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

Everyone in these threads always points out all sorts of issues with the H1B system, which are mostly true, but it's not like there's a suggestion for a replacement here. This is a de facto shutdown of the program, not a reform. I'd be happy to see a reformed skilled immigration program for the US, but this isn't it.

The US makes up about 4.5% of the global population and it seems silly to think that the FAANG companies and the new AI startups chasing behind them are going to restrict their hiring to this tiny slice of the global talent pool.

The only effect this is going to have is accelerating the offshoring of jobs through more hiring in India, Europe and Canada, which is a net loss for the US.

I myself became a US citizen two years ago after being on a H1B. I was paid the same as all my peers and for all its shortcomings the program worked for me. It stunning to think this has been closed off, killing the main path for skilled immigration into the US.

Yeah but no offense if you're paid the same as your peers, you're not necessarily exceptional.

There's literally millions of talented Americans out of work in the tech industry right now while companies continue to hire H1B.

The companies post impossible requirement job ads in obscure locations..to get around the requirements to hire Americans first.

> Yeah but no offense if you're paid the same as your peers, you're not necessarily exceptional.

Says you. I work in Lake Wobegon.

I'm happy you're here but the H1B program needs to slow down in America for a while.

Out of curiosity, why do you believe that's the case?

I think there are certainly abuses of the system, but we should be focusing on stamping out that abuse, not just generally "slowing it down". A $100k price tag is not going to affect abuse all that much; yes, it will make it less profitable, but probably not to the point where it will fix anything.

As a US-born citizen working in the US, I would rather work with a smart, motivated person from another country than a mediocre person from the US. The problem is that there are a lot of non-exceptional people being brought in on these visas, so let's focus on stopping that as much as we can. And while there are plenty of exceptional people who are US citizens, there are also many more who are mediocre or worse; we should be importing talent in order to raise that average.

Is it weird that there are like entire orgs practically of H1Bs at big tech companies these days? And if you hang out in the towns where the big offices are, the demographics are completely different from not that long ago and it’s not from the general demo shift in America since Chinese and Indians are not that large of a percent of immigrants overall. Like is there such a big shortage of workers that all of Redmond needs to be Indians now? If serving the economy demands that, perhaps we should reconsider whether serving the economy should be our top priority.

Why is it a problem? Indian people are great.

As humans, Indian people are as great as any other humans. In my experience, though, first generation families from India and China practically tend to be quite insular socially. They hang out amongst themselves. Which, like, I don’t blame them for, if I were them I’d probably do it too, but it has a strongly detrimental impact on the social environment for people who aren’t in those groups. When a house goes to one of those groups, it feels as if it disappears from the neighborhood. If the flow is slow enough then they are in theory functionally forced to integrate socially with the existing inhabitants, but the flow is not slow.

And by the way, what reality do we live in that your local megacorp can decide to radically alter your population demographic and people support the megacorps ability to do that? There was no vote for the existing inhabitants about whether they wanted to take the trade off, the decision was made for them by businessmen. It’s pretty weird when you think about it.

American immigration has functioned this way for years. Where do you think Little Italy or the Greek sections of town originated? This is how immigrants have behaved for centuries, it's not exclusively a phenomenon among people of color. European immigrants did the same thing and continue to do so. If you mention a street name in NYC to some longtime New Yorkers, they can tell you which community or immigrant group is known to live in that area.

What ultimately matters is whether immigrants are law-abiding and contribute to the local economy. Indians rarely appear in crime statistics and generally comprise part of the highest-earning immigrant demographics.