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

One man's rising gas prices are another man's oil industry boom.

The H1B process is unfair to engineers because it drives down their compensation in a way that doesn't affect nurses or welders. If immigration were completely irrespective of profession and based solely around whether the imported laborers get paid enough to contribute more than they receive in taxes/public services, nobody would have any standing to complain about their wages being driven down because every single person benefits in the long run from the economic growth.

As things stand, tech workers and unskilled laborers get screwed by the current status quo because they don't reap the benefit of cheaper goods and services in all the other industries, but everyone else benefits from cheaper electronics/software and landscaping/housekeeping/food service while their wages grow.

You're not wrong on paper, the current immigration practices are just screwy.

EDIT - The hard statistical proof that most of the H-1Bs are tech workers:

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/o...

Software developer salaries are still extremely high in the US. So I would doubt that this has had a huge effect.

If you look at the background of founders in tech you’ll soon realize that without immigration this entire industry would be a shadow of what it currently is; it’s not about the amount of compensation, it’s about whether there’s a job at all.

This also impacts non-software tech: see recent layoffs statistics at Intel, what percentage are H1B and why aren't companies required to re-prove H1B necessity? Can we just over-hire and claim we need H1Bs because we can't find enough talent to fill the rolls, then submit that we over-hired and lay off all the US talent? This seems to be a bit of what happens even if not intentionally.

I'm writing this reply not to the lazy commenter, but to anyone reading this thread...

You're just passing off your own speculation as authoritative, and you didn't even read my comment to comprehension.

I didn't say we need less immigration in the tech sector. I said it hurts tech workers when there's a deflationary effect on their earnings but not the goods and services they pay for, and hence the same immigration practices should apply to every industry.

On paper, you would think this is the case, but in practice 64% of H1-B workers are in IT and 52% are programmers:

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/o...

Again, it stands to reason that if the deflationary effect on tech workers' salaries is disproportionate to the deflationary effect on all the other goods and services they pay for, then tech workers are worse off from the H1-B program. I've seen claims less ironclad than this accepted as fact in peer-reviewed life sciences-related research.

Your comment is just another classic HN case of speculation masquerading as authority.

I'm writing this reply not to the lazy commenter, but to anyone reading this thread...

Yet again, we have classic HN speculation masquerading as authority.

Should software developer salaries be comparable to accountants or to surgeons? That's an arbitrary value judgment.

Software engineers have less purchasing power than they would without the H-1B visa program, and that's indisputable. 64% of the visas go to IT workers and 52% go specifically to programmers, which implies beyond all shadow of a doubt that their salaries decrease further than the cost of the goods and services they pay for.

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/o...

It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal. You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir!

Precisely, I have been saying this for a while: engineers are smart enough to invent things but too stupid to gatekeep their profession. You have bootcampers, H1B workers, self-taught whatever, anyone can call themselves an engineer overnight. In 5 years you are now a "principal engineer!" I would even go further and distinguish between software and other disciplines of engineering. A web developer who is called a senior engineer is on paper equal to embedded engineers who spent at least 5 years in education plus god knows how long in experience to get the same title. This is wrong. I don't see a CPR trainee suddenly being able to call themselves a registered nurse!

The median is like 140k. Is that extremely high? I know some cops who make more.

Yes, 140k for a software job is extremely high. Comparable roles in Europe done by people who are equally skilled pay half as much.

I'm not sure they actually are extremely high. It's just that most other salaries have fallen below what we'd normally consider middle class.

Stated another way, the things that software engineers can do with their wealth generally seem like normal middle class things. They can own a home but they can't afford a yacht. They can take nice vacations but they aren't part of the jet set. They can start businesses but generally not in capital intensive areas like resource extraction or heavy industry.

I'd say that software engineers, at least the higher paid ones, are probably on the higher side of middle class; but they are still solidly middle class.