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

(www.reuters.com)
1245 points mriguy | 3 comments | 19 Sep 25 19:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.441s | 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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ahmeneeroe-v2 ◴[20 Sep 25 01:30 UTC] No.45309031[source]▶
There is not a global competition for talent.

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

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1. AceJohnny2 ◴[20 Sep 25 01:36 UTC] No.45309099[source]▶
> How many people on here can truly say that they were considering between two different countries

Hi!

I know I'm just a datum, but I gotta represent myself.

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2. Fordec ◴[20 Sep 25 01:44 UTC] No.45309215[source]▶
Same, three actually, none of which the US. A closer representation for the US brain may be who is considering between different states? Here is the thing, other countries do not necessarily work exactly the same way as the US or individually have large enough local markets to contain all aspects of the overall tech industry, just locally.
3. ◴[20 Sep 25 01:44 UTC] No.45309220[source]▶