H1B is ripe with abuse - this article by Bloomberg says that half of all H1-B visas are used by Indian staffing firms that pay significantly lower than the US laborers they are replacing:
- https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-h1b-visa-middlemen-c...
If the US loses its massive lead in the network effects of a large labor pool, the amount of work in the US will shrink, both by moving to other countries and less overall innovation.
This is not a beneficial move for most software engineers.
How many people on here can truly say that they were considering between two different countries. That doesn’t happen at scale.
There is a global competition for coming to Western Europe, Canada, and the US
Hi!
I know I'm just a datum, but I gotta represent myself.
The slate of policy choices in the US is removing it from that list of countries, and will strengthen those countries' labor forces.
Right now SV salaries command a huge premium, because all of SV is predicated on increasing productivity, increasing the economic pie, and rewarding those who do so with a fraction of that gain in GDP.
Treating SV labor like plumbing or construction labor fundamentally misunderstands the dynamics and the creation of wealth.
/me
I started in Slovenia, considered London, actually got an offer in Canada, but ultimately chose San Francisco. Figured that if I’m going to the trouble of moving abroad, I might as well go to the center of the industry.
Got lots of friends who chose various EU companies based on desired lifestyle/work/partner balance. You have lots of options as a good engineer. Especially before the last 3 years of market shenanigans.
20K H1Bs with $30K fee
20K H1Bs with $60K fee
20K H1Bs with $100K fee
unlimited H1Bs with $200K
SV labor is largely not different than a skilled trade, except at the higher levels.
By US you mean corporate America? What if they maintain that massive lead on the backs of the US citizens?
The exploitation of the US worker needs to end, if the company does not have 100K to bring in global talent then that company cannot "massively lead" in any domain and the "talent" is neither global nor talented.
"the exploitation of American worker" ? American workers have one of the richest standards of living in the world.
During last century, USA has been the most benefited from that kind of immigration.
Personally I think that this is a very short sighted decision by USA administration. But overall, I think that this will benefit the rest of the world. Maybe in a few years even USA will start exporting their best minds abroad!
That's where the massive salaries come from, that massive wealth creation. It's not just taking larger chunks of a fixed size pie.
> American workers have one of the richest standards of living in the world.
What are you even talking about? Being able to hold more tokens that can buyback the products of the asset class does not make for a "rich standard of living".
Having to run gofundme's for medical care is not "rich standard of living". Them trembling on every unscheduled meeting with their boss is not "rich standard of living"
The American workers' existence is sad.
This is inaccurate. The U.S. had a highly restrictionist immigration system from 1921-1965. The foreign born population dropped from almost 15% to under 5% by 1970.
During that time, the U.S. had a small number of highly skilled immigrants, such as German scientists fleeing the Nazi regime. You’re talking about a very small number of truly exceptional people. A $100k/year fee is not going to shut down this kind of immigration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B-dependent_employer
... and is done for these employers already (though not to the level that is being proposed)
Public Law 114-113 (December 2015 to September 2025) : additional fee of $4000
Public Law 114–113, part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, imposed a fee of $4,000 on H-1B petitions and $4,500 on L-1A and L-1B petitions. The additional H-1B fees would apply to all petitions postmarked on or after December 18, 2015, and until September 30, 2025.I relocated to Amsterdam from India. When I got to know about the salaries my peers were making in the same company but in the US I felt like a fool. Being a manager I had access to compensation data so yeah it was hard to not feel being done by.
The leaders/parties supporting immigration in those countries are ambivalent to receiving high skill immigrants or refugees.
Source: DHS Yearbook, https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2019/table1...
We have been around 1 million per year for decades. If we still had that policy, adjusted for population you’re talking about cutting legal immigration by one-third to one-half.
And that’s not counting a large increase in “gray market” legal immigration (TPS, asylum, etc.)
The opportunity created in the US is due to the concentration of talent, high productivity, and extensive networks of people creating innovation that inflated the pie even larger.
Go ahead and move to any of those countries from the US, it's prettt easy, because everybody wants to be like the US! The only possibly better passport was a Canadian one!
Something deeply sick has infected the US when we no longer recognize the source of the wealth of our nation. Nobody could touch us. At least until we started to intentionally make ourselves poorer.
Of course the visa is a privilege and there are tons of abuses associated with it. There are methodical ways of going about it and actually fixing the problem. Slapping a $100k fee with unclear language and no heads-up uproots while uprooting lives of so many people have lived in the country for years if not decades, maintained legal status, and paid taxes including Social Security and Medicare is "a smart move" according to the top comment.
But we all know what the real problem is. If majority of the H-1B visa holders had the right skin color, they would be welcome with open arms regardless of any abuse of the system. Just like how South African refugees are welcome while other those from the "wrong" kind of country are not.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." ― Lyndon B. Johnson
Sure some electrical capacity goes to non-productive uses, but much of it is also spent doing things like enabling widespread computer usage.
SV labor is downstream of skilled trades.
“The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family. The opinion advanced in the Notes on Virginia is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived, or if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism? There may as to particular individuals, and at particular times, be occasional exceptions to these remarks, yet such is the general rule.” — Alexander Hamilton
As someone who lived in all three geographies and interacted with immigrants who lived in there, here is my raw take:-
Western Europe:- Love it and people are so nice but they are also (I am sorry to say) racist. Proof:- How many immigrant CEO's do you see from companies based in Western Europe? The top 4 largest tech companies in the US have two indian CEO's for more than 10 years now.
Canada:- Super nice and immigrant friendly more than the US, but the size of the country (approx 10% of the US) doesn't have the financial/economic/social infrastructure that is needed to support a large number of immigrants. Also tech salaries are miserable compared to the US
US:- For all its faults, US is truly the only country where immigrants looking for a better future can immigrate and assimilate into. For how long this lasts remains to be seen but I don't think that is going to change anytime soon.
You admitted that there were tons of abuse. This gets back to the law’s original intent. This is the best fix that corporations “pay up” for.
It’s just politics. You have CS grads facing employment headwinds against AI, H1B, and high interest rates. They aren’t going to vote for the incumbents if they’re unemployed. Now they’re going to have a $100k discount to hire them instead of from a WITCH company. FAANG will still hire H-1Bs.
The US, UK, and Canada all have special provisions in their immigration programs aimed at attracting and prioritizing highly-skilled workers.
Both the UK [1] and Canada [2] both use a points-based ranking system that prioritizes highly-skilled immigrants. The UK system is clear in its goals:
> introduce an Immigration Bill to bring in a firm and fair points-based system that will attract the high-skilled workers we need to contribute to our economy, our communities and our public services.
And while the US H1-B program is lottery-based, 20,000 slots are reserved for people who hold a master's degree from a U.S. institution. Proposals have also been made recently to change to a points-based system. [3]
> They built themselves into places that high skill immigrants seek, but that is more of a side effect than a competition
Wherever there is choice, there is competition. 55% of billion dollar startups in the US have immigrant founders, employing an average of 1,200 employees each [4]. If these people don't come to the US and start companies, the US will feel the effects - even if they were just "side effects".
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uks-points-ba...
[2] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAISE_Act
[4] https://www.fosterglobal.com/blog/55-of-americas-billion-dol...
maybe it was true before the US became the global propagandist, but almost everyone on earth is a native born american now.
This choosiness is actually a sign that immigrants are competing to enter those countries. The points based system is (in theory) a way to identify the ones we want.
That said, illegals and “refugees” outnumber H1Bs, further reinforcing that Western countries don’t care about global talent.
Even the groups who superficially assimilate into the progressive culture embraced by Yankees do so as subordinates, not peers. The Yankee will condemn his own ancestors and discriminate against people who look like him. Most immigrants are happy to be the objects of that pity, but do not behave in the identical manner. They respect their own ancestors and retain their own ethnic attachments.
Virtually everything Hamilton worried about applies to contemporary immigrants to a T.
Why would they intervene with outsourcing the jobs instead of H1Bs? And more importantly, how?
Urban-environments in the hyper-individualist age have no culture (no, drinking and watching "football" is not culture). Even Church-attendance is so low that these people you hate are buying up these abandoned buildings to create communities.
What you're complaining is that "they" have a culture, while you don't. I guess it's semi-understandable if it results in mob-violence and ganging-up, but I haven't seen this happen outside some Islamic-communities (even there, I think it's typ. only the S. Asian ones).
It goes both ways. A more streamlined application process and straightforward path to permanent residency is a draw to would-be immigrants who qualify.
I won't discuss illegal immigration or asylum here as those exist for different reasons, other than to say that it's a logical fallacy to assume that just because A is bigger than B, a country doesn’t care about B.
It's not a "card", it's reality. And you make it sound like there is something wrong with being emotional.
It's neither politics nor getting back to the law's original intent. It is red meat for wolves like you and others in this thread.
I have a culture! I grew up in Virginia, but my parents are Bangladeshi, and this describes me quite accurately: https://commisceo-global.com/articles/cultural-differences-w....
The EO expires in 12 months, so, yes, it's short-term.
Maybe in a year the administration will rethink things. Maybe sooner.