[stevepotter]

No, I don't want to underpay imported people. I'm not talking about teams of low-skilled people. You don't know my situation, so I'll explain. I work in a startup that requires a specific ML computer vision skillset. And we are in the surgery space. I found a brilliant person who is a master at computer vision, loves the medical field, and is willing to take a +6 figure salary and equity. I tried to find someone like that stateside and couldn't. He wants to live here and would be a great addition to the country. He's in Canada now, has been for years. Unfortunately he's still there now because of the recent travel ban for those born in certain countries.

Thing is, I would pay $100k extra to have him in office. In my case it's moot because of the travel ban. My point was, this whole thing simply benefits the companies that can afford it - google, meta, amazon etc, who happen to be big contributors to the administration. $100k will not stop them from hiring foreign talent, but it may stop companies like mine. Flagship companies might be psyched about this.

[elmerfud]

I know exactly what your situation is. You're looking for H1B Visa workers which are intended to be highly specialized technical skills that are not locally available in the United States. If a $100,000 fee to bring in a highly technical specialized worker that cannot be found in the United States is too much then you are not looking for a highly specialized technical worker with domain specific knowledge that doesn't exist within the United States.

It's really as simple as that. The H-1B visa system has been abused repeatedly by many corporations and you yourself are seeking to abuse it. I have seen many H-1B visa holders and none of them seem to have highly specialized domain-specific knowledge. I'm sure there's a few that do but the vast majority are average computer science graduates from India that get imported. They do average work and there is nothing special about their knowledge or their skills that they're bringing to this country.

So hire people here first. You absolutely are going to need to pay a US citizen a good 30 to 50% more than what you're going to pay that mediocre H-1B person because if you were looking for a highly specialized person with domain-specific knowledge then you would pay the US person or the H1B person the exact same wage. This fee for H1B Visas is now going to make these companies, and yourself, look very seriously about your hiring practices and your abuse of the system. Because if you need the specialized person the cost is insignificant. Because a one-time $100,000 fee is pennies compared to the salary that you should be paying yearly which is $200,000, and that 200k is not including all of the cost of employment and taxations that you have to pay.

So there's massive holes in your entire story. You're either not seeking skilled domain specific knowledge people or you are absolutely underpaying people who are highly skilled with domain-specific knowledge.

[stevepotter]

You're being too aggressive for my taste and I don't think there's any dialog to be had here. I was wrong though, this particular visa was O-1 and not H-1B and they are quite different. I was discussing a single person who was uniquely qualified. And passed the rigorous O-1 application process only to be prohibited from crossing the border because he was born in a particular place.

I'm a startup with modest angel funding. We can't compete with larger companies salary-wise and so far I haven't been able to find competent people who are willing the play the startup game when they can get half a mil straight out of school. We have only a handful of software engineers. But I don't have to tell you because like you said, you know exactly what my situation is.

This clearly isn't a productive conversation so let's just drop it. Enjoy your weekend!

[elmerfud]

So now you're just changing the subject. Because we were talking about H1B visas and now you're complaining about someone with a different visa type being prohibited from crossing the border. Maybe what's your sensing as aggressiveness is me just pointing out that you don't seem to be talking in good faith or you constantly keep changing what you're talking about without indicating you're actually changing it. Makes it quite confusing to have any kind of cohesive discussion.

I think if you'll refer back to my original response I acknowledge that I do not like The vast majority of immigration related policies that have been instituted under the Trump administration. It was only this one specifically about H1B visas that I do agree with. So you were apparently talking about not H1B visas which resulted in this confusion.

[stevepotter]

Great, take care