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

I think one important distinction that I haven’t seen mentioned here much is that there is a big difference between handing out h1bs to cognizant employees vs students who did masters programs in the US and are working as direct hires in faang companies. In the latter case, these workers have already invested tens if not hundreds of thousands into the US as well as many years before even making a dime. This cohort is much more incentivized to stay in the US and contribute over the long term. They are also not ‘abusing’ the h1b program at all, because they are getting paid the exact wages as their US counterparts, unlike those at BigTechConsulting.

Smarter policy would be to looking into targeting the actual exploitation, where it actually exists (if it’s deemed that the externalities are truly negative), like the outsourcing to cognizant. Of course, we are living under the rule of probably the most inept president in any of our lifetimes; so he doesn’t act methodically, only reflexively to once again reduce US competitiveness over the long term.

And not to belabor this point, but he’s doing such one-dimensional math here by thinking of the immigration scenario as zero sum. Trump has clearly lost the plot. What he is failing to consider is that the US is in a long term ideological war with our biggest enemy China, and our best hand in this game is stealing their best and brightest to live in the west and have them to learn and love western values; which they will use to influence their friends, families, and social media circles back at home.

I’ve seen this happen with just about every friend of mine who has immigrated from China to the US and the effect that it has on their immediate network carries significant weight at shifting their perspective. Xi is not popular at home, and the west should be doing what it can to increase domestic Chinese instability in the same way they’re doing to us (very successfully). Rather, he is hell bent on unifying them to hate America.

There’s an ideological war happening and our president is not only too stupid to play ball but he’s also interested in giving up the hand of cards we already have. He is a true and utter moron and it’s hard to understate my level of disgust.