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.

What's the median pay of big tech workers? I started at 150k 8 years ago as a new grad, for comparison.

OP's comment still makes no sense then. H1bs are not hollowing out "middle class" wage earners then - the most you could say is that they are slightly reducing income of high-income earners.

But also, the H1b median salary for a software engineer is ~$120k, which is almost identical to that of the US median overall - so all of this hullabaloo seems pretty groundless.

<< the most you could say is that they are slightly reducing income of high-income earners

First, I would like you to reconsider 'high income' and putting $120k in that category. It was a good chunk of change. In this year of our lord 2025, it is not. It is, for my region anyway, barely acceptable middle class income.

If you barely consider yourself middle-class with an income 50% over the median then you are probably at least living in a "high income" region :P

And your self-classification is questionable, but that is very common. Maybe a good trigger to experience gratefulness and satisfaction for the economical situation you are in?