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

(www.reuters.com)
1245 points mriguy | 1 comments | 19 Sep 25 19:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.301s | source
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bhouston ◴[20 Sep 25 01:12 UTC] No.45308820[source]▶
This is actually smart. Many H1B visas are used to undermine fair labor wages for already local talent. We should ensure that H1B visas are for actual unique talent and not just to undercut local wages.

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...

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epistasis ◴[20 Sep 25 01:20 UTC] No.45308920[source]▶
This is very short term thinking, in that it assumes a constant amount of work and ignores the global competition for labor.

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.

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1. fastball ◴[20 Sep 25 01:33 UTC] No.45309066[source]▶
The competition isn't for labor, it is for net productivity. These are not the same thing. As anyone who has ever worked on a team can tell you, "more team members" absolutely does not equate to a more productive team. In fact we have a plethora of phrases and anecdotes which indicate the opposite is often true.