lawyers/filing fees/etc. (all while being paid the same as everyone else).
Meanwhile, I have a lot of acquaintances from undergrad working as devs at tech consultancy firms and more "general/traditional finance" companies. The stories I hear from them about H1B at their workplaces are pretty much exactly what the grandparent comment describes, and even worse.
> In fact, they actually ended up costing more to the employer than a local would, due to having to deal with immigration lawyers/filing fees/etc. (all while being paid the same as everyone else).
I mean, you were actually underpaying the local workers if this was the case? If you offered the fully loaded salary to the local workers they might have accepted.
Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay (which per def is true, if you had to bring in foreign work?).
Workers on an H1B are more abusable though - if they lose the job they have something like 30 days to find another one or they have to leave the country entirely.
So you talk a good game about work life balance and then after you hire an H1B worker and bring them to the country you can spring 60 hour weeks doing tedius things and many won't be in a position to say no.
The salary might also seem higher to somebody who doesn't understand the cost of living in the US (and how many things are not paid for via taxes like healthcare).
> Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay (which per def is true, if you had to bring in foreign work?).
Yeah, by definition this is pretty much always true, no? No matter how scarce local workers are, if you were willing to offer double the market rate you could probably find someone. Scarcity and price are two sides of the same coin, that's how markets work. Bringing in labor from another country when local talent is scarce both reduces costs/wages and reduces scarcity.
> Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay
Whenever someone says "But then the locals making $400k would make $500k" I have to ask: where are all these qualified locals for whom $400k isn't enough money already? Shouldn't all the laid-off people be champing at the bit for these jobs?
At some price point you genuinely do run out of local talent. At that point it's just a question of whether the work goes abroad or foreign workers come in.
I can't speak to your particular situation, but in my experience this has been two factors; one is location -- it is sometimes hard in some locations to find senior talent whereas H1Bs are (naturally) more amenable to moving. The other is pricing, which is echoing the GP's point. Senior talent is expensive and you can get it at (apparently) considerably lower cost by looking for H1B applicants.
How many H1-B or non-H1-B jobs are “high 6 figures”?
That’s a tiny, tiny minority of the tech employment market and one which would readily shrug off a one-time $100K expense. (That would be less than 2 months’ salary for a high-6-figure position.)
$600K+ is around 1% of the US tech market and tends to run in clusters (so your circle is more likely to have people near you in comp than a random selection).
I'm not doubting your first statement. I think people probably estimate it reasonably accurately as "rare, but not unheard of nor extraordinarily rare".
Looks like there is need for 2 separate visa categories:
- One to bring top 0.1% talent from across the globe to the US
- Another to bring in temporary talent as needed
Current version of H1B had become a big basket to hold both, and abused too for just finding cheaper labor. It may be time to segment these out.
Also, given that US has ~400 million local citizens, there should be less need for either.
H1b was officially intended to be the former category, and a $100k visa fee puts in back squarely in that category. For a company that wants 0.1% talent paying an extra $100k one-time fee is expensive but not a show-stopper
Now the question is whether the US wants another visa category for finding cheap labor. I am not sure that is either needed or desired (by voters). Maybe with the exception of agriculture
There is no need for "temporary talent" from foreign countries. US is graduating plenty of CS grads from our schools. There is a need for wage suppression and exploitation (for anyone not aware, if you get fired from your H1B job you have 2 weeks to leave the county). That's why they have a reputation for being "better", another word for it is indentured servitude.
There are already categories like this if you jump away from tech.
Our friendly neighborhood Ski resort oligarchies leverage the J-1 Visa program to bring in international students to work at the resorts over paying more to hire local workers for example. They also leverage the company store model by putting them in dorms and charging them accordingly for housing.
> Looks like there is need for 2 separate visa categories: - One to bring top 0.1% talent from across the globe to the US - Another to bring in temporary talent as needed
O-1 is for exceptional talent ("extraordinary ability"). Bring exceptional talent, eliminate the H-1B visa. It's that simple.
I think I would reframe the OP less about cost cutting and more that the company has an unrealistic cap on salary. Would be interesting to see where geographically your experience was. Having worked in the Midwest the problem I have found is that the population wanting to live in the Midwest is small and then when you are trying to recruit top talent it is even harder. You would need to pay more but then most companies do this analysis where they say the median level 1 junior tech salary is x for this region. Which on face value is maybe ok but then you look at the job market and there is low to no real tech jobs. To hire smart people you are asking them to move to a place that has less to do and no interchangeable market for their talent.
And it’s a hard problem to fully specify. A lot of people here seem to think that CS style analytical thinking can solve every real world problem precisely. That’s just not true.
While I’m more open to this kind of H1B use, you all should be investing in training local talent as well. Ideally using those H1Bs to train local talent.
We put people on the moon. I find it hard to believe the people here lack the raw ability. I find it much more likely businesses don’t want to give back to the country that they’re residing in.
I learned a tremendous amount (and was very successful as a result) from foreign born colleagues (some of whom went on to be ACM fellows, and other major awards).
Having a disproportionate share of the best people world wide to work with is a great privilege and advantage.
Comparing getting an American to uproot themselves from their entire community to move to the Bay Area for a job vs. someone on the other side of the world who is looking to get into America just aren't the same. Ultimately, H1Bs are used to lower the working standards of Americans and enrich tiny pockets of existing regional capital holders.
Regional wealth inequality in America has not gotten better as Silicon Valley has gotten richer and brought in more foreign labor. At some point, the people making money hand over fist need to show how they're improving the situation for Americans instead of just saying "trust us, bro."
The AI discussion hasn't helped Silicon Valley seem more in touch with "flyover" states either. It's pretty clear there's a lot of disdain and hostility from Silicon Valley towards the "average" American.
Foreign language teachers is the one category where it's easy to believe it's hard to find local talent. I've seen them in small towns across the country. Sure, you may have a Vietnamese speaking US citizen in New York, but they don't want to move to a small town in the Midwest.
Increased scrutiny of H-1B-dependent employers could well be in order. There is already that classification in place and restrictions... though I suspect that underfunding of the Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division may be contributing to that lack of scrutiny.
Putting additional restrictions and requirements for reporting would likely be a good thing. I am hesitant to say "H-1B needs to go" when it does serve other non-technical positions.
It might be appropriate to separate H-1T (I'm sure its not up to section T yet, using that as a placeholder) for tech workers and have some sort of proctored test to ensure that the skills represented aren't "I know how to use Claude" along with filing fees sufficient to cover the administration of the test.
This would move tech workers out of the H-1B category allowing it to return to its original intent of skilled workers (teachers, medical technicians, private sector researchers...).
These companies have a demonstrated track record for having no qualms about bald-face lying. Suddenly we'll have an influx of "private sector researchers" to cover those tech jobs.
The employee's primary duty must consist of:
The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software or system functional specifications;
The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;
The design, documentation, testing, creation or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or
A combination of the aforementioned duties, the performance of which requires the same level of skills.
If the job definition is covered in that, then it would be classified that way.
That would make sense if the purpose of the program was to get the most valuable top talent. How do we decide who is the most valuable? We let the market decide. But that would cause upward wage pressure, which would undermine the real purpose of the program.
Medical field is under a green program. But following your point. If nursing paid more and had better conditions, it would encourage more domestic talent. H1B should be used for to get the worlds top talent otherwise it will be used by businesses to save money and depress wages.
top talent is different visa (O-1). H1B is merely specialized worker, not top tier global talent.
Nursing does pay a lot and conditions havent changed much over the years. Certified anesthesiology nurses get paid like $132/hr, and still there is shortage.
> It should be a stack rank by salary to deal with the over subscription
Considering salary based on country of origin, adjusted for position, would probably be the best way to ensure little abuse (apart from the indentured servitude-like features). If you want to hire the best, they'll be overpaid in their origin markets.
I have a couple problems with that idea that I've never been able to figure out even though the idea is good.
First, how do we ensure it doesn't become a slave program: that is you get hired for X, and they are paying you that, but you want to find a new job because you don't like your boss. Or perhaps they hire you for X, and you are doing Y (again, nothing illegal)
Second, you hire someone to do a job, and they realize you have to pay them and so they decide to do nothing (or get a second job that they are working instead).
I can find answers to all of the above, but they all fail to: somebody is aware of your solution - how are they going to abuse it. I haven't solved this secondary abuse issue.
Oh that's a really good way to handle it that would actually follow the intent of the program.
You can't find someone to do a job? Then you need to compete on wage with other companies to bring someone in. Or, you know, raise your salary for local employees.
A simple stack rank and cut has the problem of where to draw the line.
Also, how to value pre-ipo stock
There are other good options as well (an auction, etc). They all have problems, but there are mitigations. It could be vastly improved even if it’s not perfect.
Another problem: different industries and roles natohace different pay ranges.
If you decide on a single pay cutoff software engineers will starve everyone else out. And there are of course great, well paid people in other hard to hire industries.
Something about those industries would change. They might charge their customers more or train up more people or get more creative with technology. Or the market might decide it can do without that additional productivity from those companies.
I have definitely seen job postings that were so detailed and narrow that they couldn't possibly find anyone "qualified". They were clearly making it so that it would be easier to claim that nobody in the country was qualified.
But I will say that the only people I have met that are here on H1-B have been uniquely qualified for their position. Such as, they invented a way to scale a given chemical manufacturing process, and they were developing it further.
But I got the impression that they were not particularly well paid like I would expect an American in the same position to be.
I've observed more that H1B's keep employee mobility lower, so employees on H1Bs tended to be paid less due to the natural bumps that come out of switching jobs every few years, especially going from an associate to senior/staff level where often the company throws a small raise with promotions that don't keep up with market rates.
One other factor that I experienced is when I was in senior leadership we absolutely tracked 'flight risk' that factored in to retention programs for top talent, and H1Bs were by the nature of it viewed as lower flight risks so less likely to fall into these programs.
Yeah, I'm generally pretty pro-immigration and I'm very anti-H1B.
It's very abusive to the workers hired as H1-B and it's designed for wage suppression. You can stay an H1-B for years. If you lose your job, you'll face deportation. It gives your employer a VERY large amount of leverage over your life.
It's supposed to be about bringing expertise when local expertise isn't available, but in practice it's companies saying "Oh, we can't find someone who will work for $50k as a software dev so we need to hire H1-Bs."
Either the program needs to end or the minimum salary needs to be raised to something like $300k to compensate for the leverage the employer has.
I don't think raising the fee fixes the abuse problems. Unless maybe most of the fee goes into eacrow and is paid back to the employee if the employer terminates employment (maybe without a good, documented cause?). But that could produce its own misaligned incentives. I think the best way to solve it is to remove or reduce the restrictions on staying in the country after they have worked here for some number of years.
> I don't think raising the fee fixes the abuse problems.
It doesn't totally fix them, but it does make it so the applicant is more fairly compensated for accepting a more abusive work environment. It also stops companies from using H1-Bs as a mechanism to reduce overhead.
> I think the best way to solve it is to remove or reduce the restrictions on staying in the country after they have worked here for some number of years.
I'd be for that as well. If someone comes in on a work visa I want them to either have full access to the labor market with all the freedoms any american citizen has, or I want their compensation to be high enough to justify locking them to a company and out of the general labor market.
> but it does make it so the applicant is more fairly compensated for accepting a more abusive work environment
How so? It increases the cost to the employer to hire an H1B employee, so they might hire less of them. But it could also mean they pay the employee less to compensate for the higher cost of bringing them in to the country.
It's not just that. There are many sources coming out of the woodwork of massive H1B fraud rings. Basically from the top (CEO level) down a F500 company starts replacing its hiring loops to mostly focus on H1B and remove all American workers. And some of them just sit idle once hired.
They’re doing the opposite and floating the idea of making the program more coercive by ending the grace period to find a new job, so that essentially ICE could wait outside an office after layoffs and start cuffing people. This is because “protecting workers” is a pretext and not their actual goal.
No. The fees definitely slow down the companies from trying to hire cheap replacements. Yes, the end of a grace period does make things tougher for people in a bad job, but I think the goal is really to end these bad jobs.
Well then it’s not working; they’re just hiring people abroad. That outcome would be a disaster if your goal is helping American workers but a success if your goal is just reducing the number of foreigners in the country without regard for American workers. Between the results of the policies they’ve chosen and the types of rants they go on television or social media to make that interpretation suggests itself.
How do you determine the "correct" location of a job?
My employer sells software internationally - are you claiming any international job should be subject to some sort of fine simply because the company is HQed in the US?
I suppose we could try slicing revenue or profit by sales region and comparing against headcount expense per region? But with salaries abroad being a fraction of in the US, that math might still work out in favor of keeping international employees.
EDIT - I dislike the H1B system overall. Just not sure "fine companies that operate overseas" is something we should consider as a replacement.
Given that a lot of the 'offshoring' comes here to Europe (due to our much lower salaries) if the US starts encouraging their firms to cut jobs here via tariffs then the EU should absolutely respond - if this is how the US treats it's allies then perhaps closer relations with China are warranted?
I don’t think people consider the negative ramifications for this on the other side. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft have a ton of H1B. Take India, as an example, since that is where a majority of H1Bs come from. It has been pretty lenient in allowing American tech into the country. Everyone uses Google, YouTube, Windows,
WhatsApp and Amazon. All of those are profits that go to America.
If H1Bs are dropped or Indian workers are tariffed I believe you will start seeing a reciprocal tariffs, fines or calls for domestication.
H1B started off with the right idea, but has essentially become gamed to hell. It has created a new white collar slave class that companies exploit.
The US can tariff those out of country services if needed (through a combination of mandatory tax reporting and payment rails monitoring). An example of this today is SaaS taxes [1]. Please provide a non US service as an example and I'll propose how to rapidly replace it domestically. Out of country services can be cloned with LLMs if needed. The US government could sponsor tokens to US entities who employee US workers to clone these offshore or out of country businesses. Can overseas companies outrun the token dispenser and tax code disadvantages? You have to remember that outsourcing is primarily used by US businesses to arbitrage labor while having the US regulatory capture advantage. They want access to the US market without paying US labor costs.
This is what laws are for. "You can just do things."
> It's really hard to do this in a way that won't be trivial to work around, and often in ways where you're likely to like the work around even less.
So is collecting taxes, you just have a government funded entity grind tirelessly to keep closing the gaps. You make it economically burdensome to attempt to workaround. There will always be some leakage. "Work is hard." We know the labor exists in the US. We know offshoring is used to improve profit margins and to disempower workers to get more out of them. It is worth the effort, imho, if you want to keep the capital in the US versus sending it overseas and prioritize domestic workers over someone else's profits.
"SaaS taxes" are just sales taxes. They would apply if you create a SaaS for the stuff you want to outsource, sure. Except for it to be expensive enough to make outsourcing services unattractive you'd have to make them many times higher than they are today.
> Out of country services can be cloned with LLMs if needed.
Good luck cloning services whose endpoints are unavailable and documentation non-existent and that there would be no customers for, as they're built as a means of working around taxation of outsourcing.
> Good luck cloning services whose endpoints are unavailable and documentation non-existent and that there would be no customers for, as they're built as a means of working around taxation of outsourcing.
What services can only be procured from offshore businesses and service providers that aren't for cutting costs? Honestly, what can be provided by someone in the UK, Europe, or LATAM that cannot be done by one of 100M people in the US labor force? I am genuinely interested, both as a scholar and as market opportunity.
If you open an office in another country and hire people there, is that outsourcing? If so, would big tech have to close their "international" offices if they don't want to pay the 25% tax? I ask that because I'm seeing these offices opening a lot in the last 3 years
I don't know. Have to implement to find out and iterate. The number can go up until the preferred amount of offshoring has been drained from the system.
Also curious about loopholes, could said company start another company out of state that was the outsourcing entity and then the parent company paid that company. You're theoretically hiring from within the US, because I assume said policy doesn't go all the way to sub-contractors etc?
Google doesn’t underpay H-1B holders. In my experience any difference in actual pay is more likely caused by the H-1B people having worse salary negotiation skills than native born people.
It's funny how quickly tech employees turn MAGA when it comes to qualified immigration. Bad zero-sum intuitions about work abound across all strata of society, it seems.
I have no problem with someone getting a green card, citizenship, TPS, etc in the US. I think there should be a lot faster routes for that. Let the software devs come in and become citizens or permanent residents, I don't care about that.
What I do care about is the fact that H1-B locks immigrants to a company and tie their residence in the us to their employment. That means they'll accept lower wages and worse working conditions as they can't simply quit and switch jobs. The entire thing is designed to suppress wages in general.
If you look at it in a vacuum sure. When the same administration is actually floating the idea of making the program more coercive by making it so you can be deported immediately after losing your job I think it’s pretty reasonable to recognize the coercive nature of the program isn’t their concern.
Exactly. My entire problem with H1-B is the coercive nature of it. That is the thing that is ultimately designed to suppress wages.
There's a bunch of levers you could pull to stop it from being such a huge negative, faster paths to citizenship, looser requirements for switching jobs, higher minimum salaries. All these things would improve conditions for the H1-B applicant.
Put another way I don’t think this policy is a good way to address the issues you’re talking about because it’s just moving jobs out of the U.S. altogether.
Jobs that Americans weren't getting because it was cheaper to hire an H1-B indentured servant instead. The current administration will no doubt find a way to make everything worse, but they didn't start with a good program to begin with.
> What I do care about is the fact that H1-B locks immigrants to a company
They're free to change companies if the new company sponsors them. It may reset the timeline for applying for a green card, depending on the location and job type of the new job. Generally, if it's the same type of job in the same city, it doesn't reset.
People (including Indians) do it all the time.
Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?
> They're free to change companies if the new company sponsors them.
That's a much smaller pool of companies. The company already has to be participating in the H1-B program in order to sponsor someone.
> Do you know counterexamples?
Most of them happen under the likes of the EU where citizens of member nations have the freedom to migrate.
But even in the US, we have the green card (as you note) which you can get without doing H1-B. Getting a green card means your legal status isn't tied to employment.
> Most of them happen under the likes of the EU where citizens of member nations have the freedom to migrate.
Yes, but this isn't the same. As a US citizen, I don't have that freedom in the EU, correct?
> But even in the US, we have the green card (as you note) which you can get without doing H1-B. Getting a green card means your legal status isn't tied to employment.
True, but we're talking about employment visas. What the US has is likely standard in most countries when you don't have permanent residence.
Not to mention that many (most?) countries have a much more difficult path obtaining permanent residency compared to the US. You want to live there? Get an employment visa and stay on that visa forever.
> Yes, but this isn't the same. As a US citizen, I don't have that freedom in the EU, correct?
If you are from Cuba, you don't have access to the H1-B program. All nations have restrictions one which nations can and can't participate in their immigration and to what extent.
So yes, it is the same, the US just isn't a part of the EU. The relationship between EU nations is much closer to the relationship (pre-trump) between the US and Canada.
> True, but we're talking about employment visas.
No, actually what you specifically asked for was
> Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?
A green card is not a visa, but it is a mechanism to go to a country for employment without having you legal status tied to a specific company.
> If you are from Cuba, you don't have access to the H1-B program. All nations have restrictions one which nations can and can't participate in their immigration and to what extent.
Yes, but the restrictions on which countries' citizens can be part of the H-1B program is tiny compared to the list of countries that cannot participate in the EU program you're mentioning. With the US, it's practically a rounding error (or was, at least pre-Trump).
> No, actually what you specifically asked for was
>> Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?
Yes, I said "Going to a country for employment". If you have a green card, you are not going to the US for employment. You are in the US, or going to the US to receive the green card. Getting employment is incidental.
By counterexamples, I meant other countries where you get in via an employment visa and don't have your presence tied to the employer.
TN visa is much more restrictive than H1B. Only for citizens of two countries, and only for certain professions. I know Canadians who have no hope of getting a TN visa (wrong profession), but have come on H1B.
I guess I wasn't being clear. The original comment I was responding to was:
> What I do care about is the fact that H-1B locks immigrants to a company and tie their residence in the us to their employment.
I am merely pointing out that most countries lock employment visas to the employer. It's fine not to like it, but I'm highlighting that this is pretty normal - the US is not an outlier.
Its time to have a politics which puts the workers needs at its center. I can confidently say that the current system harms both workers and immigrants.
"Middle America hates immigrants because they are racists. I don't want H1-Bs because companies use them as cheaper labor, undercutting my value."
Absolute peak "lost in the political sauce". Most people aren't aware that Bernie Sanders has historically been very anti-immigration, before just becoming an old guy who echos whatever the current young people vibe is.
This is the fallacy of inventing a hypocrite by combining individual opinions from multiple people.
Not one single tech person I know in person has ever been "pro immigration" or "anti immigration". They all want reasonable immigration, and part of that has always meant not harming the livelihoods of existing citizens. That's the subjective part.
Edit: This is also a good example of the problem where we assume a person's opinion when they are not loud/explicit about a topic. E.g. a tech person might not have loud opinions on H1Bs, or they might loudly denounce e.g. Trump's immigrant detention centers, and you might falsely then slot that person into a blunt binary like "pro immigration". Then, when their lives are negatively affected by H1B policy, they speak against it, and you then think of them as a hypocrite even though they did nothing hypocritical.
I've seen the whole "nobody is illegal" be quite a popular sentiment in recent years and that (when talking about the US) that as long as they're ok people, they should be let in, seemingly oblivious to the incredibly strict US visa requirements for people from Europe etc.
I'm sure this is at least partly a case of the loud minority, but it's hard to tell sometimes
I'm not a yank but it seems to me the actual argument here is that H1Bs suppress the wages of locals, either directly by hiring foreigners which are less price-sensitive in terms of wages compared to locals or indirectly by moving jobs overseas, thus eliminating the jobs altogether.
You can be pro-immigrant while also being pro-not-fucking-people-over, for example by forcing companies to have a baseline "minimum wage" for H1Bs that match what a local would be paid (or higher!) for the role. It doesn't have to be a "let in a gazillion people or 0", you can choose a middle value.
If you live in a nation, you do have some say in the policies that directly affect your livelihood. This is the whole reason we have nations.
One need not (always) invoke racism or xenophobia to explain why folks might take issue with high levels of immigration.
It’s so politically charged now that people’s brains just turn off and everyone calls each other Nazis. But it is a discussion that does require nuance, especially as things like aging populations are really changing things immensely.
Or you know, you could take issue with specific concerns of specific implementations. Driven mostly by corporate greed and cynicism, over a great many decades. Also in an industry that you’re in and know something about.
You’re still allowed to have opinions, even if the situation does directly affect you. In fact, that sounds like exactly the situation you ought to weigh in on. Immigration or otherwise.
Yeah, fine. Honestly I think most of us have been overpaid our entire career. But I'm not sure I see it necessarily.
Take these stats, which can cut either way on this topic:
In USA there are more software engineers than all other engineers combined.
There are 10x more software engineers than the next highest engineering discipline.
If you could subdivide s/w engs into 10 equal categories ("I'm not just a run of the mill s/w eng"), each of those would be the top engineering employment category.
The top 10% of software engineers outnumber the next highest engineer class.
At 10% unemployment, there are more unemployed software engineers than the next highest employed engineer category.
I don't think this is surprising given that the US has also lost so much manufacturing due to cost cutting. A service economy is going to need a lot of software engineering. A nice big factory takes a lot of mechanical and electrical engineers.
I don't think you'll find this community welcoming the idea of lower pay (and hence a more volatile employment).
Overall if in the next 12 months I fully expect compensation on average to be down 30-50%. It's impossible for it not to, given the sudden exodus of talent from US to open up remote consultancies that can offer same skill at 1/4th the price.
Of course not. I am preparing for a 30% cut in 3 years, but don't necessarily expect it. It's not a guarantee that any demand at all will go down, or that AI will do anything whatsoever to our job. Demand is up lately for senior devs (and junior devs probably have more of an evaluation issue than closed job reqs[1]).
Hard disagree about being overpaid. These are some of the most profitable companies in the world, what else should they do if not pay their workers well?
The H1B debate has a lot of factions, but one thing is clear: AI is going to be replacing some to a lot of entry level knowledge jobs. Even if it doesn't get any better than what we have now, it'll create a pipeline problem where senior engineers are more valuable than ever and we'll have to figure out how to make room for junior engineers so that eventually they can become senior engineers. Given that, it seems prudent to pump the brakes on H1B--which has become a way to get bodies for entry level work (while top talent has shifted to O visas and the like).
It won’t because universities, national labs and non profits are exempt from the fee.
Under the proposed rule, the additional fee would not apply to H-1B petitions that are not subject to the cap, such as petitions filed by certain nonprofit research organizations, governmental research organizations, and institutions of higher education.
https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-proposes-ad...
I do believe it’s going to push a lot of jobs offshore though. I have already seen it at my job.
That's an insufficiently granular question. How much of the talent in frontier labs has an H1B rather than an O visa? Out of the people who have an H1B, how many employers would be willing to eat the $100k fee because those employees are so valuable?
I worked with and hired tons of H1Bs (and non) over the years and the idea that they earn this visa with exceptional talent is a farce. I work in bog standard web services. We fill seats with H1Bs to write ho-hum crud apps and do UX testing work. Some have been great! Others terrible.
Could be wildly different for someone in a very high-tech org or medical field, but at places I worked it was used as a convenience, but not necessary.
Is this just posturing (I won't speculate on the intended audience), or does the admin believe this will actually net more jobs for US citizens?
TFA doesn't go into great detail about how this actually pushes offshoring - the variety that I'm familiar with at least (X/Y% blend of US/"near-shore" aka anywhere-but-west-asia roles). I have no doubt however that Y is just going to get larger while X stays the same or decreases (not even factoring aipocalypse).
What constraint specifically makes them believe this is going to net in the way they want us to believe?
It's the same with the tariffs. My company has a huge "globalization" effort that expands offices and manufacturing facilities in countries with cheap labor and no/low tariffs. Instead of everything centering around the US, almost nobody gets hired in the US, except top management.
I feel like this is what the U.S. is not getting. If a company wants to hire a person, it will hire in or out of the country. They not allowing this form of *legal* immigration, is just making the country lose tax revenue and money circulating inside of the country...
On the whole, this is a good thing. There are policy responses that can be enacted as needed, in an easier and more humane way. The goal of the US government should be to protect the interests of the American citizen, as much as the goals of India or China should be to protect their own interests.
Its goal to protect the American citizen is fulfilled by economic security. If you let your industries leave, you have done a disservice to your citizens. That’s how trump got elected in the first place, and ironically it’ll only get worse because it’s the wrong solution.
I think it lessens the damage -- offshore workers do not consume finite resources in their host countries (e.g. housing, medical care) leaving those to the native citizens. Eventually AI will replace the "need" for these visa holders -- cancelling a contract with an offshore firm is more tenable than remigrating thousands of families.
I'm a former H1B visa holder and I feel very conflicted. My experience was a great one: I was hired by a startup on an H1B, successfully transferred to a different startup, then eventually went to work for a bigger company that sponsored my green card. I wasn't underpaid by those startups and I know this $100k fee means a similar company will never hire someone like me again.
But over the years I got to know many people on H1Bs who were indentured servants to their employers: once their green card application was in they were stuck. And if you're from a country like India that can take a decade or more. The whole thing feels like a scam and the $100k fee isn't going to deter those companies from doing it, it's still well worth the money to them.
I wish we saw sensible, well thought out reform here. Instead we get the Trump administration.
Terrible own-goal in my opinion. I know loads of startups that only exist because the founders were here on H1Bs originally. But it can’t be avoided I suppose. For all the complaints about VCs, they’re tuned into something innately that most people are simply incapable of reaching for - the idea of the bet on the not-yet-great population in order to get wins.
People are usually quite high-time-preference by default and “if I had bought Bitcoin/nvidia/etc” is the norm. The United States, like Europe and the UK, has hit the population wealth distribution where loss aversion dominates growth policies. Consequently, most Americans aim directly at the same targets as Europeans have succeeded at - constraining the total success of their country in an aim to extract maximal personal piece of the existing pie. The resulting shrinking in economic growth often causes much lower wealth for everyone but it’s very attractive.
This leads to nonsense like dockworkers constraining US shipping to the cost of the rest of the economy or landowners successfully prohibiting the construction of more homes. Local constituents like these block growth and prosperity for most other Americans. But just like massive minimum elevator size regulations are “estimated to not have any cost impact” so are these.
The common thread, I suppose, is an absence of systems thinking. I wonder if it is inevitable among countries that hit wealth. We will have to see what happens to the Polish and Latvians as they overtake the British and Germans in prosperity. People think in their lifetimes. The challenge for civilizations is thinking in longer terms when comprised of shorter individual lives.
In my opinion, American cities should be towers to the sky. America has easily space to build more New Yorks. The H1B is America’s hukou for the world and the US should attempt to test-select people in and unleash coastal megacities. We shall see where we get.
Datacenters are good, ships are good, factories are good, power plants are good, space launch is good. And the people we will need to get all that now that we don’t make enough locally are also good.
The $100k fee is such a bad idea. I would be fine for there being a minimum salary to get rid of the undercutting of available American labor. But there are certain niche jobs that there just isn't any local talent for that will just result in contracting with them overseas which is a lose-lose.
Nobody is willing to state this but it’s pretty clear if you look at the way officials behind the policy talk: they’re OK with this. They don’t mind economic harm. The purpose has nothing to do with protecting workers and everything to do with creating a more ethnically homogenous country.
People state this constantly. It's a very effective distraction (a distraction based on reality, to be clear - there are plenty of plain old racists out there, of course).
What do you mean it is a distraction? I don’t think the fact that people at the highest level of power go on TV and give racist lectures about how Haiti had problems because Haitians themselves are defective should be ignored when we look at the policy the same people are making and tell us it’s motivated by something else.
May I give a more balanced perspective here while acknowledging that there are bad actors with malign incentives on both sides of this debate?
I think we should all be able to agree that in the limit both sides of this debate are wrong, and therefore what we are arguing here is where the balance is whether this fee helps strike the right balance.
A nation cannot simply open its labour market up to the most qualified workers in the world and not have most of the best job openings going to foreigners. This is simply just a matter of numbers and probability. If you're very skilled already, then you may not see this as a problem, but if you're just coming out of education looking for a skilled job and must compete with the the entire world for a decent job in your own country, you might feel this isn't a great deal.
Similarly, a nation which does not accept any foreign talent, regardless of what those individuals can provide clearly harms that nation's own economic growth potential, and ultimately longer-term that costs everyone.
Maybe some people disagree, but it seems obvious to me that a nation somewhat owes its best jobs to its own citizens, and it should seek to have labour markets which are tight enough that employees will be occasionally incentivised to hire someone fresh out of education and train them up to be able to work high-skilled and well-paid jobs, rather than simply taking the easy option of hiring someone from abroad.
However, sometimes training someone isn't feasible. From time to time a company may really need talent and is simply unable to reasonably train or source that domestically regardless of the salary they might offer. If this is the case then they should of course be welcome to hire foreign workers, but there should be a financial disincentive to this so that companies are always incentivised to first look for workers domestically.
So I must admit I struggle a bit to understand the opposition to this $100k fee. If this causes talent to be lost then the assumption that they are extremely valuable surely must be wrong?
Well, I’m not making a claim about people showing up to argue on Hacker News so much as the people making the policy. But anyway I anticipate the result of this policy will be economic harm to everyone including people anticipating it will help them.
There’s not much you can do about jobs just moving abroad unless you start some kind of tariffs or import bans on software, which is a self-defeating choice for a massive net exporter of tech services and software.
The point of the these visas is to hire outside talent which cannot be found in the US and qualifies as the "best and brightest" and specialized "talent" that is beyond outstanding. Everyone knows this has been heavily abused for years.
Now the word "talent" has lost its meaning or most commonly means "anyone" for cheap even though the employer knows that they are unqualified and hires them anyway for cheap labor to reduce their operating costs (expensive US employees).
You can't say "we are hiring the best and brightest" and then decide to then go for those who are unqualified. Now this $100K fee is pointless when AI agents, and data centers (homes for the AI agents) are getting hired over both US employees and off-shored employees.
One more thing. The big question is who would you rather trust to hire to not create a disaster like in [0][1] (Human or AI agent, hint one of them cannot be held accountable.)
Almost like if the $100k fee is the sticking point, then maybe the talent being brought in isn’t world class talent we can’t find domestically so much as easily exploitable manpower that can be replaced with another H-1B if they start asking for reasonable treatment or higher wages.
Sorry IEEE, but offshoring happens regardless of the H-1B fee. I’m a pretty flexible dinosaur but you’re never going to get me to feel sympathy for employers leveraging a visa that’s tantamount to employment slavery in its onerous restrictions and lack of direct pathway to citizenship.
The H1B problem could be fixed overnight if the government handed them out by a simple test of ability rather than an idiotic lottery. Having world class researchers and engineers who command million dollar salaries enter the same line as a $60K worker at a slop factory like Infosys or TCS is beyond idiotic. And a high visa fee ultimately hurts more than it helps because it drives away both groups, and US tech needs the top talent from across the world to continue to remain dominant.
Cap the number, sort by salaries (perhaps by coarse domains of skills and not very narrow . Nurses vs Doctors. But s/w engineers are s/w engineers).
Testing abilities is a gamable proxy.
How much a company is willing to spend on the person is the best barometer, if we stay true to the intent of the visa (scarce talent)
I’m not super familiar with the options, but isn’t there O-1 for anyone who’s world class commanding a million dollar salary? The impression I have (mostly from online discussion) is that H-1B is basically only for (comparatively) low skill workers to come work for lower salaries. Are there cases where globally competitive people would come on a H-1B?
I came in on an H1B as an IC3 at Meta. Now, with the skills I gained during my career, I maintain core infrastructure that has a massive benefit to the industry and is critical to tech companies of all sizes (I learned last week that a major auto manufacturer uses my infrastructure as well). Immigration's benefit to society is tail-distributed, which is why it's important to have broad-based immigration (you can't predict who will be at the tails).
The company documents it and files an application. It’s pretty formula and a bit random. I’ve written recommendation letters for colleges to get these. My impression was the person evaluating it knows a bit about the field, they are no where near as informed as we were. AIUI, the pay was a bigger factor.
> And a high visa fee ultimately hurts more than it helps because it drives away both groups
Does it though? It seems like it would drive away the $60k worker, and the companies hiring the million dollar worker would pay it without second thought.
The other half of "cost" is "return on investment".
If I had a plan to e.g. copy-paste specific success stories from any rich country to any poor country, something that might e.g. raise the per-capita income of the poor country to that of the rich country over 30 years, I'd be glad to have the chance to make that investment in India.
The per-capita GDP difference between the USA (94k) and India (2.8k) would imply 3300% growth over 30 years, which is about 12.5%/year compounding average annual growth for the whole period.
This feels small enough to be plausible, and big enough to be massively tempting. Extremely fast growth, but not quite pushing absurd.
Everywhere else but the USA (and possibly Luxembourg), $90k will buy you a fantastic quality of life.
If you really want to make $90k seem as bad to the rest of us as it feels to you, you need to get the exchange rates changed, have USD devalued compared to other currencies until they're at purchasing power parity.
Of course, doing this would mean forcing yourselves to accept that China's got the biggest economy and the USA is only a little ahead of the EU, instead of thinking China and the EU are about the same as each other and significantly behind the USA.
H1B visas are only given to US local workers (remote workers don't need them), most of whom will end up working in tech centers (aka high cost of living places).
I worked at a company that depended heavily on one of the major 4 Indian suppliers. Their employees were treated like garbage. they would bring them here for months at a time. It was like indentured servitude. they lived in a bunk house and worked all day and slept and a bus picked them up and they worked. 6 days a week. If they fucked up, they were gone the next day. All for the chance to make it here.
Once we added a resource and had a sham hiring process in which the supplier supplied an expert with no less than 10 pages of experience in our niche project. To his credit, he did not lie to me, and told me he could try to figure it out but had not worked on the product, but that he needed to do well. We were forced to hire him
Later our team slated to replaced by that firm to maintain a major product while we went to green field stuff. I resigned and my team flew the coup over the next year or
Disgusting
we should have a tax or tariff on "W2" employees or firms outsourcing labor. Minimally a tax that helps pay for our social safety net. We depend on new employed young people and sending that work afar does not help us.
I remember when this was announced here on HN. So many right-wingers were on board with this because it would bring jobs back and make companies pay. A win-win as they said.
Canada is jumping on this opportunity to invite the US tech workers who are frustrated with US H1B visa restrictions and GC backlog by offering an express permanent residency in 10 days
https://canadabychoice.com/services/move-to-canada/usa/occup...
Canada also floating idea of alliance with Europe for travel and job opportunities
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-european-union-eu-me...
The economics don’t make any more sense for Canada or the EU than they do for the US. The the new $100k H1B fee was imposed because companies have a huge financial incentive to import semi-skilled workers from lower-wage markets rather than hire domestically. Canada and the EU face the same problem. In tech, it's about the kinds of work inexperienced/cheap developers are often doing: assembly line, JIRA-ticket-taker type development.
This is especially impacting Indian tech workers in the US [1] since these are often the types of roles that InfoSys and other foreign tech consulting firms are staffing. The new $100,000 fee to sponsor an H1B visa has made it difficult to justify hiring foreign tech workers when most of the time they are just going to be using American LLMs to do their work anyway.
The foreign tech workers that are worth the $100,000 fee are still easily getting their visa sponsored.
[1] https://thefederal.com/category/news/h1b-visa-indian-tech-wo...
> semi-skilled workers
fwiw the h1-b workers I encountered in bigtech were totally on-par with their US citizen equivalents in both coding and english communication. many teams were about 50/50 in my office (SF, non-HQ).
my current talent/placement company works mostly with AI startups who are usually too early to support visa requirements [0]. being able to support the lead-time and planning for international applicants is a huge advantage later stage companies have in terms of being able to scoop up talent at reasonable prices. big loss for the local ecosystems if these jobs move across the border imo.
[0]: https://www.hedgy.works
Yeah, it is not much worth because issue is not that top talent on H1 matches local talent but how average is the rest but get brought to US in name of high skill immigration.
The debate by supporters is set like: Look at these 5 top guys they are best in class in every aspect so why shouldn't they be here. And now don't look over there 500 guys which are business analyst, basic enterprise coders, testers application support engineers lest question maybe asked how come they are considered highly skilled.
Ironically, if it's true that the jobs are being off-shored, rather than on-shored and filled by locals, this would be beneficial for the countries who currently find themselves in a brain-drain spiral (be it India, Ukraine, etc.). It would result in a more tech and economically balanced world rather than having two lobes (USA and China). People would say that it's a detriment to the US's future --but those are often the most critical of US hegemony.
The Indian offshore firms are scrambling because of the opposite happening. If all this work was just flooding to India then the panic that’s happening there over the industry imploding wouldn’t be occurring.
The sort of work traditionally handled by cheap offshore labor is now the sort of work most ripe for replacement by AI. So it’s burning the candle from both ends. The low value stuff is getting replaced by AI and not sent there and the high value stuff struggles to get delivered by cheap labor because the play was always cost of and not the quality of the talent.
US has shipped all manufacturing jobs to Asia, including China and got the Rust Belt in exchange (and huge corporate profits). and China is now a manufacturing powerhouse.
Partly that push was created by the labor unions, who pushed the cost of doing manufacturing business far above what was profitable and feasible.
When the environment becomes hostile to conducting business, then jobs will leave and local industries atrophy.
How was the environment that enabled businesses to lower their cost by admitting China in WTO hostile to conducting business?
BTW - with or without unions manufacturing was profitable in the US before NAFTA and China entering WTO. So your narrative that manufacturing was dying because of labor unions does not hold much water.
Patently false narrative, equivalent to saying all americans are fat - both are extremely cheap uneducated arguments.
Every single H1B I worked with was brilliant in their field - and paid extremely well often in excess of $400K. I know several that are earning well past $500K. If you claim these are generic Jira pushers, well you are showing ignorance.
The $100K fees isn’t material to them but the whole vitriolic nonsense poured around what they do and just rolling their work in mud - well that’s where they just move and take their 50 ppl organization with them.
This is pure nonsense.
The H1B coworkers I work with really go the entire spectrum. The laziest programmers I met are H1B. And there are also some pretty smart ones that I learned a lot from and I continue to learn from.
To say that the H1B are all brilliant is hyperbole.
Well, if this small fee can help brilliant folks to explore their horizons outside US, it would be all worth in end.
Canada was already much cheaper than the US for tech. I was shocked to find out how little colleagues in Canada in the same role are paid relative to peers in the US.
If the issue was cost the jobs would already be in Canada. If the issue was cost the jobs would also have already been offshored.
The issue is on attracting the best talent and here, despite doomsday predictions to the contrary, the US continues to lead. The $100k fee is nothing to bring in top talent. Top talent was competing against Indian offshore companies scooping up thousands of visas for iffy-at-best talent.
The cold reality is many folks in tech on this visa were mediocre talent at best coming out of degree mills or body shops, in roles that could easily be filled domestically if there wasn’t inexpensive overseas labor willing to work for less.
Folks casually leave out the bit that all that iffy talent was crowding out far better talent looking to come to the US but couldn’t because they didn’t get picked in the lottery. This raising of the entry bar is freeing up space so the best folks have a better chance.
Agree with it or not that’s what these changes are aiming to fix, and there’s little evidence this will just send all the jobs to Canada.
Canada historically is also one of the worst places to work in tech. Maybe it’s changed but I remember a decade ago tech jobs were paying a 1/4th of what they were in NYC/SF.
If pay and money is the only thing you care about then yeah. But for the rest of us, none of the places are "the worst place to work in tech" as long as you're in the northern hemisphere. Take a look at what the pay is in Chile if it's so scary to you.
Nope, cost of living is what matters and at least at the time major Canadian metros were as if not more expensive than SF/NYC and got you a 1/4th of the pay. I am sure that’s attractive to some but sounds pretty miserable. Chile I imagine has pretty good cost of living economics. Anecdotally most of my friends in Latin and South America live upper middle class on software salaries.
"major Canadian metros were as if not more expensive than SF/NYC"
That just isn't true. You can easily look up the cost of living for e.g. Vancouver:
> Cost of Living Including Rent in San Francisco, CA is 57.8% higher than in Vancouver
> Rent Prices in San Francisco, CA are 91.7% higher than in Vancouver
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
> Anecdotally most of my friends in Latin and South America live upper middle class on software salaries
And your North American friends do not? Please.
The commonality is that software engineers all across the globe live pretty great, compared to their local peers. But of course, compare them to inflated NYC/SV salaries and everything looks like peanuts.
Sure. My point was historically Canada was pretty bad from a QOL perspective. Low salary and high cost of living. Not sure what you are trying to argue but have at it!
Trying to help you understand that Canada does not have "low salary" just because it's lower than NYC/SV, since apparently your software engineer buddies live an upper middle class life on software salaries, how "low" can it be then, especially if the cost of living is so high? Something doesn't make sense here.
Pay and money are why people work, so yeah they're pretty important.
Money is just a tool to get what you actually want, the goal itself shouldn't be "more money", unless you want to miserable, because that hole you feel never gets filled by shoveling more money down it.
More money generally equals more freedom, even if you don't know what you want specifically, but you're ultimately talking about a bigger, unrelated issue.
I've been working in Canada for US companies for decades, and pay-wise, it's gotten a lot better, though there's still a big difference. Never been tempted to move though.
Good to hear. I just remember looking at big tech postings at the time with salaries around 60k but then looking at rents that were more expensive then SF and thinking no way.
Canada was bad for tech specifically because of H1B.
Now that H1B pathway is being blocked, Canada can build an alternative tech center and ecosystem. They can do it, Canada has very strong CS programs and is a birthplace of AI and deep learning
Does Canada not already have an issue with not enough jobs available?
My uncle is a skilled immigrant to Canada (electrical engineer) and was never able to find an engineering job. They live in an immigrant-heavy subsidized housing neighborhood full of people in the same situation.
Plus one. My parents experience as well in Montreal. My dad could not understand why Canada bothered to move him and his family and the keep him on welfare. BTW - life on welfare in Canada was 5 times better than life as an electrical engineer in România. My parents never stopped thinking it was a really good idea to migrate to Canada.
How do people get by when that happens? If you have no job after a period of time, what are your options?
He tutors math and science, my aunt (who also has a graduate degree) works in a daycare. Canadian welfare is also quite generous.
Their son is doing well, but I don’t see how it makes economic sense for Canada at that point. It boils down to a circuitous and expensive way to direct government dollars to smart people who are likely to have smart kids. You could save yourself a step and just give lower income kids in Canada IQ tests and throw money at the promising ones.
The US says they don't want them, the point of the article is the new visa requirements (surprise) aren't converting into hiring US citizens but instead pushing the roles offshore.
Well yes, what difference does it make to bring people over to the US vs them doing the work overseas?
Bringing people over has negative consequences in the US (housing demand goes up; water demand goes up; power demand goes up) and in the person's home country (money doesn't flow to the local country; good people leave who should be staying and building their own country).
the candidate for Canadian PR has to secure a job offer beforehand, so the Canada's plan is that US tech workers move their US jobs to Canada, and big tech employers expand their existing tech offices in Canada, rather than being forced to shell out $100k to Donny.
Why should US employers be forced to pay $100k to Donny or compromise for substandard smaller labor pool in the US and bear increased costs?
Put another way: why should American employers be forced to hire Americans? If the labor pool is indeed substandard, they arguably have a vested interest in improving the quality of that labor pool rather than simply giving up on it. The $100k (and it's consequences) are putting a finger on the scale in a nationalist manner to prefer local products. It's tariffs for people.
It comes down to whether you have a globalist or nationalist mindset. Depending on which, you will come to a different conclusion about what to think. Should a government prioritize the individual success of citizens of its country, or the profitability of companies domiciled there (and therefore overall national economic performance)? Which approach, which tide lifts more boats by a meaningful amount? Which comports with a government's stated duties?
You decide!
Employers have only one job: to maximize profits, thats it. It is not employers' fault that US is unable to train tech workers, despite spending $30-40k per pupil in school system only to end up #27 in PISA ranking.
The problem with all anti-H1B discourse is Lump Of Labor fallacy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy ). The loudest people are the least educated about the consequences of blocking high skilled immigration.
Economics is generally not a zero sum game. At least according to what they taught me in Econ 101, on a macroeconomic scale skilled workers tend to increase job availability. They spend a larger portion of their income on services, which has a positive multiplier effect.
> skilled workers tend to increase job availability
Who'd imagine squeezing the middle class would backfire epically? Compensation hasn't reflected the GDP per capital increases for the majority of the workforce. I don't think even the productivity increases from personal computers in the end of the 1970's have trickled down.
Most of the 'squeeze' comes from things like housing and health care. The former driven by NIMBYs pulling the ladder up after them in so many desirable places.
The subcategory of NIMBY hate regarding overdevelopment of existing communities (as opposed to things like datacenters, multi-home owners concerned about investment, etc etc) is mostly hatred of the average citizen, which is not a great category of people to decide to hate. 90% of people would react the same ways in the same situations.
The obvious problem is that you can only develop a "desirable" area so much before you have fundamentally altered it. When there is a perception that the demand is driven in large part by people moving into the country, rather than by being born, that naturally engenders bitterness. When there is a perception that there are plenty of other areas available for development, which would then become desirable over time, but the developers want money and the government is focused on short-term goals, that further engenders bitterness. This is all very natural, and doesn't necessitate people to be unreasonably NIMBY to oppose it. Again, most people would.
It's not hate, it's just something that changed in the US in about the 1970ies. In the past, you'd have a booming area and people would build homes as a result and things weren't perfect, but kind of balanced out in terms of housing.
Then we stopped doing that, with devastating consequences for many people wishing to move to places with better opportunities: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388 - as well as the economy as a whole.
You can read about it in books like Arbitrary Lines https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781642832549/ar... or Zoning Rules https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/books/zoning-rules/
A huge amount of housing demand comes from immigration. You can't call people who like their neighbourhoods "NIMBYs" for not wanting their nice area to triple in population to solve a problem. They aren't the problem. The demand is the problem.
So lack of supply isn't the problem, it's the people who want a place to live who are the problem? Would you make this same argument if the increased demand was from people being born rather than immigration (because it is both)?
I think if you want to be able to block your neighbors from building denser housing on their property then that should only be enforceable if it was agreed to by everybody in advance when they bought the place (e.g. via an HOA contract or some similar type of restriction on the property deed). Otherwise this is tantamount to allowing Walmart to get a vote on whether to allow Target to set up next door.
> So lack of supply isn't the problem, it's the people who want a place to live who are the problem? Would you make this same argument if the increased demand was from people being born rather than immigration (because it is both)?
I totally agree it's both, although most first world populations have low birth rates (until you add in generational immigration from high birth rate cultures), so slow building works well.
Actually you can blame them because it was the done thing throughout US history to build more homes when people moved to an area. And there is nothing more American than moving to a place with better opportunities or amenities. "The pursuit of happiness" and all that.
Actual immigration from outside the US is a vanishingly small part of our housing problems, just as immigrants do not actually "eat the cats and dogs".
Where I live in Oregon the conflict is almost entirely about other Americans moving here vs those pulling up the ladder - which doesn't, of course,stop anyone from moving here, it just means only the wealthy can, rather than teachers, nurses, firefighters and so on.
> Who'd imagine squeezing the middle class would backfire epically? Compensation hasn't reflected the GDP per capital increases for the majority of the workforce. I don't think even the productivity increases from personal computers in the end of the 1970's have trickled down.
Why would investments by employers result in higher compensation for employees?
That said, median real individual income has increased substantially since the 1970s: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/mepainusa672n
It's really dismaying how many people on this site seem to think immigration and the job market are a zero sum game... and that hasn't changed 12 years after I wrote this:
https://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-job...
also known as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
They always had that issue - going back 20 years. Nothing new at the moment.
one man's issue is another's man opportunity to overwork and underpay :)
lower wages and higher rents are 99.99% of the reason for the West's immigration policies.
While the U.S. capricious immigration policy gives an opportunity for Canada, it only gives it one particular opportunity: that of hiring educated, high-potential, but inexperienced immigrant workers.
The thing about potential is that it needs to right environment to be realized. Canada still has two hurdles to create that environment:
- Access to capital, either in the form of risk-tolerant VC funding or established companies willing to invest significantly in R&D. Those are not quick to move over the border.
- A critical mass of _experienced_ talent. Entrepreneurs and high-agency ICs who've seen what it looks like to build a successful startup and capable of replicating it. Those don't have much incentive to move over the border either.
The U.S. has hundreds of startups that later became unicorns. The employees of those startups are typically the key members that drive the success of new ones. For Canada, the only name that easily comes to mind is Shopify.
Work permit in 10 days (With qualifying job offer), not permanent residency.
In my experience, people who didn’t make it in the H-1B lottery go to Canada, try the L-1 and come back to the United States. It’s good for Canada to offer a work permit so quickly, but I’m just not seeing people willing to obtain permanent residency in Canada. After all, for the same job, the pay in Canada is way worse. In fact I’m seeing Canadian citizens come to the U.S. to get a big salary bump while doing the same job.
> After all, for the same job, the pay in Canada is way worse.
OTOH, you have free universal healthcare - and, the best part is that everyone in Canada gets it. You also have gun-free schools, abortions are considered healthcare, and, on top of all that, a sane government and a population that's considered pathologically nice to each other.
Honestly, I'd take the pay cut (in fact, I did - but I live in Ireland instead).
Canada used to have free healthcare, not anymore.
While 90% of Canadian tech grads work in the US on TN visas.
This stuff doesn't actually help Canada at all, it's in a bit of a development trap.
I mean Canada has jumped so many times in last 8-10 years with these express residencies, hiring H1B laid off workers, grabbing people who are stuck with travel restrictions to US I'd have thought they be half way to the moon.
In any case I wish well to people in Canada and Europe and people who are looking to move there. More spreaded opportunities lead to better outcome for everyone including US even if it does not look like one.
Man it’s embarrassing that they had AI write that for them
Canadian salaries are terrible once you realize that the cost of living in Canada is just as high or even higher than the US, which is why a lot of Canadian engineers left for the US
This just isn't true. Yes, ratio of salary to cost of living is better in the US, setting aside the precarious immigration process, political instability, high rates of gun crime, lack of healthcare, etc. I left this reply to someone else claiming the same thing:
You can easily look up the cost of living for e.g. Vancouver:
> Cost of Living Including Rent in San Francisco, CA is 57.8% higher than in Vancouver
> Rent Prices in San Francisco, CA are 91.7% higher than in Vancouver
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
its a matter of building a sustaining tech ecosystem: colleges, employers, investors ecosystem.
Once they figure out the ecosystem Canada can arbitrage away the broken US immigration policies and anti-immigrant bigotry.
Just as manufacturing jobs in heartland have left US for Asia, so do tech jobs can leave US for Canada, India and elsewhere
The us is not anti-immigrant, it accepts massive numbers of immigrants every year. It would be below sustainable birthrate without it.
Canada or Canadians?
Must be rage bait lol
Not surprising, H1B for my entire career was a cost cutting measure.
Every time we had a layoff some portion would be replaced with H1B.
Every H1B that shared their salary with me has been underpaid.
I know its anecdotal but sharing to see if anyone has seen similar.
Not my experience in big tech and HFT.
We spent a ton of time and effort trying to find anyone to our standards, never able to find enough. H1B (and other work visas) were generally better and more Sr compared to locals we found. They got paid as much or more than everyone else.
When we had great people we could not get here we would instead build a team overseas, taking a bunch of other jobs with them.
I think that both you and the grandparent comment are correct at the same time. It feels like there is a strong dichotomy between how H1B visa is treated across different realms of tech.
I have been working in big tech for a decade, and have a few friends working in the more technical financial firms (think more TwoSigma/HRT/Citadel, not JPM/GS), and my experience matches yours. Every H1B I knew at the companies I worked at was absolutely not hired as a cost-cutting measure. It was just simply difficult to find people who could qualify. And god knows we tried, I remember my team interviewing roughly 50 people just to fill a position of just a baseline decent dev (not a rockstar math olympics winner with multiple groundbreaking publications; though that would've been nice). And absolutely none of them were underpaid either, they were on the exact same comp range for the level, with plenty of them topping out the range. In fact, they actually ended up costing more to the employer than a local would, due to having to deal with immigration lawyers/filing fees/etc. (all while being paid the same as everyone else).
Meanwhile, I have a lot of acquaintances from undergrad working as devs at tech consultancy firms and more "general/traditional finance" companies. The stories I hear from them about H1B at their workplaces are pretty much exactly what the grandparent comment describes, and even worse.
Re: cost
Also, very expensive relocation packages
> In fact, they actually ended up costing more to the employer than a local would, due to having to deal with immigration lawyers/filing fees/etc. (all while being paid the same as everyone else).
I mean, you were actually underpaying the local workers if this was the case? If you offered the fully loaded salary to the local workers they might have accepted.
Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay (which per def is true, if you had to bring in foreign work?).
Workers on an H1B are more abusable though - if they lose the job they have something like 30 days to find another one or they have to leave the country entirely.
So you talk a good game about work life balance and then after you hire an H1B worker and bring them to the country you can spring 60 hour weeks doing tedius things and many won't be in a position to say no.
The salary might also seem higher to somebody who doesn't understand the cost of living in the US (and how many things are not paid for via taxes like healthcare).
At all of my jobs everyone was treated the same.
> Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay (which per def is true, if you had to bring in foreign work?).
Yeah, by definition this is pretty much always true, no? No matter how scarce local workers are, if you were willing to offer double the market rate you could probably find someone. Scarcity and price are two sides of the same coin, that's how markets work. Bringing in labor from another country when local talent is scarce both reduces costs/wages and reduces scarcity.
> Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay
Whenever someone says "But then the locals making $400k would make $500k" I have to ask: where are all these qualified locals for whom $400k isn't enough money already? Shouldn't all the laid-off people be champing at the bit for these jobs?
At some price point you genuinely do run out of local talent. At that point it's just a question of whether the work goes abroad or foreign workers come in.
IME we had very few people turn down offers, and even the it was rarely about the comp.
It’s hard to get people to even interview, or find them in the first place.
I can't speak to your particular situation, but in my experience this has been two factors; one is location -- it is sometimes hard in some locations to find senior talent whereas H1Bs are (naturally) more amenable to moving. The other is pricing, which is echoing the GP's point. Senior talent is expensive and you can get it at (apparently) considerably lower cost by looking for H1B applicants.
I found that once you are paying mid to high 6 figures the company is not trying to save by hiring a foreigner.
How many H1-B or non-H1-B jobs are “high 6 figures”?
That’s a tiny, tiny minority of the tech employment market and one which would readily shrug off a one-time $100K expense. (That would be less than 2 months’ salary for a high-6-figure position.)
Most of my friends and colleagues ended up in that range (or higher).
It’s more common then people think
$600K+ is around 1% of the US tech market and tends to run in clusters (so your circle is more likely to have people near you in comp than a random selection).
I'm not doubting your first statement. I think people probably estimate it reasonably accurately as "rare, but not unheard of nor extraordinarily rare".
if theres higher supply, then companies pay less.
Looks like there is need for 2 separate visa categories: - One to bring top 0.1% talent from across the globe to the US - Another to bring in temporary talent as needed
Current version of H1B had become a big basket to hold both, and abused too for just finding cheaper labor. It may be time to segment these out.
Also, given that US has ~400 million local citizens, there should be less need for either.
H1b was officially intended to be the former category, and a $100k visa fee puts in back squarely in that category. For a company that wants 0.1% talent paying an extra $100k one-time fee is expensive but not a show-stopper
Now the question is whether the US wants another visa category for finding cheap labor. I am not sure that is either needed or desired (by voters). Maybe with the exception of agriculture
There is no need for "temporary talent" from foreign countries. US is graduating plenty of CS grads from our schools. There is a need for wage suppression and exploitation (for anyone not aware, if you get fired from your H1B job you have 2 weeks to leave the county). That's why they have a reputation for being "better", another word for it is indentured servitude.
And it’s well known all CS grads are equally good
There are already categories like this if you jump away from tech.
Our friendly neighborhood Ski resort oligarchies leverage the J-1 Visa program to bring in international students to work at the resorts over paying more to hire local workers for example. They also leverage the company store model by putting them in dorms and charging them accordingly for housing.
You understand that people get better at things over time?
> Looks like there is need for 2 separate visa categories: - One to bring top 0.1% talent from across the globe to the US - Another to bring in temporary talent as needed
O-1 is for exceptional talent ("extraordinary ability"). Bring exceptional talent, eliminate the H-1B visa. It's that simple.
I think I would reframe the OP less about cost cutting and more that the company has an unrealistic cap on salary. Would be interesting to see where geographically your experience was. Having worked in the Midwest the problem I have found is that the population wanting to live in the Midwest is small and then when you are trying to recruit top talent it is even harder. You would need to pay more but then most companies do this analysis where they say the median level 1 junior tech salary is x for this region. Which on face value is maybe ok but then you look at the job market and there is low to no real tech jobs. To hire smart people you are asking them to move to a place that has less to do and no interchangeable market for their talent.
Both can be true.
Finding the top 1% gets better results if you have a wider net.
Finding the cheapest 20% does too...
There is absolutely a ton of abuse. It actually hurts efforts to get the best people. They end up getting put in overseas offices.
I'm absolutely sure there is. Any poorly specified constraint will be abused.
And it’s a hard problem to fully specify. A lot of people here seem to think that CS style analytical thinking can solve every real world problem precisely. That’s just not true.
While I’m more open to this kind of H1B use, you all should be investing in training local talent as well. Ideally using those H1Bs to train local talent.
We put people on the moon. I find it hard to believe the people here lack the raw ability. I find it much more likely businesses don’t want to give back to the country that they’re residing in.
I learned a tremendous amount (and was very successful as a result) from foreign born colleagues (some of whom went on to be ACM fellows, and other major awards).
Having a disproportionate share of the best people world wide to work with is a great privilege and advantage.
"We put people on the moon."
using german nazi scienties, which is irony since they are definition of immigrant
Yes, there’s a great story about von Braun training a local American. Using imported talent to the benefit of Americans is good.
This has definitely not been my experience.
+1 to this at big tech.
H1B were no less skilled (and no less paid) than their US-based counterparts.
Comparing getting an American to uproot themselves from their entire community to move to the Bay Area for a job vs. someone on the other side of the world who is looking to get into America just aren't the same. Ultimately, H1Bs are used to lower the working standards of Americans and enrich tiny pockets of existing regional capital holders.
Regional wealth inequality in America has not gotten better as Silicon Valley has gotten richer and brought in more foreign labor. At some point, the people making money hand over fist need to show how they're improving the situation for Americans instead of just saying "trust us, bro."
The AI discussion hasn't helped Silicon Valley seem more in touch with "flyover" states either. It's pretty clear there's a lot of disdain and hostility from Silicon Valley towards the "average" American.
The best people I worked from (in the bay area) were from Switzerland, Germany, the UK, France , Israel, etc.
H1B should have never been a lottery. It should be a stack rank by salary to deal with the over subscription.
H1B also includes things like high school foreign language teachers.
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=french+language+immer...
A stack rank by salary would mean "H1B is big tech employees" rather than "these are professionals who have skills."
The H1B was intended for highly specialized skills that where there is no local talent available.
"Foreign language teacher" isn't a "highly specialized skill"? Tons of Americans work as English teachers abroad.
Foreign language teachers is the one category where it's easy to believe it's hard to find local talent. I've seen them in small towns across the country. Sure, you may have a Vietnamese speaking US citizen in New York, but they don't want to move to a small town in the Midwest.
Excatly. It was meant as a temporary program in the early-90s. It wasn't meant as a permanent solution for skilled labor staffing.
We've had about 35 years to build a domestic pipeline of Novell NetWare, SunOS 4, Windows 3.0, and dBASE IV developers and experts.
Then you will have unscrupulous contracting firms miscategorize employees to take advantage of those different quotas.
Increased scrutiny of H-1B-dependent employers could well be in order. There is already that classification in place and restrictions... though I suspect that underfunding of the Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division may be contributing to that lack of scrutiny.
Putting additional restrictions and requirements for reporting would likely be a good thing. I am hesitant to say "H-1B needs to go" when it does serve other non-technical positions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B-dependent_employer
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62c-h1b-depende...
In the past there have been specific carve outs for specific fields. The H-1A was the section for nurses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#The_Immigration_Act_...
It might be appropriate to separate H-1T (I'm sure its not up to section T yet, using that as a placeholder) for tech workers and have some sort of proctored test to ensure that the skills represented aren't "I know how to use Claude" along with filing fees sufficient to cover the administration of the test.
This would move tech workers out of the H-1B category allowing it to return to its original intent of skilled workers (teachers, medical technicians, private sector researchers...).
These companies have a demonstrated track record for having no qualms about bald-face lying. Suddenly we'll have an influx of "private sector researchers" to cover those tech jobs.
I was more referring to things like... a horticulturist. https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=horticulturist&city=&...
Elsewhere in DOL, there's a definition of computer professional.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17e-overtime-co...
If the job definition is covered in that, then it would be classified that way.Or if the job is classified by the BLS as 15-0000 ( https://www.bls.gov/oes/2025/may/oes_stru.htm#15-0000 )
All this still requires proper funding of the Department of Labor and its ability to investigate H-1B-dependent employers.
That would make sense if the purpose of the program was to get the most valuable top talent. How do we decide who is the most valuable? We let the market decide. But that would cause upward wage pressure, which would undermine the real purpose of the program.
the problem is H1B is not only tech, there are nurses, some medical professionals, non-tech specialized workers.
Stack rank would just give all the visas to big tech and starve US hospitals and every other industry
Medical field is under a green program. But following your point. If nursing paid more and had better conditions, it would encourage more domestic talent. H1B should be used for to get the worlds top talent otherwise it will be used by businesses to save money and depress wages.
top talent is different visa (O-1). H1B is merely specialized worker, not top tier global talent.
Nursing does pay a lot and conditions havent changed much over the years. Certified anesthesiology nurses get paid like $132/hr, and still there is shortage.
> It should be a stack rank by salary to deal with the over subscription
Considering salary based on country of origin, adjusted for position, would probably be the best way to ensure little abuse (apart from the indentured servitude-like features). If you want to hire the best, they'll be overpaid in their origin markets.
Ranking by salary would basically mean ranking by industry, not just skill
I have a couple problems with that idea that I've never been able to figure out even though the idea is good.
First, how do we ensure it doesn't become a slave program: that is you get hired for X, and they are paying you that, but you want to find a new job because you don't like your boss. Or perhaps they hire you for X, and you are doing Y (again, nothing illegal)
Second, you hire someone to do a job, and they realize you have to pay them and so they decide to do nothing (or get a second job that they are working instead).
I can find answers to all of the above, but they all fail to: somebody is aware of your solution - how are they going to abuse it. I haven't solved this secondary abuse issue.
Oh that's a really good way to handle it that would actually follow the intent of the program.
You can't find someone to do a job? Then you need to compete on wage with other companies to bring someone in. Or, you know, raise your salary for local employees.
A simple stack rank and cut has the problem of where to draw the line.
Also, how to value pre-ipo stock
There are other good options as well (an auction, etc). They all have problems, but there are mitigations. It could be vastly improved even if it’s not perfect.
It’s just the will to do it.
But at the moment there are quotas right? So it's basically the same - there are N visas to give out so you rank by salary and pick the top N.
Another problem: different industries and roles natohace different pay ranges.
If you decide on a single pay cutoff software engineers will starve everyone else out. And there are of course great, well paid people in other hard to hire industries.
Maybe that's ok? It would raise pay in other industries.
I doubt it. Most are limited by the economics. They just don’t make as much per employee as software.
Something about those industries would change. They might charge their customers more or train up more people or get more creative with technology. Or the market might decide it can do without that additional productivity from those companies.
the salary weighted lottery today is a good step in the right direction IMO.
I think it has to be by industry and role. Software, mechanical engineering, teaching, medicine, etc are all very different
It needs to compensate for country and position.
I have definitely seen job postings that were so detailed and narrow that they couldn't possibly find anyone "qualified". They were clearly making it so that it would be easier to claim that nobody in the country was qualified.
But I will say that the only people I have met that are here on H1-B have been uniquely qualified for their position. Such as, they invented a way to scale a given chemical manufacturing process, and they were developing it further.
But I got the impression that they were not particularly well paid like I would expect an American in the same position to be.
It definitely varies a ton.
I've observed more that H1B's keep employee mobility lower, so employees on H1Bs tended to be paid less due to the natural bumps that come out of switching jobs every few years, especially going from an associate to senior/staff level where often the company throws a small raise with promotions that don't keep up with market rates.
One other factor that I experienced is when I was in senior leadership we absolutely tracked 'flight risk' that factored in to retention programs for top talent, and H1Bs were by the nature of it viewed as lower flight risks so less likely to fall into these programs.
Same experience. NYC location of a high street investment bank.
Been pretty much my exact experience
> Not surprising, H1B for my entire career was a cost cutting measure.
> Every H1B that shared their salary with me has been underpaid.
Yes.
yep. I see the same thing. Trump isn't wrong to hike fees for H1-B. For companies that shift development overseas they should face tariffs as well.
Yeah, I'm generally pretty pro-immigration and I'm very anti-H1B.
It's very abusive to the workers hired as H1-B and it's designed for wage suppression. You can stay an H1-B for years. If you lose your job, you'll face deportation. It gives your employer a VERY large amount of leverage over your life.
It's supposed to be about bringing expertise when local expertise isn't available, but in practice it's companies saying "Oh, we can't find someone who will work for $50k as a software dev so we need to hire H1-Bs."
Either the program needs to end or the minimum salary needs to be raised to something like $300k to compensate for the leverage the employer has.
I don't think raising the fee fixes the abuse problems. Unless maybe most of the fee goes into eacrow and is paid back to the employee if the employer terminates employment (maybe without a good, documented cause?). But that could produce its own misaligned incentives. I think the best way to solve it is to remove or reduce the restrictions on staying in the country after they have worked here for some number of years.
> I don't think raising the fee fixes the abuse problems.
It doesn't totally fix them, but it does make it so the applicant is more fairly compensated for accepting a more abusive work environment. It also stops companies from using H1-Bs as a mechanism to reduce overhead.
> I think the best way to solve it is to remove or reduce the restrictions on staying in the country after they have worked here for some number of years.
I'd be for that as well. If someone comes in on a work visa I want them to either have full access to the labor market with all the freedoms any american citizen has, or I want their compensation to be high enough to justify locking them to a company and out of the general labor market.
> but it does make it so the applicant is more fairly compensated for accepting a more abusive work environment
How so? It increases the cost to the employer to hire an H1B employee, so they might hire less of them. But it could also mean they pay the employee less to compensate for the higher cost of bringing them in to the country.
It's not just that. There are many sources coming out of the woodwork of massive H1B fraud rings. Basically from the top (CEO level) down a F500 company starts replacing its hiring loops to mostly focus on H1B and remove all American workers. And some of them just sit idle once hired.
They’re doing the opposite and floating the idea of making the program more coercive by ending the grace period to find a new job, so that essentially ICE could wait outside an office after layoffs and start cuffing people. This is because “protecting workers” is a pretext and not their actual goal.
No. The fees definitely slow down the companies from trying to hire cheap replacements. Yes, the end of a grace period does make things tougher for people in a bad job, but I think the goal is really to end these bad jobs.
Well then it’s not working; they’re just hiring people abroad. That outcome would be a disaster if your goal is helping American workers but a success if your goal is just reducing the number of foreigners in the country without regard for American workers. Between the results of the policies they’ve chosen and the types of rants they go on television or social media to make that interpretation suggests itself.
How do you determine the "correct" location of a job?
My employer sells software internationally - are you claiming any international job should be subject to some sort of fine simply because the company is HQed in the US?
I suppose we could try slicing revenue or profit by sales region and comparing against headcount expense per region? But with salaries abroad being a fraction of in the US, that math might still work out in favor of keeping international employees.
EDIT - I dislike the H1B system overall. Just not sure "fine companies that operate overseas" is something we should consider as a replacement.
devil's advocate - if they are HQ'd in the US, is hiring US citizens that big of an ask? why do they need cheap overseas labor?
IME it’s not cheaper, it’s the only way to find enough qualified people
IME at my org we have 3 contractors out of SE Asia to every 1 US FT role. They make less than a third of a FT US employee.
Given that a lot of the 'offshoring' comes here to Europe (due to our much lower salaries) if the US starts encouraging their firms to cut jobs here via tariffs then the EU should absolutely respond - if this is how the US treats it's allies then perhaps closer relations with China are warranted?
the year of the linux desktop is going to come faster than the year of Europeans not behaving like vassals to US interests
I don’t think people consider the negative ramifications for this on the other side. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft have a ton of H1B. Take India, as an example, since that is where a majority of H1Bs come from. It has been pretty lenient in allowing American tech into the country. Everyone uses Google, YouTube, Windows, WhatsApp and Amazon. All of those are profits that go to America.
If H1Bs are dropped or Indian workers are tariffed I believe you will start seeing a reciprocal tariffs, fines or calls for domestication.
H1B started off with the right idea, but has essentially become gamed to hell. It has created a new white collar slave class that companies exploit.
Rest of us really ought to put tariffs on US software.
Not to bring in jobs or money (tariffs don't do that); just to push us away from your companies.
Call your congressional rep.
The HIRE Act: 25% tax on outsourcing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45161419 - September 2025
Ohio senator introduces 25% tax on companies that outsource jobs overseas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45146528 - September 2025
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/297...
So you'd move companies overseas and buy services instead of outsourcing work.
It's really hard to do this in a way that won't be trivial to work around, and often in ways where you're likely to like the work around even less.
The US can tariff those out of country services if needed (through a combination of mandatory tax reporting and payment rails monitoring). An example of this today is SaaS taxes [1]. Please provide a non US service as an example and I'll propose how to rapidly replace it domestically. Out of country services can be cloned with LLMs if needed. The US government could sponsor tokens to US entities who employee US workers to clone these offshore or out of country businesses. Can overseas companies outrun the token dispenser and tax code disadvantages? You have to remember that outsourcing is primarily used by US businesses to arbitrage labor while having the US regulatory capture advantage. They want access to the US market without paying US labor costs.
This is what laws are for. "You can just do things."
> It's really hard to do this in a way that won't be trivial to work around, and often in ways where you're likely to like the work around even less.
So is collecting taxes, you just have a government funded entity grind tirelessly to keep closing the gaps. You make it economically burdensome to attempt to workaround. There will always be some leakage. "Work is hard." We know the labor exists in the US. We know offshoring is used to improve profit margins and to disempower workers to get more out of them. It is worth the effort, imho, if you want to keep the capital in the US versus sending it overseas and prioritize domestic workers over someone else's profits.
[1] https://stripe.com/guides/introduction-to-saas-taxability-in...
"SaaS taxes" are just sales taxes. They would apply if you create a SaaS for the stuff you want to outsource, sure. Except for it to be expensive enough to make outsourcing services unattractive you'd have to make them many times higher than they are today.
> Out of country services can be cloned with LLMs if needed.
Good luck cloning services whose endpoints are unavailable and documentation non-existent and that there would be no customers for, as they're built as a means of working around taxation of outsourcing.
> Good luck cloning services whose endpoints are unavailable and documentation non-existent and that there would be no customers for, as they're built as a means of working around taxation of outsourcing.
What services can only be procured from offshore businesses and service providers that aren't for cutting costs? Honestly, what can be provided by someone in the UK, Europe, or LATAM that cannot be done by one of 100M people in the US labor force? I am genuinely interested, both as a scholar and as market opportunity.
> This is what laws are for. "You can just do things."
“China” “National Security”
And with that, you’re argument is dead in the water.
If you open an office in another country and hire people there, is that outsourcing? If so, would big tech have to close their "international" offices if they don't want to pay the 25% tax? I ask that because I'm seeing these offices opening a lot in the last 3 years
is 25% enough to move the needle?
I don't know. Have to implement to find out and iterate. The number can go up until the preferred amount of offshoring has been drained from the system.
Also curious about loopholes, could said company start another company out of state that was the outsourcing entity and then the parent company paid that company. You're theoretically hiring from within the US, because I assume said policy doesn't go all the way to sub-contractors etc?
Wait? People do not know this? This war was lost a decade ago. Google employs more than 4,100 H-1B visa holders.
Google doesn’t underpay H-1B holders. In my experience any difference in actual pay is more likely caused by the H-1B people having worse salary negotiation skills than native born people.
It's funny how quickly tech employees turn MAGA when it comes to qualified immigration. Bad zero-sum intuitions about work abound across all strata of society, it seems.
This isn't a MAGA thing. H1-B is a bad program.
I have no problem with someone getting a green card, citizenship, TPS, etc in the US. I think there should be a lot faster routes for that. Let the software devs come in and become citizens or permanent residents, I don't care about that.
What I do care about is the fact that H1-B locks immigrants to a company and tie their residence in the us to their employment. That means they'll accept lower wages and worse working conditions as they can't simply quit and switch jobs. The entire thing is designed to suppress wages in general.
If you look at it in a vacuum sure. When the same administration is actually floating the idea of making the program more coercive by making it so you can be deported immediately after losing your job I think it’s pretty reasonable to recognize the coercive nature of the program isn’t their concern.
Exactly. My entire problem with H1-B is the coercive nature of it. That is the thing that is ultimately designed to suppress wages.
There's a bunch of levers you could pull to stop it from being such a huge negative, faster paths to citizenship, looser requirements for switching jobs, higher minimum salaries. All these things would improve conditions for the H1-B applicant.
That's why I call it a bad program.
Put another way I don’t think this policy is a good way to address the issues you’re talking about because it’s just moving jobs out of the U.S. altogether.
Jobs that Americans weren't getting because it was cheaper to hire an H1-B indentured servant instead. The current administration will no doubt find a way to make everything worse, but they didn't start with a good program to begin with.
Just because the status quo isn’t good doesn’t mean we should blindly support anyone changing it even if their results will be even worse.
> What I do care about is the fact that H1-B locks immigrants to a company
They're free to change companies if the new company sponsors them. It may reset the timeline for applying for a green card, depending on the location and job type of the new job. Generally, if it's the same type of job in the same city, it doesn't reset.
People (including Indians) do it all the time.
Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?
> They're free to change companies if the new company sponsors them.
That's a much smaller pool of companies. The company already has to be participating in the H1-B program in order to sponsor someone.
> Do you know counterexamples?
Most of them happen under the likes of the EU where citizens of member nations have the freedom to migrate.
But even in the US, we have the green card (as you note) which you can get without doing H1-B. Getting a green card means your legal status isn't tied to employment.
> Most of them happen under the likes of the EU where citizens of member nations have the freedom to migrate.
Yes, but this isn't the same. As a US citizen, I don't have that freedom in the EU, correct?
> But even in the US, we have the green card (as you note) which you can get without doing H1-B. Getting a green card means your legal status isn't tied to employment.
True, but we're talking about employment visas. What the US has is likely standard in most countries when you don't have permanent residence.
Not to mention that many (most?) countries have a much more difficult path obtaining permanent residency compared to the US. You want to live there? Get an employment visa and stay on that visa forever.
> Yes, but this isn't the same. As a US citizen, I don't have that freedom in the EU, correct?
If you are from Cuba, you don't have access to the H1-B program. All nations have restrictions one which nations can and can't participate in their immigration and to what extent.
So yes, it is the same, the US just isn't a part of the EU. The relationship between EU nations is much closer to the relationship (pre-trump) between the US and Canada.
> True, but we're talking about employment visas.
No, actually what you specifically asked for was
> Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?
A green card is not a visa, but it is a mechanism to go to a country for employment without having you legal status tied to a specific company.
> If you are from Cuba, you don't have access to the H1-B program. All nations have restrictions one which nations can and can't participate in their immigration and to what extent.
Yes, but the restrictions on which countries' citizens can be part of the H-1B program is tiny compared to the list of countries that cannot participate in the EU program you're mentioning. With the US, it's practically a rounding error (or was, at least pre-Trump).
> No, actually what you specifically asked for was
>> Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?
Yes, I said "Going to a country for employment". If you have a green card, you are not going to the US for employment. You are in the US, or going to the US to receive the green card. Getting employment is incidental.
> Going to a country for employment and having your legal status tied to a company is pretty standard across the world. Do you know counterexamples?
TN visa
By counterexamples, I meant other countries where you get in via an employment visa and don't have your presence tied to the employer.
TN visa is much more restrictive than H1B. Only for citizens of two countries, and only for certain professions. I know Canadians who have no hope of getting a TN visa (wrong profession), but have come on H1B.
Its an example right? now you are shifting goalposts to be easily available to everyone or something.
I guess I wasn't being clear. The original comment I was responding to was:
> What I do care about is the fact that H-1B locks immigrants to a company and tie their residence in the us to their employment.
I am merely pointing out that most countries lock employment visas to the employer. It's fine not to like it, but I'm highlighting that this is pretty normal - the US is not an outlier.
thats fine but what was your intention behind asking this
> Do you know counterexamples?
I answered that above:
> By counterexamples, I meant other countries where you get in via an employment visa and don't have your presence tied to the employer.
I remember when twitter was sold and Elon "Nazi" Musk fired like 4/5 of the staff, all that remained were H1B's
Its time to have a politics which puts the workers needs at its center. I can confidently say that the current system harms both workers and immigrants.
all H1B posts turn into Klan rallies.
Except that’s clearly not the case here.
"Middle America hates immigrants because they are racists. I don't want H1-Bs because companies use them as cheaper labor, undercutting my value."
Absolute peak "lost in the political sauce". Most people aren't aware that Bernie Sanders has historically been very anti-immigration, before just becoming an old guy who echos whatever the current young people vibe is.
If you believe that the market sets prices via supply and demand in general, do you believe this is true for the labor market as well? If not, why?
Unlike offshoring, immigration increases supply and demand at the same time.
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
Elon Musk was H1B after his study at UPenn, since then he created a lot of companies, jobs, and wealth for investors and himself.
Do you think Elon Musk (and every other foreigner who founded US company) diluted supply of labor, or expanded supply of jobs ???
So if you're not pro social dumping you're anti immigration? Weird when both are about chauvinism against foreigners.
It is pretty interesting to watch. "I'm pro immigration EXCEPT specifically the kind that directly affects me"
This is the fallacy of inventing a hypocrite by combining individual opinions from multiple people.
Not one single tech person I know in person has ever been "pro immigration" or "anti immigration". They all want reasonable immigration, and part of that has always meant not harming the livelihoods of existing citizens. That's the subjective part.
Edit: This is also a good example of the problem where we assume a person's opinion when they are not loud/explicit about a topic. E.g. a tech person might not have loud opinions on H1Bs, or they might loudly denounce e.g. Trump's immigrant detention centers, and you might falsely then slot that person into a blunt binary like "pro immigration". Then, when their lives are negatively affected by H1B policy, they speak against it, and you then think of them as a hypocrite even though they did nothing hypocritical.
I've seen the whole "nobody is illegal" be quite a popular sentiment in recent years and that (when talking about the US) that as long as they're ok people, they should be let in, seemingly oblivious to the incredibly strict US visa requirements for people from Europe etc.
I'm sure this is at least partly a case of the loud minority, but it's hard to tell sometimes
> oblivious to the incredibly strict US visa requirements for people from Europe etc.
Their strange notions of what democracy looks like might feel dangerous to the current government.
I'm not a yank but it seems to me the actual argument here is that H1Bs suppress the wages of locals, either directly by hiring foreigners which are less price-sensitive in terms of wages compared to locals or indirectly by moving jobs overseas, thus eliminating the jobs altogether.
You can be pro-immigrant while also being pro-not-fucking-people-over, for example by forcing companies to have a baseline "minimum wage" for H1Bs that match what a local would be paid (or higher!) for the role. It doesn't have to be a "let in a gazillion people or 0", you can choose a middle value.
I mean that's what it's always been about, be virtuous about everything unless it actually affects you and your gated neighborhood
If you live in a nation, you do have some say in the policies that directly affect your livelihood. This is the whole reason we have nations.
One need not (always) invoke racism or xenophobia to explain why folks might take issue with high levels of immigration.
It’s so politically charged now that people’s brains just turn off and everyone calls each other Nazis. But it is a discussion that does require nuance, especially as things like aging populations are really changing things immensely.
Or you know, you could take issue with specific concerns of specific implementations. Driven mostly by corporate greed and cynicism, over a great many decades. Also in an industry that you’re in and know something about.
You’re still allowed to have opinions, even if the situation does directly affect you. In fact, that sounds like exactly the situation you ought to weigh in on. Immigration or otherwise.
So it was never about the talent, but just about cost?
First time? meme here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49540700 (citations)
(was always about cost, the US produces ~2M more college graduates per year than it needs, the system wants a labor surplus to contain labor costs)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49378010 (citations)
Seems like, if the $100k fee is too high a barrier to clear for talent they claim they cannot find domestically.
I think this will go hand in hand with tech compensation and jobs falling off a cliff. In the AI world too, we can't have our cake and eat it.
Yeah, fine. Honestly I think most of us have been overpaid our entire career. But I'm not sure I see it necessarily. Take these stats, which can cut either way on this topic:
In USA there are more software engineers than all other engineers combined.
There are 10x more software engineers than the next highest engineering discipline.
If you could subdivide s/w engs into 10 equal categories ("I'm not just a run of the mill s/w eng"), each of those would be the top engineering employment category.
The top 10% of software engineers outnumber the next highest engineer class.
At 10% unemployment, there are more unemployed software engineers than the next highest employed engineer category.
I don't think this is surprising given that the US has also lost so much manufacturing due to cost cutting. A service economy is going to need a lot of software engineering. A nice big factory takes a lot of mechanical and electrical engineers.
I don't think you'll find this community welcoming the idea of lower pay (and hence a more volatile employment).
Overall if in the next 12 months I fully expect compensation on average to be down 30-50%. It's impossible for it not to, given the sudden exodus of talent from US to open up remote consultancies that can offer same skill at 1/4th the price.
Of course not. I am preparing for a 30% cut in 3 years, but don't necessarily expect it. It's not a guarantee that any demand at all will go down, or that AI will do anything whatsoever to our job. Demand is up lately for senior devs (and junior devs probably have more of an evaluation issue than closed job reqs[1]).
[1]: Sorry for the blog post: https://jodavaho.io/posts/ai-signalling.html
Hard disagree about being overpaid. These are some of the most profitable companies in the world, what else should they do if not pay their workers well?
So is walmart. If you can understand that system, the answer to your question is revealed.
Are there not 10x the need of software engineers compared to other engineers, particularly in the US?
It would seem there are! The question is: Will there continue to be?
Good, H1B is just modern servitude. But there should be an incentive to hire local workers instead of just hiring foreigners in their own country.
Thet should pay into a tax fund that is applied toward student loans of American grads who are unemployed.
But that would increase taxation over corporations. That won't work for as long as corporations can make the vast majority of campaign donations.
Every citizen should have the right to one vote. Large scale campaign financing distorts that.
The H1B debate has a lot of factions, but one thing is clear: AI is going to be replacing some to a lot of entry level knowledge jobs. Even if it doesn't get any better than what we have now, it'll create a pipeline problem where senior engineers are more valuable than ever and we'll have to figure out how to make room for junior engineers so that eventually they can become senior engineers. Given that, it seems prudent to pump the brakes on H1B--which has become a way to get bodies for entry level work (while top talent has shifted to O visas and the like).
Wow. This will affect universities and negatively impact the US in the coming years.
How many of the talent from frontier labs is immigrant?
It won’t because universities, national labs and non profits are exempt from the fee.
Under the proposed rule, the additional fee would not apply to H-1B petitions that are not subject to the cap, such as petitions filed by certain nonprofit research organizations, governmental research organizations, and institutions of higher education. https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-proposes-ad...
I do believe it’s going to push a lot of jobs offshore though. I have already seen it at my job.
That's an insufficiently granular question. How much of the talent in frontier labs has an H1B rather than an O visa? Out of the people who have an H1B, how many employers would be willing to eat the $100k fee because those employees are so valuable?
50% of US unicorns are immigrant founded.
I think its more of equal counter force
as other commenter pointing out, those visas is for high skill job that lacks candidate on US soil
but company uses that for hiring Immigrant so they can underpaid them effectively reduce US born origin competitiveness
I worked with and hired tons of H1Bs (and non) over the years and the idea that they earn this visa with exceptional talent is a farce. I work in bog standard web services. We fill seats with H1Bs to write ho-hum crud apps and do UX testing work. Some have been great! Others terrible.
Could be wildly different for someone in a very high-tech org or medical field, but at places I worked it was used as a convenience, but not necessary.
Is this just posturing (I won't speculate on the intended audience), or does the admin believe this will actually net more jobs for US citizens?
TFA doesn't go into great detail about how this actually pushes offshoring - the variety that I'm familiar with at least (X/Y% blend of US/"near-shore" aka anywhere-but-west-asia roles). I have no doubt however that Y is just going to get larger while X stays the same or decreases (not even factoring aipocalypse).
What constraint specifically makes them believe this is going to net in the way they want us to believe?
It's the same with the tariffs. My company has a huge "globalization" effort that expands offices and manufacturing facilities in countries with cheap labor and no/low tariffs. Instead of everything centering around the US, almost nobody gets hired in the US, except top management.
I feel like this is what the U.S. is not getting. If a company wants to hire a person, it will hire in or out of the country. They not allowing this form of *legal* immigration, is just making the country lose tax revenue and money circulating inside of the country...
On the whole, this is a good thing. There are policy responses that can be enacted as needed, in an easier and more humane way. The goal of the US government should be to protect the interests of the American citizen, as much as the goals of India or China should be to protect their own interests.
Its goal to protect the American citizen is fulfilled by economic security. If you let your industries leave, you have done a disservice to your citizens. That’s how trump got elected in the first place, and ironically it’ll only get worse because it’s the wrong solution.
> The goal of the US government should be to protect the interests of the American citizen
Except this is doing the opposite. Pushing jobs offshore does not help American citizens.
I think it lessens the damage -- offshore workers do not consume finite resources in their host countries (e.g. housing, medical care) leaving those to the native citizens. Eventually AI will replace the "need" for these visa holders -- cancelling a contract with an offshore firm is more tenable than remigrating thousands of families.
Hopefully this helps stem the brain drain from developing countries
I'm a former H1B visa holder and I feel very conflicted. My experience was a great one: I was hired by a startup on an H1B, successfully transferred to a different startup, then eventually went to work for a bigger company that sponsored my green card. I wasn't underpaid by those startups and I know this $100k fee means a similar company will never hire someone like me again.
But over the years I got to know many people on H1Bs who were indentured servants to their employers: once their green card application was in they were stuck. And if you're from a country like India that can take a decade or more. The whole thing feels like a scam and the $100k fee isn't going to deter those companies from doing it, it's still well worth the money to them.
I wish we saw sensible, well thought out reform here. Instead we get the Trump administration.
well said, thanks for sharing your perspective.
Bringing new labor into the market isn't an optimal solution in the current market either. If it's a problem, simply tax offshore labor.
Terrible own-goal in my opinion. I know loads of startups that only exist because the founders were here on H1Bs originally. But it can’t be avoided I suppose. For all the complaints about VCs, they’re tuned into something innately that most people are simply incapable of reaching for - the idea of the bet on the not-yet-great population in order to get wins.
People are usually quite high-time-preference by default and “if I had bought Bitcoin/nvidia/etc” is the norm. The United States, like Europe and the UK, has hit the population wealth distribution where loss aversion dominates growth policies. Consequently, most Americans aim directly at the same targets as Europeans have succeeded at - constraining the total success of their country in an aim to extract maximal personal piece of the existing pie. The resulting shrinking in economic growth often causes much lower wealth for everyone but it’s very attractive.
This leads to nonsense like dockworkers constraining US shipping to the cost of the rest of the economy or landowners successfully prohibiting the construction of more homes. Local constituents like these block growth and prosperity for most other Americans. But just like massive minimum elevator size regulations are “estimated to not have any cost impact” so are these.
The common thread, I suppose, is an absence of systems thinking. I wonder if it is inevitable among countries that hit wealth. We will have to see what happens to the Polish and Latvians as they overtake the British and Germans in prosperity. People think in their lifetimes. The challenge for civilizations is thinking in longer terms when comprised of shorter individual lives.
In my opinion, American cities should be towers to the sky. America has easily space to build more New Yorks. The H1B is America’s hukou for the world and the US should attempt to test-select people in and unleash coastal megacities. We shall see where we get.
Datacenters are good, ships are good, factories are good, power plants are good, space launch is good. And the people we will need to get all that now that we don’t make enough locally are also good.
The $100k fee is such a bad idea. I would be fine for there being a minimum salary to get rid of the undercutting of available American labor. But there are certain niche jobs that there just isn't any local talent for that will just result in contracting with them overseas which is a lose-lose.
I'm seeing a lot of "offshoring" and go to Canada at the moment in my co.
Nobody is willing to state this but it’s pretty clear if you look at the way officials behind the policy talk: they’re OK with this. They don’t mind economic harm. The purpose has nothing to do with protecting workers and everything to do with creating a more ethnically homogenous country.
People state this constantly. It's a very effective distraction (a distraction based on reality, to be clear - there are plenty of plain old racists out there, of course).
What do you mean it is a distraction? I don’t think the fact that people at the highest level of power go on TV and give racist lectures about how Haiti had problems because Haitians themselves are defective should be ignored when we look at the policy the same people are making and tell us it’s motivated by something else.
The ship sailed on this one a long time ago. The US is going to be more and more ethnically diverse regardless.
You may well be right but that’s where the urgency for massive action comes from.
May I give a more balanced perspective here while acknowledging that there are bad actors with malign incentives on both sides of this debate?
I think we should all be able to agree that in the limit both sides of this debate are wrong, and therefore what we are arguing here is where the balance is whether this fee helps strike the right balance.
A nation cannot simply open its labour market up to the most qualified workers in the world and not have most of the best job openings going to foreigners. This is simply just a matter of numbers and probability. If you're very skilled already, then you may not see this as a problem, but if you're just coming out of education looking for a skilled job and must compete with the the entire world for a decent job in your own country, you might feel this isn't a great deal.
Similarly, a nation which does not accept any foreign talent, regardless of what those individuals can provide clearly harms that nation's own economic growth potential, and ultimately longer-term that costs everyone.
Maybe some people disagree, but it seems obvious to me that a nation somewhat owes its best jobs to its own citizens, and it should seek to have labour markets which are tight enough that employees will be occasionally incentivised to hire someone fresh out of education and train them up to be able to work high-skilled and well-paid jobs, rather than simply taking the easy option of hiring someone from abroad.
However, sometimes training someone isn't feasible. From time to time a company may really need talent and is simply unable to reasonably train or source that domestically regardless of the salary they might offer. If this is the case then they should of course be welcome to hire foreign workers, but there should be a financial disincentive to this so that companies are always incentivised to first look for workers domestically.
So I must admit I struggle a bit to understand the opposition to this $100k fee. If this causes talent to be lost then the assumption that they are extremely valuable surely must be wrong?
Well, I’m not making a claim about people showing up to argue on Hacker News so much as the people making the policy. But anyway I anticipate the result of this policy will be economic harm to everyone including people anticipating it will help them.
There’s not much you can do about jobs just moving abroad unless you start some kind of tariffs or import bans on software, which is a self-defeating choice for a massive net exporter of tech services and software.
As a SWE I would prefer offshore labor remain offshore. I have no problem with it.
but no, you can't work remotely
The point of the these visas is to hire outside talent which cannot be found in the US and qualifies as the "best and brightest" and specialized "talent" that is beyond outstanding. Everyone knows this has been heavily abused for years.
Now the word "talent" has lost its meaning or most commonly means "anyone" for cheap even though the employer knows that they are unqualified and hires them anyway for cheap labor to reduce their operating costs (expensive US employees).
You can't say "we are hiring the best and brightest" and then decide to then go for those who are unqualified. Now this $100K fee is pointless when AI agents, and data centers (homes for the AI agents) are getting hired over both US employees and off-shored employees.
One more thing. The big question is who would you rather trust to hire to not create a disaster like in [0][1] (Human or AI agent, hint one of them cannot be held accountable.)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47061682
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-investigating-tata...
There is indeed no need for office jobs to be done in the US, and that's the hard truth.
Almost like if the $100k fee is the sticking point, then maybe the talent being brought in isn’t world class talent we can’t find domestically so much as easily exploitable manpower that can be replaced with another H-1B if they start asking for reasonable treatment or higher wages.
Sorry IEEE, but offshoring happens regardless of the H-1B fee. I’m a pretty flexible dinosaur but you’re never going to get me to feel sympathy for employers leveraging a visa that’s tantamount to employment slavery in its onerous restrictions and lack of direct pathway to citizenship.
The H1B problem could be fixed overnight if the government handed them out by a simple test of ability rather than an idiotic lottery. Having world class researchers and engineers who command million dollar salaries enter the same line as a $60K worker at a slop factory like Infosys or TCS is beyond idiotic. And a high visa fee ultimately hurts more than it helps because it drives away both groups, and US tech needs the top talent from across the world to continue to remain dominant.
Cap the number, sort by salaries (perhaps by coarse domains of skills and not very narrow . Nurses vs Doctors. But s/w engineers are s/w engineers).
Testing abilities is a gamable proxy. How much a company is willing to spend on the person is the best barometer, if we stay true to the intent of the visa (scarce talent)
I’m not super familiar with the options, but isn’t there O-1 for anyone who’s world class commanding a million dollar salary? The impression I have (mostly from online discussion) is that H-1B is basically only for (comparatively) low skill workers to come work for lower salaries. Are there cases where globally competitive people would come on a H-1B?
I came in on an H1B as an IC3 at Meta. Now, with the skills I gained during my career, I maintain core infrastructure that has a massive benefit to the industry and is critical to tech companies of all sizes (I learned last week that a major auto manufacturer uses my infrastructure as well). Immigration's benefit to society is tail-distributed, which is why it's important to have broad-based immigration (you can't predict who will be at the tails).
The government can’t measure ability
So then why do they hand out visas that require “extraordinary ability”?
The company documents it and files an application. It’s pretty formula and a bit random. I’ve written recommendation letters for colleges to get these. My impression was the person evaluating it knows a bit about the field, they are no where near as informed as we were. AIUI, the pay was a bigger factor.
> And a high visa fee ultimately hurts more than it helps because it drives away both groups
Does it though? It seems like it would drive away the $60k worker, and the companies hiring the million dollar worker would pay it without second thought.
why did submission change the title to clickbait?
title is false. There are no jobs "pushed" offshore for the fee
dang really sleeping on his job these days :D
India has become super popular for US VCs. Why not invest domestically? Cost and control I guess.
The other half of "cost" is "return on investment".
If I had a plan to e.g. copy-paste specific success stories from any rich country to any poor country, something that might e.g. raise the per-capita income of the poor country to that of the rich country over 30 years, I'd be glad to have the chance to make that investment in India.
The per-capita GDP difference between the USA (94k) and India (2.8k) would imply 3300% growth over 30 years, which is about 12.5%/year compounding average annual growth for the whole period.
This feels small enough to be plausible, and big enough to be massively tempting. Extremely fast growth, but not quite pushing absurd.
ok great but this hollows out American Industry which is a primary concern right now.
I'd be happier if H1B's (read: employment slavery) was completely redone and not tied to a single sponsor company, or gotten rid of completely.
I know so many IT folks who are unemployed. And compounding that is unmitigated slop machines for both generating resumes and filtering them.
Its fraud all the way down every where I look.
Yep. Taking advantage of desperate people from developing countries who think a $90k salary is something extravagant.
Everywhere else but the USA (and possibly Luxembourg), $90k will buy you a fantastic quality of life.
If you really want to make $90k seem as bad to the rest of us as it feels to you, you need to get the exchange rates changed, have USD devalued compared to other currencies until they're at purchasing power parity.
Of course, doing this would mean forcing yourselves to accept that China's got the biggest economy and the USA is only a little ahead of the EU, instead of thinking China and the EU are about the same as each other and significantly behind the USA.
H1B visas are only given to US local workers (remote workers don't need them), most of whom will end up working in tech centers (aka high cost of living places).
$90k gets you a good quality of life in most of the US, too.
Would you say merely "good", or is this agreement on "fantastic"?
> who think a $90k salary is something extravagant
I guess Europe is then part of these "developing countries"
Yes, but H1B visas apply only for those working IN the US, not remotely.
The USA is the capitalist economy. The businesses do get protection and advantages.
I worked at a company that depended heavily on one of the major 4 Indian suppliers. Their employees were treated like garbage. they would bring them here for months at a time. It was like indentured servitude. they lived in a bunk house and worked all day and slept and a bus picked them up and they worked. 6 days a week. If they fucked up, they were gone the next day. All for the chance to make it here.
Once we added a resource and had a sham hiring process in which the supplier supplied an expert with no less than 10 pages of experience in our niche project. To his credit, he did not lie to me, and told me he could try to figure it out but had not worked on the product, but that he needed to do well. We were forced to hire him
Later our team slated to replaced by that firm to maintain a major product while we went to green field stuff. I resigned and my team flew the coup over the next year or
Disgusting
we should have a tax or tariff on "W2" employees or firms outsourcing labor. Minimally a tax that helps pay for our social safety net. We depend on new employed young people and sending that work afar does not help us.
I remember when this was announced here on HN. So many right-wingers were on board with this because it would bring jobs back and make companies pay. A win-win as they said.