The $100,000 H-1B Fee Backfired: Only 85 Companies Paid
New $100K H-1B Visa Fee Pushes Tech Jobs Offshore
Over 21 months, the U.S. government raised H-1B costs from about $5,000 to $100,000, cut interviews, and capped student visas. The result: DHS collected fees for just 85 qualifying applications and processed 87 percent fewer of the taxed visas, earning $20 million less than the year before. Tech firms are quietly building and hiring abroad instead — and of 25 companies IEEE Spectrum contacted, none would talk.
Whether they go into effect or not, it's really an unrelenting barrage of government-sponsored propaganda against highly-skilled workers in the U.S.
- bijowo1676
Canada is jumping on this opportunity to invite the US tech workers who are frustrated with US H1B visa restrictions and GC backlog by offering an express permanent residency in 10 days
https://canadabychoice.com/services/move-to-canada/usa/occup...
Canada also floating idea of alliance with Europe for travel and job opportunities
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-european-union-eu-me...
- bearjaws
Not surprising, H1B for my entire career was a cost cutting measure.
Every time we had a layoff some portion would be replaced with H1B.
Every H1B that shared their salary with me has been underpaid.
I know its anecdotal but sharing to see if anyone has seen similar.
- Sol-
It's funny how quickly tech employees turn MAGA when it comes to qualified immigration. Bad zero-sum intuitions about work abound across all strata of society, it seems.
- mvdwoord
So it was never about the talent, but just about cost?
- unified101
I think this will go hand in hand with tech compensation and jobs falling off a cliff. In the AI world too, we can't have our cake and eat it.
- sebastiangrill
Good, H1B is just modern servitude.
But there should be an incentive to hire local workers instead of just hiring foreigners in their own country.
- rayiner
The H1B debate has a lot of factions, but one thing is clear: AI is going to be replacing some to a lot of entry level knowledge jobs. Even if it doesn't get any better than what we have now, it'll create a pipeline problem where senior engineers are more valuable than ever and we'll have to figure out how to make room for junior engineers so that eventually they can become senior engineers. Given that, it seems prudent to pump the brakes on H1B--which has become a way to get bodies for entry level work (while top talent has shifted to O visas and the like).
- superjose
Wow. This will affect universities and negatively impact the US in the coming years.
How many of the talent from frontier labs is immigrant?
- threecheese
Is this just posturing (I won't speculate on the intended audience), or does the admin believe this will actually net more jobs for US citizens?
TFA doesn't go into great detail about how this actually pushes offshoring - the variety that I'm familiar with at least (X/Y% blend of US/"near-shore" aka anywhere-but-west-asia roles). I have no doubt however that Y is just going to get larger while X stays the same or decreases (not even factoring aipocalypse).
What constraint specifically makes them believe this is going to net in the way they want us to believe?
- Hippocrates
I worked with and hired tons of H1Bs (and non) over the years and the idea that they earn this visa with exceptional talent is a farce. I work in bog standard web services. We fill seats with H1Bs to write ho-hum crud apps and do UX testing work. Some have been great! Others terrible.
Could be wildly different for someone in a very high-tech org or medical field, but at places I worked it was used as a convenience, but not necessary.