5 ms·

Everyone in these threads always points out all sorts of issues with the H1B system, which are mostly true, but it's not like there's a suggestion for a replace

Everyone in these threads always points out all sorts of issues with the H1B system, which are mostly true, but it's not like there's a suggestion for a replacement here. This is a de facto shutdown of the program, not a reform. I'd be happy to see a reformed skilled immigration program for the US, but this isn't it. The US makes up about 4.5% of the global population and it seems silly to think that the FAANG companies and the new AI startups chasing behind them are going to restrict their hiring to this tiny slice of the global talent pool. The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US. I myself became a US citizen two years ago after being on a H1B. I was paid the same as all my peers and for all its shortcomings the program worked for me. It stunning to think this has been closed off, killing the main path for skilled immigration into the US.

geye1234 1y ago
> The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US. Offshoring can, and ought to be, heavily tariffed.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- sinuhe69 1y ago
  The tariffs are illegal and void. Even if it's implemented, how do you rise tariffs on intangible works? For the planned tariff, US consumers are the ones to bear the brunt of the costs.
  - geye1234 1y ago
    > Even if it's implemented, how do you rise tariffs on intangible works? If you are an American company (or a subsidiary thereof), and you have an employee resident in another country who does IT work, then you pay a tax to the US Treasury on that employee's salary. This tax can be varied depending on the country of the employee's residence. Alternatively, if you pay OutsourceCo or whomever to provide you with IT services, then, depending on OutsourceCo's incorporated location, either you pay a tax on the services you buy from OutsourceCo, or OutsourceCo pays the tax on salaries just described. All this can be avoided by hiring American workers, of whom there are many currently looking for work (mainly because of offshoring and immigration).
- ponector 1y ago
  Do you know what tariff is? How is it applicable to hiring people in offshore offices?
llm_nerd 1y ago
> This is a de facto shutdown of the program Is it? Some AI recruitments have seen 9-figure contracts. $100K is actually a surprisingly well-considered number and would still see the intake of legitimate talents, obviously contingent on the specific details. Indeed, those people wouldn't have to compete with masses of consultant trash and the whole lottery system could be done away with. $100K actually seems perfectly coherent with forcing the program to winnow down to actual talents. People truly good enough to get the employer to pony up $100K to pull them in -- presuming there isn't some kickback fraud happening -- will truly be the best of the best. > The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in Paradoxically the #1 reason H1B employers bring in H1Bs is to bridge offshoring work. Pull in a dozen Indians and they're your bridge to the big Indian office, which is precisely why Infosys, Tata et al are such H1B users.
- guyzero 1y ago
  > Some AI recruitments have seen 9-figure contracts. These are crazy outliers who would go through a different visa path anyway. US tech companies still need mid-level workers making low-to-mid six figures. Weirdly O1 visa holder spouses will get an O3 which doesn't allow them to work, making it worse than the H1B/H4 visa for some set of people. (H4s allow spouses to work)
  - llm_nerd 1y ago
    > These are crazy outliers They are. And in the truly talented spaces there are many at all of the ranges in between. > US tech companies still need mid-level workers making low-to-mid six figures $100k for three to six years seems entirely reasonable if it's really such a critical need.
    - dtauzell 1y ago
      It sounds like this expired each year. So it is 100k extra per year.
      - 1y ago
the_real_cher 1y ago
Yeah but no offense if you're paid the same as your peers, you're not necessarily exceptional. There's literally millions of talented Americans out of work in the tech industry right now while companies continue to hire H1B. The companies post impossible requirement job ads in obscure locations..to get around the requirements to hire Americans first.
- guyzero 1y ago
  > Yeah but no offense if you're paid the same as your peers, you're not necessarily exceptional. Says you. I work in Lake Wobegon.
  - the_real_cher 1y ago
    I'm happy you're here but the H1B program needs to slow down in America for a while.
    - kelnos 1y ago
      Out of curiosity, why do you believe that's the case? I think there are certainly abuses of the system, but we should be focusing on stamping out that abuse, not just generally "slowing it down". A $100k price tag is not going to affect abuse all that much; yes, it will make it less profitable, but probably not to the point where it will fix anything. As a US-born citizen working in the US, I would rather work with a smart, motivated person from another country than a mediocre person from the US. The problem is that there are a lot of non-exceptional people being brought in on these visas, so let's focus on stopping that as much as we can. And while there are plenty of exceptional people who are US citizens, there are also many more who are mediocre or worse; we should be importing talent in order to raise that average.
      - hnuser847 1y ago
        The sole purpose of companies hiring foreign workers is to pay less in wages. This results in lower wages for Americans. It’s that simple.
TMWNN 1y ago
>The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India Such offshoring was possible before and after today. Put another way, if all the H-1B jobs really can be offshored quickly and easily the way so many Indians and anti-Trump people here and elsewhere confidently predict, *that would have happened already*.
- Jyaif 1y ago
  The offshoring has started happening in the last 2 years in some of the big companies, by for example opening offices in Eastern Europe. I suspect it didn't happen before because these companies were more focused on growth than efficiency. That being said, thanks to AI parts of the big companies are again focused on growth at all cost.
smt88 1y ago
Big Tech chose to get elect an anti-immigrant candidate while relying on immigrant labor. Let them burn themselves down.
kelnos 1y ago
> This is a de facto shutdown of the program Is it? $100k per hire isn't much of a cost to pay for large companies. Smaller companies may -- may -- end up having some trouble with this, but consider that $100k often amounts to less than a yearly base salary (and will pretty much always be less than a year of total comp/total employee cost), not to mention the costs of legal staff that they're already paying to deal with this stuff. What this may do is cause some of the "body shop" consultancies to drop some of their "low end" business, so they'll focus more on targeting positions with higher salaries. That's... probably a good thing. And yeah, we may see some higher rates of offshoring, but I don't think that will be significant. And I'm not even really convinced: offshoring is already possible, and in strict dollar terms is already cheaper than going through the H-1B process to bring someone to the US. If companies preferred offshoring, they'd be doing it; clearly the already-higher-cost H-1B program is still their preference. I agree that this isn't going to fix the H-1B visa system, and is not a reform or even a particularly positive step toward a reform, but I think you're overestimating the negative impact. I really don't think this will change things much at all.
- enraged_camel 1y ago
  >> Is it? $100k per hire isn't much of a cost to pay for large companies. It is $100k per hire per year. https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-trump-immigration-8d39699d0b2de3d90936f8076357254e https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-trump-immigration-8d3969...
- fooker 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - zodiac 1y ago
    1400 x $100,000 is $140 million, not $1.4 billion
  - tomhow 1y ago
    Please don't comment like this on HN. The guidelines ask us all to be kind; they're the first words in the "In Comments" section: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
callc 1y ago
> The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US. I’m honestly tired of hearing the argument “if we do X then business will move to another state or out of US”. Good riddance to the companies that flee from jurisdictions enforcing workers rights, don’t allow exploitation, etc. The most important thing is protecting people, not fearing the cries of money-making machines.
- spacebanana7 1y ago
  Particularly in tech, where the network effects and first mover advantages are so strong. California could introduce a million dollar minimum wage for software engineers, ban electricity on Thursdays, raise corporate taxes to 60% and still probably have more new unicorns founded in the subsequent year than Europe.
  - infinite8s 1y ago
    Don't be so sure of that. Network effects are still subject to tipping points.
  - mavelikara 1y ago
    Subsequent year, probably. In later years, no. Massachusetts is case study on this.
    - cowsandmilk 1y ago
      What happened in Massachusetts?
      - anon7725 1y ago
        Seems like the point is what’s not happening there
- digianarchist 1y ago
  They'll still end up in the US as they can work a year abroad and come in using L1-B program for 5 years (3 + 2 years on renewal). L1 has no PWD, no min wage requirements (beyond min wage law in US) and is completely uncapped.
hx8 1y ago
> This is a de facto shutdown of the program No, this is just another tariff. If it costs $200k/yr to employee an H1B Software Engineer, and you expect them to work for you for 3 years, it raises the cost of employment from $200k/yr to $233k/yr. It'll discourage people from applying on the margins, which will bring the application rate down and acceptance rate up.
- alecst 1y ago
  AP is reporting that It's $100k/yr. So it wouldn't amortize like that.
- dbmnt 1y ago
  It's an annual fee. It would raise the cost to $300k/yr. https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-trump-immigration-8d39699d0b2de3d90936f8076357254e https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-trump-immigration-8d3969...
- cerved 1y ago
  It's not a tariff
kristopolous 1y ago
In this supposed competition with China, Trump is deeply dedicated to giving China every advantage possible. From defunding science, fining the biggest universities, defunding green energy, making hiring ambitious foreign workers economically unfeasible, replacing technocratic administrators with incompetent lackies with quite literally zero experience, imposing inordinate tariffs ... It's just win after win for the CCP. Couldn't possibly be more generous
- mrtksn 1y ago
  Yes, but all these things will have bad long-term effects. The short-term effect would be payment into the federal budget and increase in local employment. Even with tariffs, the initial effect was to increase purchases before the tariffs hit. Later the companies started eating from their margins instead of increasing prices right away. So it all resulted in increased economic activity and then increased tax payments into the federal government. However, because this is tax on consumption, it will eventually reduce business profits and personal wealth of the consumers. Meanwhile, Trump can claim that the economy is booming and he is collecting huge tax revenues without any negative effects.
- remarkEon 1y ago
  Sad that we're doing this. The United States couldn't compete and was a poor country with minimal scientific achievement until the H-1B visa was created in 1990.

geye1234 1y ago

> The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US. Offshoring can, and ought to be, heavily tariffed.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
sinuhe69 1y ago
The tariffs are illegal and void. Even if it's implemented, how do you rise tariffs on intangible works? For the planned tariff, US consumers are the ones to bear the brunt of the costs.
- geye1234 1y ago
  > Even if it's implemented, how do you rise tariffs on intangible works? If you are an American company (or a subsidiary thereof), and you have an employee resident in another country who does IT work, then you pay a tax to the US Treasury on that employee's salary. This tax can be varied depending on the country of the employee's residence. Alternatively, if you pay OutsourceCo or whomever to provide you with IT services, then, depending on OutsourceCo's incorporated location, either you pay a tax on the services you buy from OutsourceCo, or OutsourceCo pays the tax on salaries just described. All this can be avoided by hiring American workers, of whom there are many currently looking for work (mainly because of offshoring and immigration).
ponector 1y ago
Do you know what tariff is? How is it applicable to hiring people in offshore offices?

llm_nerd 1y ago

> This is a de facto shutdown of the program Is it? Some AI recruitments have seen 9-figure contracts. $100K is actually a surprisingly well-considered number and would still see the intake of legitimate talents, obviously contingent on the specific details. Indeed, those people wouldn't have to compete with masses of consultant trash and the whole lottery system could be done away with. $100K actually seems perfectly coherent with forcing the program to winnow down to actual talents. People truly good enough to get the employer to pony up $100K to pull them in -- presuming there isn't some kickback fraud happening -- will truly be the best of the best. > The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in Paradoxically the #1 reason H1B employers bring in H1Bs is to bridge offshoring work. Pull in a dozen Indians and they're your bridge to the big Indian office, which is precisely why Infosys, Tata et al are such H1B users.

guyzero 1y ago
> Some AI recruitments have seen 9-figure contracts. These are crazy outliers who would go through a different visa path anyway. US tech companies still need mid-level workers making low-to-mid six figures. Weirdly O1 visa holder spouses will get an O3 which doesn't allow them to work, making it worse than the H1B/H4 visa for some set of people. (H4s allow spouses to work)
- llm_nerd 1y ago
  > These are crazy outliers They are. And in the truly talented spaces there are many at all of the ranges in between. > US tech companies still need mid-level workers making low-to-mid six figures $100k for three to six years seems entirely reasonable if it's really such a critical need.
  - dtauzell 1y ago
    It sounds like this expired each year. So it is 100k extra per year.
    - 1y ago

the_real_cher 1y ago

Yeah but no offense if you're paid the same as your peers, you're not necessarily exceptional. There's literally millions of talented Americans out of work in the tech industry right now while companies continue to hire H1B. The companies post impossible requirement job ads in obscure locations..to get around the requirements to hire Americans first.

guyzero 1y ago
> Yeah but no offense if you're paid the same as your peers, you're not necessarily exceptional. Says you. I work in Lake Wobegon.
- the_real_cher 1y ago
  I'm happy you're here but the H1B program needs to slow down in America for a while.
  - kelnos 1y ago
    Out of curiosity, why do you believe that's the case? I think there are certainly abuses of the system, but we should be focusing on stamping out that abuse, not just generally "slowing it down". A $100k price tag is not going to affect abuse all that much; yes, it will make it less profitable, but probably not to the point where it will fix anything. As a US-born citizen working in the US, I would rather work with a smart, motivated person from another country than a mediocre person from the US. The problem is that there are a lot of non-exceptional people being brought in on these visas, so let's focus on stopping that as much as we can. And while there are plenty of exceptional people who are US citizens, there are also many more who are mediocre or worse; we should be importing talent in order to raise that average.
    - hnuser847 1y ago
      The sole purpose of companies hiring foreign workers is to pay less in wages. This results in lower wages for Americans. It’s that simple.

TMWNN 1y ago

>The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India Such offshoring was possible before and after today. Put another way, if all the H-1B jobs really can be offshored quickly and easily the way so many Indians and anti-Trump people here and elsewhere confidently predict, *that would have happened already*.

Jyaif 1y ago
The offshoring has started happening in the last 2 years in some of the big companies, by for example opening offices in Eastern Europe. I suspect it didn't happen before because these companies were more focused on growth than efficiency. That being said, thanks to AI parts of the big companies are again focused on growth at all cost.

smt88 1y ago

Big Tech chose to get elect an anti-immigrant candidate while relying on immigrant labor. Let them burn themselves down.

kelnos 1y ago

> This is a de facto shutdown of the program Is it? $100k per hire isn't much of a cost to pay for large companies. Smaller companies may -- may -- end up having some trouble with this, but consider that $100k often amounts to less than a yearly base salary (and will pretty much always be less than a year of total comp/total employee cost), not to mention the costs of legal staff that they're already paying to deal with this stuff. What this may do is cause some of the "body shop" consultancies to drop some of their "low end" business, so they'll focus more on targeting positions with higher salaries. That's... probably a good thing. And yeah, we may see some higher rates of offshoring, but I don't think that will be significant. And I'm not even really convinced: offshoring is already possible, and in strict dollar terms is already cheaper than going through the H-1B process to bring someone to the US. If companies preferred offshoring, they'd be doing it; clearly the already-higher-cost H-1B program is still their preference. I agree that this isn't going to fix the H-1B visa system, and is not a reform or even a particularly positive step toward a reform, but I think you're overestimating the negative impact. I really don't think this will change things much at all.

enraged_camel 1y ago
>> Is it? $100k per hire isn't much of a cost to pay for large companies. It is $100k per hire per year. https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-trump-immigration-8d39699d0b2de3d90936f8076357254e https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-trump-immigration-8d3969...
fooker 1y ago
[flagged]
- zodiac 1y ago
  1400 x $100,000 is $140 million, not $1.4 billion
- tomhow 1y ago
  Please don't comment like this on HN. The guidelines ask us all to be kind; they're the first words in the "In Comments" section: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

callc 1y ago

> The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US. I’m honestly tired of hearing the argument “if we do X then business will move to another state or out of US”. Good riddance to the companies that flee from jurisdictions enforcing workers rights, don’t allow exploitation, etc. The most important thing is protecting people, not fearing the cries of money-making machines.

spacebanana7 1y ago
Particularly in tech, where the network effects and first mover advantages are so strong. California could introduce a million dollar minimum wage for software engineers, ban electricity on Thursdays, raise corporate taxes to 60% and still probably have more new unicorns founded in the subsequent year than Europe.
- infinite8s 1y ago
  Don't be so sure of that. Network effects are still subject to tipping points.
- mavelikara 1y ago
  Subsequent year, probably. In later years, no. Massachusetts is case study on this.
  - cowsandmilk 1y ago
    What happened in Massachusetts?
    - anon7725 1y ago
      Seems like the point is what’s not happening there
digianarchist 1y ago
They'll still end up in the US as they can work a year abroad and come in using L1-B program for 5 years (3 + 2 years on renewal). L1 has no PWD, no min wage requirements (beyond min wage law in US) and is completely uncapped.

hx8 1y ago

> This is a de facto shutdown of the program No, this is just another tariff. If it costs $200k/yr to employee an H1B Software Engineer, and you expect them to work for you for 3 years, it raises the cost of employment from $200k/yr to $233k/yr. It'll discourage people from applying on the margins, which will bring the application rate down and acceptance rate up.

alecst 1y ago
AP is reporting that It's $100k/yr. So it wouldn't amortize like that.
dbmnt 1y ago
It's an annual fee. It would raise the cost to $300k/yr. https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-trump-immigration-8d39699d0b2de3d90936f8076357254e https://apnews.com/article/h1b-visa-trump-immigration-8d3969...
cerved 1y ago
It's not a tariff

kristopolous 1y ago

In this supposed competition with China, Trump is deeply dedicated to giving China every advantage possible. From defunding science, fining the biggest universities, defunding green energy, making hiring ambitious foreign workers economically unfeasible, replacing technocratic administrators with incompetent lackies with quite literally zero experience, imposing inordinate tariffs ... It's just win after win for the CCP. Couldn't possibly be more generous

mrtksn 1y ago
Yes, but all these things will have bad long-term effects. The short-term effect would be payment into the federal budget and increase in local employment. Even with tariffs, the initial effect was to increase purchases before the tariffs hit. Later the companies started eating from their margins instead of increasing prices right away. So it all resulted in increased economic activity and then increased tax payments into the federal government. However, because this is tax on consumption, it will eventually reduce business profits and personal wealth of the consumers. Meanwhile, Trump can claim that the economy is booming and he is collecting huge tax revenues without any negative effects.
remarkEon 1y ago
Sad that we're doing this. The United States couldn't compete and was a poor country with minimal scientific achievement until the H-1B visa was created in 1990.