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

I think there’s plenty of interesting debates to be had about immigration policy and its effects on the labor market, but one thing worth noting here is that the primary problem that damn near every other country on earth has isn’t immigration, it’s brain drain.

A core strategic strength of the US over the last century has been that everyone with any talent wants to come here to work, and by and large we’ve let them do so. You can argue how well that’s worked out for us - having worked with a great many extremely talented H1bs in an industry largely built by immigrants, I’d consider it pretty positive - but it damn sure hasn’t worked out well for the countries those talented folks came from.

The top end of H1B has been great for America. In the last few decades, there has been growth of abuse of the program to get mid level talent at below market rates which really hurts the middle class in America. People need to understand that most reformists don't want to get rid of the truly exceptional immigration to the US. We need to limit the volume, especially the immigrants that are directly competing with a hollowed out middle class in the US. Let me know if you want further reading on this topic.

The median pay of an H1B visa holder is $118k. The 25th percentile is $90k. This is from the government's official data: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/O...

Any suggestion that the program is dragging wages down instead of dragging wages up is not just misleading but factually wrong.

A better perspective is that the median H1B holder created $100k+ worth of value for some US company. Salaries are lower than the value you create, or else your employer would stop paying you.

There could be some rare edge case where you are undercut by a direct competitor, but overall America is much richer with H1Bs that without them.

Value for who? Certainly not the majority of Americans. Depressed wages increase profits, which go to shareholders. Most Americans do not benefit from the H-1B grift. I’ll even argue it hurts US citizens by importing immigrants who aren’t necessary from a labor supply perspective (for those on the visa who are not exceptional talent), who compete for housing with citizens when there is a shortage of millions of housing units.

A few select tech and financial services companies, and their shareholders, benefit the most from the program.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/04/what-we-k...

https://www.pewresearch.org/?attachment_id=201754