Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says

Interesting decision. I'm on the F1 -> H1B pipeline myself as a software engineer. And my wife is a researcher working on Genetic Engineering.

Of the both of us, I've been the strong proponent for moving the US. and with each passing day, its getting harder to make a strong case for the pain, and uncertainty of moving here.

Lately everything has been counter to what one would expect from a pro-growth, accelerationist country. But I understand where the reasoning is coming from, though.

with each passing day, its getting harder to make a strong case for the pain, and uncertainty of moving here.

That is exactly the goal here by this administration.

Shutting down the H1B is the end of the American success story. First generation immigrants have started the majority of our unicorns.

if you are exceptional, there is always the O-1 visa

So there were no American immigrant success stories pre-1990, when the H-1 program started?

You don't think this administration would cut off their nose to spite their face?

We are seeing it in real time.

No, there was no immigration process back then, you just came.

Which is why all the people yelling about immigration today, who are second and third generation, need to be quiet.

I might.

It's not just this specific issue, honestly. Throwing wrench on all economies, that my wife and I bet on is what's horrible. Research fund cuts on premium institutes, the wonky arrests etc.

Even yesterday, I had to make a case for why all of this certainty might be worth it. And it was not easy. At this point though, I certainly agree that the US is not in a trajectory for appreciating external contributions.

The H1B really should have just been an O-1 from the beginning. Being a software or genetics engineer isn't really that interesting, we literally have millions of software engineers, and more genetics engineers than we have good jobs. If someone is truly exceptional than they deserve an O-1, and if you truly can't find any engineers in the US at your salary then maybe you should move overseas.

I can see you’re downvoted , but I think you’re right. It was much more liberal time.

No, you become exceptional after coming here. The majority of our unicorns are first generation immigrant founded.

Accelerationist doesn’t mean what you think it means here.

Might be, but that's how you end up in a situation where all the technical skill is outside the US and the products inside are a marketing layer over technical efforts.

Similar to what ended up happening with china and manufacturing.

The H-1 program started as a "correction" to the tightening of immigration rules as a whole over time.

Consider that, in 1905, my great-grandfather got on a boat in Italy, sailed across the Atlantic, arrived in New York, went through a very simple immigration process on-site, and at that point was legal to live and work in the US for as long as he wanted. He eventually naturalized as a US citizen in 1920, only needing to prove his residency and present the record of his legal entrance 15 years prior.

We're a long way from that state of affairs now. The H-1 program was developed because we weren't getting enough of an influx of skilled work due to the reduction in immigration caused by new, more-restrictive immigration laws enacted over the prior decades.

And the requirements for O-1 aren't even that difficult. I know people who are frankly not exceptional (not mediocre either, though, of course), but have worked with lawyers to systematically fulfill the requirements of the O-1 visa. It does take time to do, and I assume the legal assistance isn't cheap, but I think a lot of people on H-1Bs who don't even consider it, could do it.

I don't think their statement implies that. Note that they said it will be the end of the American success story, not the end of the American immigrant success story.

The nature of the American success story changes over time and with that the nature of immigrant success also changes.

In the last decade or so tech, especially information tech, has been one of the biggest contributors to growth in the US economy, and first generation immigrants have been a big contributor to that. For example, first generation immigrants have founded many of the tech unicorns (although I think he overstated it a little--my searching suggests it is closed to 40-50% rather than a majority).

In earlier decades the biggest contributors at various times included manufacturing, farm technology, defense, the Gulf Coast petroleum industry, and construction.

There were certainly immigrants involved in all those but not nearly to the extent that they are in present day tech, especially at the top.

Yes, but race was also very very central then,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1907_Bellingham_race_riot

(and even with that regime, Italians/Irish/Catholics etc. were discriminated LOL).

Today, US is forced to comply with anti-racial position so it can't quite do what it really wants - to open the doors to white-immigrants but to restrict it to everyone else. This happens in the background with the way the green-card process is structured, but frankly, I think everyone is well-served if we stop this farce and just have racial quotas. US empire is failing, so there's no need to keep up such pretences today.

There's quite a bit of research on how anti-racism was a strategy adopted by the US/West after WW2 to prevent the then freed countries (starting with India ironically) from seeking revenge for the centuries of total devastation and mass violence imposed on them.

O-1 is a subjective visa which means the process is heavily gamed. Pay conferences to host your papers, pay newspapers to write meaningless articles about you, get a famous personality to sign off on your recommendation letter (I know startups used their board of advisors only for this) and on and on. It’s mostly a joke at this point. O-1 can be scrapped and you wouldn’t lose anything