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

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...

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.

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

> How many people on here can truly say that they were considering between two different countries. That doesn’t happen at scale.

/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.