Government Proposes New Six-Figure Fee for H1B Visas
wsj.comMost likely these companies will set up GCCs offshore. Moving the jobs abroad.
Whatever tax and living + lifestyle expenses that USA economy was making from H1B's will be gone.
Good for the rest of the world.
The government can penalize companies for doing so.
Not really.. Corporations have enough holdings abroad to survive and kill a party or two.
The HIRE Act: 25% tax on outsourcing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45161419 - September 2025
Ohio senator introduces 25% tax on companies that outsource jobs overseas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45146528 - September 2025
Any examples?
Anything that can't be done by the company will be outsourced to a consultancy. This already happens; a lot of work in Google products is done by external agencies.
Did Google give work to external agencies because American employees couldn't do it, or because external agencies were cheaper? What happens when they are no longer cheaper w/ the government penalty?
A lot of companies reasonably prefer to outsource software work that they don't deem part of their value-add or core competency for the same reason any other company outsources that kind of work. It may or may not be a cost reason (it usually isn't because contractors are not cheap even outsourced ones), it's mostly because you don't want to increase payroll for these tasks or the tasks are of temporary nature.
This is not avoidable, and trying to make it illegal would just kill of American software companies.
As an example: a friend of mine worked for a large consultancy that worked on menu screens for gaming companies. The reason for this is that game companies aren't interested in developing specialized UIs for each game but there are outsourcing agencies that already have entire pipelines set up for this and are basically a sausage factory of game menus for most major game engines.
Of course you can outsource without offshoring.
Not if you actually want to get the best talent in the world.
Why will someone need the best talent in the world for some not 'value-add or core competence' work?
The "best talent in the world" should have no problem with that six figure sum, then.
The best talent in the world nowadays doesn't need to move to the US and works under just a small discount of American salaries, not big enough to justify whatever the US government is asking for and certainly not under the neo-fascist regime occupying the US.
This is a nice trick. Since SCOTUS barred universal injunctions, the government can implement whatever batshit ideology they want until the case makes its way through the judicial system. Often that is a year or two. And even if it is eventually vacated, like the tariffs or the previous iteration of this fee, the damage is already done, as you cannot go back in time.
Irreparable damage for thee, not Mee
All Canada needs to do to become the center of innovation now is to... become 10°C warmer.
Warmer would help, but the latitude difference still gets you on sun height and hours of daylight in the winter months.
Ireland nd UK are doing fine and we're farther north than most Canadian cities.
I dont know, warm weather but not too much direct sunlight could actually be a good thing.
This is why their forests are currently burning
They're getting a nice assist from global warming.
Wasn't this struck down because by law the Federal Government can only charge the cost of producing a visa? The amount cannot be arbitrary in any way.
Or has the Trump Administration found a workaround for this?
The workaround is not caring and doing it anyways, letting the taxpayers pay for endless appeals
There's an attempt under "Cost Basis" to justify the cost.
===
The proposed ~$8.78B/year in H-1B fee revenue would be allocated roughly as follows:
USCIS: $3.00B (34.2%)
EOIR / immigration courts: $2.96B (33.7%)
DOL: $1.21B (13.8%)
ICE: $1.05B (11.9%)
State Department: $484M (5.5%)
CBP: $76.2M (0.9%)
Total: ~$8.78B/year
> Notably, only $79.2M of the $8.78B is specifically allocated to DOL's H-1B program.
I vote for Democrats. Sad they didn't step up for American tech workers though, and the guy shitting himself did.
why?
Track record of the Democratic party vs the Republican party
No, why are you saying they didn't step up. They lost the presidency, the house and the senate and the supreme court has had a conservative majority since before Bidens term. So what didn't they do, that they could have done?
Most American tech workers, myself included, have been asking for program to be reformed so it’s actually given to highly skilled workers and not used as method of outsourcing in the US.
It’s not a new problem but Democrats and non Trump Republicans have done nothing and here comes Trump trying to something. It won’t survive court challenges most likely.
Don't give away our job to Indians? I mean what do you want here, it's not a post-grad course. If H1Bs are for "highly specialized knowledge," why the fuck are we taking in Indians at below par cost for American "highly specialized knowledge?"
Why is there not a highly significant fee or compensation threshold to prevent abuse?
But why not? Your [right to a] job isn't something enshrined in the constitution. Congress deemed it appropriate for your job to be given to someone else, for they provide better value than you do. The answer to all your "why" questions is - "Because Congress deemed it so".
Man this is why people don't trust democrat politicians to help them. Imagine telling a voter "you don't deserve a job and deserve to be homeless."
Good grief no wonder SV + SF have the political instincts of a soiled diaper.
In other words, companies who rely on H1B visas are not donating enough to Trump 2028 or the Republican party.
Elon has been trying, he is not putting in money for the midterms for his health. Tim brought him a statue of gold....
This is not due to bribery. Everyone using H1B have already done the bribing.
The Republican base is demanding this. They want jobs for themselves and their kids.
Good. What’s happening now in the corporate world (and other places) is very distasteful. Americans shouldn’t have to compete against the whole world to get a job in the USA
I forgot where I heard this, but the thought is that if a country takes the world's best and brightest, it means those other countries that they are coming from lose their best and brightest, making it harder for those other countries to succeed.
Arguably it leaves room for people that DO NOT profit from nepotism and generational wealth when the "best and brightest" leave. A lot of important people don't even filter into "best and brightest", while people acclaimed with this title are sometimes completely useless.
Well arguably H-1B is being abused specifically to lower wages. I think we're aware especially given the contrived ways of circumventing how H-1B is supposed to be used like deliberately advertising jobs in an obscure print newspaper that doesn't even get circulated or modifying the job description to suit an international candidate alone.
But for me, a larger concern is elite overproduction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Turchin#Elite_overproduc...). We've basically massively expanded the number of highly credentialed people in the country and this might not be a good idea.
This is one of the problems with this issue. People talking about it are pretty clueless and have no idea what they're talking about. They get whipped up into an ignorant frenzy about something they don't understand. H-1B has no requirement for advertising in newspapers.
>But for me, a larger concern is elite overproduction.
Props for finding incredibly niche and out-there theories to support your worldview. This is kind of nice about HN. Normally, people would just cite the great replacement theory or other leftist slop to support protectionism, but you found something even more bizarre. It reminds me of how Vance talks. He'll bring up latin incantations like ordo amoris to justify otherwise mundane cruelties.
> They get whipped up into an ignorant frenzy they don't understand. H-1B has no requirement for advertising in newspapers.
Oh yes, yeesh, my bad, this is for green cards only, there's some hilariously low bar for H-1B yet it still exists. But let's just go back to my point that H-1B is used to lower wages. You can just search for it unless you think it's a conspiracy theory. For all your frothing hostility, I noticed you didn't try to defend lowered wages. What are you defending here? Corporate profits? Some kind of moral issue? Do you have evidence H-1B was vitally necessary?
> incredibly niche and out-there theories
It's a scientific theory.
> support protectionism
I think that misses the point if you mean trade protectionism. I am saying H-1B (also EB-2 and other degree to green card pipelines) presents a danger of destabilizing society. I already think that's obviously the case.
>H-1B is used to lower wages.
Everything is used to lower wages. Uber, waymo, doordash, LLMs, etc. all reduce wages. There is no requirement in the statute that it should not lower wages. Congress considered the tradeoff and decided that it was worth having the program. It is a minuscule number, btw. 85k per year, which given the size of the US economy should not even register anywhere in any discussions. In any case, these econ 101 discussions are beyond the scope here.
Congress did that for when skilled jobs couldn't be filled. It wasn't primarily meant to just onboard people and fill jobs. I don't think ~85k per year is minuscule. I think that is substantial and the cap has regularly been exceeded and this is annually for decades.
That brings us to
If that's true, which I doubt, I am not sure why this isn't a higher priority problem of ours to solve.Americans are too dumb to get these jobs so we still need it:
:|Americans are not too dumb but we need H-1B anyway for reasons:>the cap has regularly been exceeded and this is annually for decades.
The cap is 85k, which is never exceeded, as that is a statutory limit. There are other cap exempt categories for non-profits and universities.
>That brings us to
It doesn't bring us to any of these conclusions. The vehicle for the change you seek is the legislature. Lobby Congress to change the law. You have a house rep and 2 state senators. Talk to them about your concerns.
Those are exactly the two conclusions it brings us to. If a skilled job can't be filled the question becomes why the skill gap exists or if it even exists at all and I have never seen someone suggest every single job given to a H-1B holder provably could not be filled by a citizen. There's almost no bar at all besides putting a notice in the lunch room or something equally frivolous. The LCA is easily gamed.
>the vehicle for change you seek is the legislature
I never argued the fee was legal for reference. And oop must've forgotten that Congress cared about my concerns, thanks for the tip!
You are building up hypotheses and theories in your head that have no basis in reality. There is no requirement that a job is opened up to H-1B if a citizen cannot do it. That does not exist. You are starting with this flawed assumption and then reaching some absurd conclusions. H-1B exists because it is nice to have and provides positive value. The fact that it may displace other citizens' jobs is fine too and permitted by the statute. Uber doesn't exist because no capable taxi drivers could ride a cab. Your grievance stems from a flawed premise. You wish there were protectionism, but there is no protectionism in the law. So again, talk to Congress. And Congress knows very well how to do protectionism. See Jones Act.
You know what? You might be right. The wording doesn't seem to specifically state anything about reasons indeed implying that "H-1B exists because it is nice to have and provides positive value". The lore about requirements doesn't appear. This means the law was never intended to fill shortages and the law isn't really being gamed because there's nothing dishonest about the intentions. This saddens me greatly. Truly the only fix is through Congress.
I don't know if protectionism is the right word.
85k per year plus their families and all concentrated into specific sectors of the economy
Why not? Let the Free Market decide.
If Americans can’t compete on merit, that’s their own fault. We don’t need reverse DEI.
I thought the argument and attacks on DEI policies were about not hiring solely based on merit.
Now you’re asking for a safe space where unqualified Americans get jobs over more qualified candidates.
Because the country through policy should not act directly against the interests of its citizens. Blue collar is gone and white collar is halfway there. Why even have borders? The government is by the people FOR the people. Not AGAINST the people FOR corporate profits. The h1b is being abused against it’s original intent.
That's for Congress to decide, not armchair commentators on HN, nor the executive branch.
I don't think he is advocating for this but rather juxtaposing it with common right wing talking points.
Good immigration policy should serve the existing citizens of a nation.
I thought we didn’t like it when the government picks winners and losers.
A city's leadership shouldn't try to look after the city's interest? The answer to that is so obvious, you should look to explaining why it doesn't apply to the elected leadership of a nation.
Why should America’s best and brightest minds have to sacrifice the quality of talent on their teams? Choosing a less qualified candidate because of where the most qualified candidate was born.
How is encouraging brain drain looking out for best interests?
The argumenth that H-1Bs are best and brightest is laughable and has been refuted so many time. I don't think anyone would argue against using H-1B as intended to bring best and brightest. If so, it would be nothing for the employers to pay a little bit to prove that the person is so good.
However, the vast majority of H-1Bs are not better than Citizens/Perm residents. And my personal experience working with them side-by-side would actually say that outside of the big-tech the majority of typical H-1Bs are actually significantly worse than their US Citizen peers.
The argument of that we need to import H-1Bs due to shortage on the local market is also laughable given the state the market has been in the last 5 years (constant layoffs, many qualified candidates can't land a job for 1.5-2 years).
Having a country is now "reverse DEI". Good to know.
> Americans shouldn’t have to compete against the whole world to get a job in the USA
Milton Friedman would have a couple of things to say about that
He would, except for he has been dead for 20 years.
And companies shouldnt lie and say "we just can't find people!"
Perhaps the most personally impactful positive change that a president has ever enacted in my lifetime. Bravo. Trump is fucking up a lot, but this is a win for all American tech workers.
When you can’t beat illegal migration, just make legal migration more difficult, works like a charm every time.