> H-1B visa holders are REQUIRED to leave the country to renew their visas every few years
This part is not exactly true. You can renew H1B indefinitely within the USA(every 3 years, need a pending Green card application from the 2nd extension onwards i.e after 6 years). However, if you leave the US for any reason you won't be able to re-enter the USA without a renewed visa stamp from a US embassy. The two exceptions are that you can visit Canada or Mexico for less than 30 days without triggering the visa stamp requirement.
No, it's correct. The original comment said "to renew their visas". The visa expires on its expiration date, however the H1B status itself is extended. Hope this helps.
H1-B program is exploited. They are not supposed to be hired unless there aren't Americans who can fill the role. There should be a large fee associated with it.
I'd preface this by saying I'm a not fan of Trump or the direction he is aiming for in general.
But when the circumstances are that opportunistic actors have been behaving badly for many years and adjusting to small and medium changes in laws that they see coming, Friday night massacres are exactly what's needed. What would be nice (but unlikely) is a similar health care sea change.
That's what's steadily happening, and why the pipeline crisis in cybersecurity and other segments of the tech industry is arising in the US.
The US system only worked because the US had the right mix of openness to domestic and foreign capital and talent.
A lot of people on HN and in our industry in the US need to recognize that they are competing in a global market, and need to upskill accordingly.
Just having a CS degree and knowing Leetcode isn't enough, and I'm not going to pay $150k base for an MLE who only knows how to use PyTorch wrappers and basic math, but little-to-no CUDA or Infiniband background, or for a new grad SWE to work on a CNAPP if they don't understand how eBPF and LSMs work.
And no, it is not our responsibility as businesses to incubate that talent if American admins are not helping us (though I shouted myself hoarse about this when I used to be in that space). Everything has become hyper-politicized in the US now, and that is not the kind of environment any business can operate in.
That's a tangent, I'm not making excuses for American labor. If we can't compete, then we can't compete.
But we will never stay competitive or self-reliant if we destroy our domestic markets by allowing companies to use H1 workers and offshoring to subvert our own labor supply. And it guarantees its demise if all incentives for Americans to even try are removed.
I am not, to be clear, talking about immigration or hoarding knowledge. I am more than happy to support programs to bring the brightest minds over as permanent residence - and their families - or to export knowledge to allied nations so we may all prosper.
> But we will never stay competitive or self-reliant if we destroy our domestic markets by allowing companies to use H1 workers and offshoring to subvert our own labor supply. And it guarantees its demise if all incentives for
To solve that the US needs to
1. Offer tax credits and subsidizes comparable to what countries like India and the CEE provide in order to reduce the incentive to offshore
2. With the provided tax credits add a GC and Citizenship quota that isn't onerous but nudges a firm to hire overwhelmingly in the US. A 25% quota is the magic number in my experience.
3. Work with universities to revamp CS education. The philosophy of segregating CS and CE in the US needs to end. The EECS model such as Cal's is a better approach to providing education that is aligned with that used in every other country.
Trump's proposal did nothing to solve the 3 points above which are the primary drivers for offshoring in product-led companies. All the proposal did is give a dollar value to the expected cost of hiring immigrant labor versus shifting abroad - and that dollar amount is the same amount that you would need to spend in the CEE, Israel, or India to avail significant tax windows and subsidizes.
Instead of an office with 50-60% American labor now this move incentivized shifting the entire office to Warsaw or Hyderabad instead of hiring domestically. A new grad with a CS degree from (randomly chosen) Ohio State simply isn't worth a $120k TC or a chronically unemployed (unemployed longer than 6 months) SWE isn't worth hiring as a business. If this administration actually cared to get us to hire those two archetypes, recommendations 1-3 would have solved it.
Doesn't this just encourage companies to off-shore even harder, which is arguably more damaging to US tech workers than H-1Bs? I agree that the program is routinely abused by employers, but I’m not sure punishing foreign workers for this fact is the remediation we need.
If the cost benefit analysis for employers still shows that H1-Bs are cheaper, how will this offset H1-B exploitation? My guess is that this will suppress STEM wages artificially to account for paying a one-time fee for an H1-B, but hiring someone for 1+ years at that suppressed rate will be cheaper. Employers will blame AI for decrease in STEM wages, of course. A complementary solution is to add the $100k fee, and to restrict H1-B per employer per year, or something like that.
In 2025, the decision isn't hiring someone on an H1B versus a citizen - the cost is mostly a wash.
The decision is hiring in the US (visa or citizen) versus hiring abroad.
Given that a large number of EMs, PMs, Directors, and even VPs are on some sort of immigration or work visa, this makes it easier to incentivize you as an employer to move some of them back to India or Czechia to open a GCC. This is what has been happening for the past 5 years now.
On top of that, vast swathes of STEM academia are dependent on H1B. You simply aren't going to find enough American citizens with a background in (say) battery chemistry to become a tenure track professor versus from Korea, Japan, or China.
Now you basically created an incentive for large swathes of junior faculty in STEM subfields to return to Asia, leading to a massive reverse brain drain.
> The decision is hiring in the US (visa or citizen) versus hiring abroad.
True, but there’s a balance that employers have to maintain to get some in-state advantages from local or state governments for job creation.
That said, it makes more sense for America to get trainers or professors for niche subfields than actual workers so you can create homegrown talent, not sure why that isn’t done more.
> but there’s a balance that employers have to maintain to get some in-state advantages from local or state governments for job creation
True! The issue is local, state, and federal governments gives limited benefits compared to CEE countries, Israel, India, and others who roll the red carpet with multi-year tax holidays, subsidizes, and targeted hiring pipelines.
> makes more sense for America to get trainers or professors for niche subfields than actual workers so you can create homegrown talent
How? They overwhelmingly came on H1Bs as well, not O-1s.
This is why this is such a stupid approach, and is absolutely showing the hallmarks of a Stephen Miller policy. Interestingly, this seems to have overshadowed the Trump Gold Card and Platinum Card announcements (which part of me thinks was part of the reason this announcement happened).
Don't make H1-B employer-specific. That way, they automatically have to pay market rates to the guy since otherwise you would sponsor his entry and he'd switch to a market rate employer immediately. This removes the "unfair" aspect of h1bs being cheaper to hire.
> Don't make H1-B employer-specific. That way, they automatically have to pay market rates to the guy since otherwise you would sponsor his entry and he'd switch to a market rate employer immediately
Exactly.
That solves the problem of consultancies and firms trying to abuse the H1B program as indentured servitude, and makes it easier for those in that kind of a situation to demand a higher salary.
In product companies, someone on a work visa is paid comparable to an American, and bringing a foreign nation on site is already a bit of a wash savings wise.
That said, with this announcement the ship has sailed, because having to spend $100k per year per H1B filing on top of the salary premium of hiring in the US just made opening a GCC/offshoring even more cost effective. For the top 20% of talent in CEE and India, you're already seeing TC break that $100k mark. The issue is there just aren't enough people in the US in certain subdomains with the right skills.
I blame CS programs over the last 10 years for that by trying to overleverage "Leetcode" and "Fullstack" style courses and increasingly reducing specialized courses.
A CSE major at a decent program in India or the CEE will have studied algorithms, digital signals processing, OS internals, and computer architecture along with the option to take further electives in a specialization of their choice (ML, Security, Systems, HCI, etc). They are much more "well-rounded" for technical roles because they will have dipped their toes in 2-3 technical subfields and did their "data structures" equivalent.
In my subfield (cybersecurity) it's been almost impossible to find the right talent at scale of OS internals, systems programming, CompArch, and CUDA+Infiniband experience in the US for the past 5-7 years. As such, there is a generational skill gap, because there is a gap of people who should be mid-career now but don't exist domestically.
And it's not something a "bootcamp" can solve either. The reality is, if we need to spend 2-3 years retraining people domestically with table stake skills like algos, OS internals, and other courses that are expected in a CS major, we should also dramatically reduce salaries for those employees, becuase I can't justify paying $150k for a bootcamp grad. At $50k-80k the math works out to only hire domestically with that level of skill while also offering training like the ASU BSCS program.
Yes, but a visa stamp renewal is a visa “application” while the document that allows the application is the “petition”, which is the word used on this text and the step requiring the payment.
"Section 1. Restriction on Entry. (a) ... the entry into the United States..., is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000".
OK, if I consider this interpretation, which of the following do you think will apply to already-approved H-1B petitioners:
1. Existing H-1B holder can amend their already-approved petition by "supplementing a payment" to become eligible for a visa and re-entry.
2. It's not possible to amend an already-approved H-1B petition. So existing H-1B holders can never satisfy the requirement. They cannot re-enter with H-1B visa anymore.
3. This EO is not retrospective. So already-approved H-1B petitioners (with or without visa) are fine.
I’m not not a lawyer at all and I have no real idea. My guess is that existing visas are already printed and henceforth there is no petition anymore, you have a status or visa already. Since the old petition didn’t require the payment, you don’t need to show proof of payment now. But lol if I actually know how this works, can be anyone’s guess.
My guess is that if this goes forward new h1b visas petitioned while the worker is outside the US will have a line saying “must show proof of payment” or something like that, while petitions while in the US won’t have that line on their visa stamp
a) Pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000 — subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (c) of this section. This restriction shall expire, absent extension, 12 months after the effective date of this proclamation, which shall be 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2025.
Good. Skilled Indians/Chinese/Europeans should go back to their countries, build their own tech and compete with the US.
People are smoking if they think “talents” would still want to stay in the US given this series of policies (i.e. recent cuts/restrictions on science funding, international students, and visas) from Trump government.
This is a good time for EU to build its own digital economy.
Pretty much. This is basically a free "Thousand Talents" program for much of the EU, India, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Israel, and others.
This is ridiculously stupid given how vast swathes of industries we want to redevelop need talent from our partners in the EU, Japan, Korea (still opposed to Hyundai's visa shenanigans, but two wrongs don't make a right - also interesting how HN is so positive about this but so negative about that), etc
In tech industry, we already began slowing down H1B hiring after COVID, and remote work only exacerbated that trend (I can't justify spending $150k plus an additional 25-35% in withholdings, medical, and benefits when I can hire 2-3 people with a similar outlay in Praha or Bangalore or Tel Aviv).
At least with H1B hiring, there was some incentive for industries like cybersecurity to keep some engineering headcount in the US. Now I have no reason not to completely offshore to Tel Aviv or Praha becuase the talent is there and not in the US.
This H1B change does nothing to solve the pipeline crisis nor does it solve offshoring (though even with a services tax, I'd be hard pressed to find the same ecosystem in the US like I can in Israel or Poland or even India for significant swaths of cybersecurity).
Finally, charging $100k per year per H1B employee means I can now justify a $1-10M investment in building a GCC abroad in CEE or India and availing tax benefits, subsidies, and tax holidays.
All this did is now incentivize me to push my portfolio companies to move hiring almost entirely abroad and choose a couple of high level PMs and EMs on H1Bs who would be open to becoming a Director of PM or Director of Engineering at a GCC abroad.
On top of that, the cream of the crop you want with a brain drain like academics in STEM fields, nurses, and doctors are sponsored on H1Bs.
America has a pipeline and skills problem in a lot of STEM fields and subfields, and coding bootcamp grads aren't going to cut it.
Cutting down on processing abuse by consultancies is something everyone can get behind, but this is literally the stupidest way to approach that problem.
Then make the GCC itself unprofitable to operate as an extractive force and the costs unable to be mitigated as an extractive entity.
Your GCCs will be paying for the direct training of the US side people you overlooked and essentially a generous and well backed “pension” for the few that can’t be made current.
Unless you’re helping to fix the pipeline problem you allege exists, you’re expanding the problem space.
Global Capability Center - think offshoring, except now you have a VP or GM assigned at that office, and a couple of P/L owning PMs and Eng Directors and actual IP being created.
Basically, back office work offshoring like in the 2000s is dead. Now entire revenue generating or complex IP product lines are being produced by offshore teams.
GCP's Security and K8s portfolio is a good example of that or that team at Facebook's Infra Silicon team in Bangalore.
One personal pet peeve I have is using obscure (and in this case, non-Google-able) acronyms. Its easy to just give the full name once, then use the acronym after.
Just rip out the entire 1965 Immigration Act root and stem along with its follow on provisions. Then replace with a points system with citizen impact factored into the equation.
To handle the losses, have any firm and their downstream contractors and clients pay off displaced individuals many times over, with regional adjustments - such that it is cost prohibitively expensive to even think of bodyshopping people.