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

(www.reuters.com)
1233 points mriguy | 2 comments | 19 Sep 25 19:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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gnulinux996 ◴[20 Sep 25 01:44 UTC] No.45309222[source]▶
> If the US loses its massive lead

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.

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vasilipupkin ◴[20 Sep 25 01:49 UTC] No.45309292[source]▶
and so who owns the shares of "corporate america"? Newflash: Teachers' and firefighters' and cops' pensions are all invested in "corporate america". As well as pensions of union workers. As well as 401ks of all the other middle class people. Come on.

"the exploitation of American worker" ? American workers have one of the richest standards of living in the world.

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1. gnulinux996 ◴[20 Sep 25 02:02 UTC] No.45309432{3}[source]▶
Oh now they care about teachers, firefighters, cops and puppies? Is that what this H1B is about?

> 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.

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2. vasilipupkin ◴[20 Sep 25 10:47 UTC] No.45312173[source]▶
if you are going to argue that Americans don't have a rich standard of living, that is just an absurd argument. It's obvious to anyone who has lived or worked somewhere else.