H-1B Visa Changes Approved by White House

https://www.newsweek.com/h-1b-visas-changes-approved-white-house-report-2112216

by ivewonyoung • 11 months ago

176 253 11 months ago

IF implemented in a sane manner, I don't see how this is worse than a lottery based system.

jajuuka• 11 months ago

Instead of it being fair to everyone in the pool it now gives an advantage to the wealthy to buy their way into a H1B. Seems significantly worse.

horns4lyfe5• 11 months ago

It’s by salary. Individuals don’t pay for it, the company sponsoring them does. Did you even read the article?

rayiner• 11 months ago

The proposed weighted-selection concept echoes a 2021 DHS plan under President Donald Trump's first administration that had sought to rank and select petitions by wage tiers (OES wage levels IV down to I), an approach that the Trump administration argued would prioritize higher-paid, highly skilled hires. That earlier plan faced opposition, was withdrawn by the Biden administration and saw related regulations blocked in federal court.

This seems like a no-brainer. Why did Biden withdraw the rule?

Moomoomoo309• 11 months ago

I think the whole "blocked in federal court" part is why.

dec0dedab0de2• 11 months ago

Probably because someone told him to. That someone was likely using H1b visas to save money instead of because of an actual need.

animitronix• 11 months ago

That's what they all do. The whole H1B program needs to be shelved.

fredfoobar20• 11 months ago

Do you have examples of these people who are saving money using H1B?

Izikiel432• 11 months ago

Was Biden actually running things or was it a Weekend at Bernie's presidency? I don't know if we'll ever know, by the end of it he was very out of it.

justanotherjoe• 11 months ago

I'm not sure I get it. So you want to have higher positions filled by h1b holders? The quota will be maxxed anyway. I don't have issues with that, personally.

bubblethink2• 11 months ago

Because the executive doesn't have the authority to do this. Trump also ultimately didn't do it. I don't recall if he lost the suit or withdrew it voluntarily. The new court is different and submissive, so it'll likely get through this time.

upmind2• 11 months ago

Did they release the salary levels/corresponding weightings?

dilyevsky• 11 months ago

best i can tell the rule modification hasn't been published yet

maest• 11 months ago

Does salary mean TC or just base? How are discretionary bonuses handled?

kyawzazaw• 11 months ago

base

upmind2• 11 months ago

Can they not increase the amount of visas they can give out?

khuey• 11 months ago

Congress would have to change the law.

stackskipton2• 11 months ago

They could but Congress would have to get involved. H-1B visa increase is likely to be heavily unpopular with voters. This American voter for sure would not be thrilled.

geodel2• 11 months ago

increase why?

xnx4• 11 months ago

Why not auction H-1B visas? Isn't that typically the most efficient/optimal way to distribute a limited resource?

HardCodedBias• 11 months ago

100% should be the way it should be done.

If there is surplus to being physically in the US, then the US should gain some of that surplus.

Let the market decide.

The H1B isn't charity, it is a work visa for specialty occupations.

o11c• 11 months ago

The status quo is that the H-1B is a charity, given out to companies who don't want to pay what their workers are worth.

oldpersonintx2• 11 months ago

there are already ways in to the US for people who want to pay

Trump's "golden ticket" for example

mdasen• 11 months ago

I'm not the person who proposed the auction, but I read it as "let the companies compete for the H1-B visas in an auction," not about the workers buying their way into the US.

For example, if CheapoCorp is looking to replace reasonably well paid US workers with H1-B workers, they won't bid much for the visas. CheapoCorp isn't trying to get good talent from overseas. They're trying to save money, push down wages, have a workforce that they can mistreat (since they can't easily leave the company given their immigration status requires employment), etc.

By contrast, if a company is looking to hire great engineers or scientists from overseas because they're in a growing industry with a shortage of workers, they would be willing to pay a lot more to get the H1-B visas. They're not looking to save $20,000/year on someone's salary. They want top talent.

When companies are trying to replace their workforce with lower-paid foreign workers who can't complain (lest they lose their job and with it their immigration status), that's not what the H1-B system was designed for. It certainly is how some companies are using it. If you're on an H1-B and lose your job, you have 60 days to find a new job or you're gone. That's going to make you a much more compliant employee. You have little leverage to negotiate raises, you aren't likely to quit even if they're overworking you, they can pass you over for promotions and you'll quietly accept it.

But if the employer is competing in an auction for H1-B visas, they're more likely to be companies that are seeking out top talent rather than seeking out workers they can underpay and mistreat.

cnst• 11 months ago

But the golden ticket requires 5mil. Even in the US, even the most talented engineers, probably wouldn't have that much until after 5 to 10+ years of work, and outside of the US, earning that much money as an engineer is probably next to impossible before well over 40+. (And, even then, if all you have is just the 5mil, would you really part with that much money just for a visa?)

Apes5• 11 months ago

People want at least the appearance of a holistic process that considers a candidate’s broader value to society — even if that process isn’t perfect. An auction drops the pretense entirely and just says: pay to win.

dgrin91• 11 months ago

Because then the bigtechs will buy them all and everyone else gets nothing.

xnx4• 11 months ago

everyone else gets nothing

More revenue for the treasury and efficient allocation of resources

pyb• 11 months ago

As the meme goes: "You don't need to sell it to me, I was already convinced!"

some_random4• 11 months ago

Would they? I know that they've engaged in a ton of wage suppression historically but deliberately paying out the nose for H1B visas seems like it wouldn't be worth it.

stackskipton2• 11 months ago

I mean, would big tech really buy them all? The argument against H-1B is it's being used to replace American workers with cheaper workers who are locked into their employer.

If H-1B requires massive comp, there would be little reason for Big Tech to hire Jr H-1B developers unless the employer lock in is worth it.

nine_k2• 11 months ago

It only works if hiring H1Bs is cheaper, or otherwise much more appealing, so that paying the premium on an auction makes sense.

It used to be the case, say, 15-20 years ago. It not need to be the case today. Since we're talking about big tech, let the minimal bid for a company be the median salary across that company's relevant line of work (engineering, sales, whatever). This would make hiring an H1B candidate a merit-based decision, not a cost-cutting measure. This would make hiring a US-born engineer and, say, an India-born engineer approximately equally expensive, so the company would hire the better engineer, not the cheaper.

If the price arbitrage were gone, I bet there'd remain enough H1B slots to invite better researchers, better flute players, better sea captains, etc.

riku_iki• 11 months ago

Because then the bigtechs will buy them all and everyone else gets nothing.

and whats wrong about this? Humans funneled into area with higher added value.

conscion• 11 months ago

I see this brought up as an issue every time distributing H1-Bs by salary is brought up. What is the issue with big tech "buying them all"?

aprilthird20215• 11 months ago

That is an argument that the supply of visas is too limited (which it probably is), not against the idea of auctioning

Izikiel432• 11 months ago

But do all the big tech positions need 85K visas? MSFT I think requested less than 3k this year.

Edit: Saw somewhere else in this post it was around 9k, after layoffs, so I stand corrected

horns4lyfe5• 11 months ago

Oh no they’ll have to hire and train American college grads!!

slt20216• 11 months ago

all visas will go to tech, and no visas will go to Nurses, professors, teachers, artists etc

jdale27• 11 months ago

If they’re not willing to pay up, then there isn’t really a shortage.

some_random4• 11 months ago

I had no idea there was a huge shortage of professors, teachers, and artists.

542458• 11 months ago

If we think those things have positive externalities (such that we want them to happen even if they wouldn't win an auction) we should subsidize them.

diebeforei4853• 11 months ago

Nurses generally can't get an H-1B, and professors are exempt. Your argument makes no sense.

gruturo• 11 months ago

So nurses, professors, teachers and artists will be in higher demand and they'll have to pay them a better salary to fill positions? which may attract people who currently avoid those career cause they lead to poverty? Yup I'm sold.

And as others said, add a cost factor to train an citizen for every H-1B issued. Actually, slap a 350% tax on all the salaries paid to H-1Bs except for the first 15 people (or, I don't know, 3% of the overall staff, whichever is higher) and make sure it's hard to game with shell companies, body shops and subsidiaries.

Precisely 0% chance it'll happen in the current administration, and it's anyone guess if there will be administrations after this one, but a few hours of additional thinking around this solution (this is the first 3 minutes roughly) could make it work way better. Remove limits, make it really expensive, give some rights to the people who come on it, use the money to address real shortages, and watch companies stop abusing it.

P.S. European here, with 0 interest in coming to work in the US.

skrtskrt• 11 months ago

Optimal for who? These are humans not math problems

VirusNewbie• 11 months ago

For the economy. We use money as a proxy for economic value.

Apes5• 11 months ago

It’s not even clear that an auction would be the most efficient way to allocate H-1Bs if we define efficiency as maximizing long-term economic and societal value, not just short-term revenue. An auction favors companies with deep pockets right now — meaning a startup looking to bring in a world-leading PhD in a critical field could lose out to a much larger firm simply filling headcount. That’s hardly an optimal outcome for innovation or competitiveness.

mgh952• 11 months ago

A "world-leading PhD in a critical field" should come under an O1-A visa (see: https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...):

"O-1A: Individuals with an extraordinary ability in the sciences, education, business, or athletics (not including the arts, motion pictures or television industry)"

xnx4• 11 months ago

meaning a startup looking to bring in a world-leading PhD in a critical field could lose out to a much larger firm simply filling headcount.

Is it unfair that a big company could afford to pay more to hire a desirable employee than a small startup?

horns4lyfe5• 11 months ago

That’s not an H1B, there are other visas for that

spullara• 11 months ago

This change basically makes it an auction.

bluGill• 11 months ago

I want them auctioned by how much you pay the person hired. Want top talent, a million ensures you win and they get compensated well. Want cheap labor - train someone locally as you won't win the auction.

there is the downsides of what if they treat the emplopee baddly, of the emblopee commits fraud - I'm not sure how to handle that. However I still think the idea is right despite that issue.

ethbr12• 11 months ago

Salary based auctions would also create a perverse incentive to pressure employees for kickbacks.

"We could pay you more and ensure you're able to get that visa, but then we'd need you to pay 20% of your salary back..."

horns4lyfe5• 11 months ago

If you read the article, that’s pretty much what its going to

chatmasta• 11 months ago

Surely there is a ceiling for talent you can expect from H1-B, since top talent will get an O1 instead.

lesuorac8• 11 months ago

Do keep in mind.

H-1B is for when you cannot find an American to fill a role so somebody comes into the US on a visa to fill that slot.

O-1 [1] is a for when somebody non-American has a lot of skill and is allowed to immigrate into the US to perform it.

I still think H-1B visas should require some kind of additional fee proportional to training an American to fill that role. Afaik, most of the H-1B visas are just abuse where you hire somebody at a low wage than you'd need to for an otherwise legal resident so there needs to be some kind of higher opportunity cost to the company.

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...

30minAdayHN• 11 months ago

I agree with your broader point about companies abusing H1-Bs. But I'm not sure if the abuse happens through hiring at lower wage. For example, if you look at FANG, they pay as much for an H1-B as they would pay any other employee. Where is this perspective that you can hire someone at lower wage because they come with H1-B? Would love understand the loophole.

mgh23• 11 months ago

Are the H1B salary reports self-reported by company, employees or are actual numbers based on W-2s, tax filing?

happytoexplain• 11 months ago

Wages are not straightforward, as much as businesses would like to pretend they are. What do you mean by "would pay"? They don't just make up a number. The willingness of applicants to accept a lower wage lowers the wage they "would" pay ("our wages are competitive").

code_runner• 11 months ago

not every company is FANG. there are tens of thousands of companies operating at sub trillion dollar valuations which absolutely positively do this. FANG (or even "big tech") is far too narrow to draw any meaningful conclusions in the broader market.

some_random4• 11 months ago

You can work an H1-B nearly to death, Elon has all but explicitly said so for instance. If they're fired it's very unlikely that they'll be able to get a new job before being forced to leave the country at which point they're unlikely to ever get the chance to come back and they know this.

lesuorac8• 11 months ago

Perhaps, FAN pay as much. G is alleged to pay less.

https://www.epi.org/publication/new-evidence-widespread-wage...

fredfoobar20• 11 months ago

Yeah, there's plenty of abuse with H1B with those consulting companies operating out of India and shipping people overseas, I don't believe many of them would qualify for the H1B. That said, many folks who come here to study and get hired by companies (usually, for their specialization in a masters degree for most foreign students) also apply for a H1B.

I don't understand your "low wage" argument though, aren't there laws against it currently? they need to be paid at least the prevailing wage in their location/job level.

rawgabbit• 11 months ago

From https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wa...

Quote

     The statute creating the H-1B visa—which allows U.S. employers to hire college-educated workers as well as fashion models from abroad—contains language establishing a “prevailing wage.”4 This prevailing wage requirement is intended to protect the wages of U.S. workers in occupations requiring a college degree from adverse impacts and to prevent college-educated migrant workers from being underpaid and exploited. Corporate lobbyists and other H-1B proponents often cite this prevailing wage requirement in the H-1B law as evidence that H-1B workers cannot be paid less than U.S. workers. However, the reality is that the H-1B statute, regulations, and administrative guidance allow employers wide latitude in setting wage levels....


     Although salary information that corresponds to requested positions on LCAs has been made available by DOL for a number of years through the Office of Foreign Labor Certification’s LCA disclosure data, until recently the prevailing wage levels selected by employers were not readily available. In 2011, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for the first time reported what some had suspected and speculated about but to that point were not able to officially confirm: The vast majority of H-1B jobs were being certified by DOL at the two lowest wage levels.

lesuorac8• 11 months ago

they need to be paid at least the prevailing wage in their location/job level.

I mean if you follow the law sure.

It's easy to either just pay them below market or hire them at a lower title than the role actually requires.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/09/h1b_visa_fraud/

https://www.epi.org/publication/new-evidence-widespread-wage...

franktankbank5• 11 months ago

Isn't it directly influencing prevailing wage? When H1-B dominates a sector then I'm competing with H1-B and am forced into that existing wage not the other way around. If I don't want to work in that environment because it fucking sucks well guess who's getting a green card? Whole thing is rotten and software industry is going to become the new "going postal".

paxys• 11 months ago

H-1B is for when you cannot find an American to fill a role

No, this is a myth. Employers can sponsor H-1B visas for any "speciality occupation" regardless of whether a citizen is available to do the job or not. Legally there are no restrictions in place re: criteria. The only thing they are required to do is pay the prevailing wage. Tests for whether a citizen can do the job only come into play later when they are sponsoring a green card.

fredfoobar20• 11 months ago

Some of these posts make it seem like software engineering is a low skilled job, I beg to differ, it's still a very high skilled job, < .5% of the world knows how to code.

mvieira38• 11 months ago

Not to mention the EU countries already do effectively the same thing. If your wage is below a certain treshold (based on profession), you can't compete fairly with europeans (i.e. the company has to prove they couldn't find anyone), but if you're above it then you're eligible for the Blue Card program and get to compete fairly. Very similar to Trump's changes in intent

lgleason4• 11 months ago

There is no requirement to demonstrate that you cannot find an American to do the job to get an H1b visa approved. If that person applies for a PERM position (needed to convert to a green card) there is. Hence the H1b is easy to game by employers to get cheap indentured servants.

With PERM (converting to a green card) they try to hide the job postings so that people will not apply so that they can get the green card approved. Some of the tricks include putting ads in the newspaper, using esoteric websites and other media such as radio instead of job boards where tech people actually look for jobs. Some Americans who have trouble finding jobs in the current market took on a side project of scraping newspaper ads and these job boards and created https://www.jobs.now/ which lists these jobs. If enough Americans that meet the minimum qualifications apply for a listed job it stops the green card process for that position, usually for 6 months before the sponsor may try again.

Also, there are a lot of stories about people getting O-1 visas via fake credential mills and research papers. Both can and are being gamed to get O-1's.

unsupp0rted• 11 months ago

A lot of these jobs are from places like Stripe or Big-4 accounting.

Are they hiding jobs?

nine_k2• 11 months ago

Thanks for the jobs.now!

I still think that you mix up the "green card" and the "H1B visa".

The green card is a status of a permanent resident. A person legally living in the US for enough time (5 years or so) on a variety of visas can apply to get it. It costs significant money so an employer usually helps with that.

The H1B visa is a visa for a worker on a position for which a company fails to hire a worker in the US. That worker may become or not become a permanent US resident afterwards.

reaperducer• 11 months ago

they try to hide the job postings so that people will not apply so that they can get the green card approved.

And this explains why I recently heard an ad on KNX radio for a tech job at a winery or brewery or something similar, which specified that applications would only be taken by mail.

It also had a massive list of responsibilities and a pay rate about half of what it should be.

digianarchist2• 11 months ago

I scraped through PERM before the recruiting phase started getting attention from websites like jobs.now. I'm not against this and would expand the test to non-immigrant visas.

Meta being sued by the DoL was supposed to stop ridiculous gaming of the process [0].

Still I think a points system would be better for America and the RAISE Act is looking better everyday [1].

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/19/facebook-settles-claims-it-d...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAISE_Act

mtrovo• 11 months ago

Is that really true? My impression is that companies tries as much as possible to not use the O-1 route, not sure because the requirements are by design too high or process and cost are not worth it compared to other routes.

O(1) data point: got offer from FAANG to join on the H-1B lottery, later moved to L-1 because the timing was not going to work well for the H-1B process and L-1 at least would give my partner the chance to also work, I later decided to not migrate and keep working from a different country.

toomuchtodo• 11 months ago

I have personally seen H-1B visas used to displace US workers for labor cost optimization. Bloomberg has even done a piece on this.

H-1B Middlemen Bring Cheap Labor to Citi, Capital One - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44398978 - June 2025

simianwords• 11 months ago

H1B is ultimately a cost optimization technique from the start. And it is a good thing overall for everyone.

You can technically be forced to hire only citizens by paying them really high salaries but you wouldn’t be able to have that many businesses.

phyzix5761• 11 months ago

H-1B is for when you cannot find an American to fill a role so somebody comes into the US on a visa to fill that slot.

The job market would disagree with you right now. I know so many US citizens who have 10+ years of work experience and work in modern stacks that have been out of a job for 6+ months yet companies are still hiring H-1B workers because its cheaper.

alephnerd2• 11 months ago

I know so many US citizens who have 10+ years of work experience and work in modern stacks that have been out of a job for 6+ months

The tech industry like tech stack is broad.

For example, it's nigh impossible to hire an American citizen with professional CUDA or eBPF experience because almost anyone with those skills already has a job. If you have those skills YOU WILL land a job (not remote first though - that era's over).

And it's not like you can retrain a fullstack engineer to understand systems programming overnight - it takes years of experience and knowledge of computer and OS architecture.

And it's not like companies aren't paying top dollar for these skills - they are, but people with those skills simply don't exist in significant numbers in the US.

There's a reason a large portion of the cybersecurity industry shifted to Israel and India - the kinds of table stakes skills in systems development aren't heavily taught in the US anymore compared to 15 years ago, and the only universities where you might have a shot hiring someone with those skills are T10 programs where students can field multiple job offers.

That said, the proposed changes in the H1B program are good - it's easier for a startup or a professional company to sponsor an H1B now instead of dealing with unethical consultancies gumming up the works.

The H1B market is bimodal - you have a huge chunk at consultancies who are paid low even by Indian standards and then an equally large chunk of people who are actually pretty elite and successful in India and are working at FAANG or top startups. You want to optimize for the right hand but don't want to make it so hard that you don't end up incentivizing talented people from leaving and returning to India or China or Europe.

That said, I don't envision this having much impact on easing hiring - AI/ML in the hands of experienced devs is fairly powerful AND the economic conditions currently are incentivizing us to limit hiring to only those who are truly critical.

Terr_• 11 months ago

I suspect the parent-poster meant that in terms of original legislative intent, rather than practical outcome.

slt20216• 11 months ago

it is not cheaper, you can make an argument that H1B talent pool puts downward pressure on wages in general, but to claim that H1Bs are cheaper is just insulting to everyone's intelligence and is factually not true (unless it is plain abuse of h1b visa through shady schemes by unknown companies, which i dont support)

kstrauser• 11 months ago

That's right. To be explicit: I am absolutely, 100% for smart people coming to the US and participating as full, equal peers in our job market. Come on in, friend! I welcome you!

However, I am wholly opposed to the H-1B program as I've seen it used in reality, where those smart peers are used as below-market-rate slave labor who can't really complain about it without facing immediate deportation. I've personally worked with iOS app devs who were making less than I was while working many more hours per week, all because our asshole boss let them know that if they didn't like it, they had 60 days to find another visa sponsor or GTFO of the country and leave their homes and friends and partners behind.

They weren't coming here to invent quantum computers. They were writing phone apps. The sole reason said asshole boss hired them was because he knew he'd own them.

I firmly, adamantly believe there should be an extra 50% employer-borne tax on H-1B roles, making it so that it's possible but expensive to bring in new employees. It wouldn't stop people like those quantum computer scientists. The companies making those things would still hire them in a heartbeat if they couldn't find "local" talent. But it would stop the asshole boss from exploiting my friends to work them like rented mules while artificially suppressing salaries for everyone else.

lacker• 11 months ago

In my experience the FAANG companies don't really abuse their H-1Bs. At Google or Meta the H-1Bs really are just smart people who participate as full and equal peers. And the FAANGs employ plenty of American citizens, they hire all the good employees they can get. The trouble either comes from small companies or from consulting shops.

The simplest solution is just to take salary into account. If someone is making $180k a year then they aren't "owned".

fakeasf• 11 months ago

I understand but this post would of been a lot better if you simply admitted you don’t want H1B slaves who set the work ethics bar so high. I get it. When someone works until 10pm it makes those who work until 2pm looks bad especially if they have similar capabilities. Keep in mind, a lot of the AI talent started off are young people starting from entry regular level engineer roles. If you want the the quantum computer folks, they don’t even need H1B they can do the phd track.

Everyone has their own perspective. Your friend who referred to as “rented mules” probably will question you as a friend because you actually want them to be out of this country lol. Just be real, we don’t want H1B slaves who set the bar so high for work ethics. Just stop fake being nice as if you care about their well being. They chose to stay in the US after college knowing the expectation. You are shutting down the door for those who really could of developed into great tech talents.

Mars008• 11 months ago

If you put a tax on it they, employers, will simply pay even less. There will be enough people to work even for just food and roof. With the hope to get green card in a few years and bring the family. I was working for years with no promotions so that shitty boss could take the credits. I quit right after getting GC.

ponector2• 11 months ago

>had 60 days to find another visa sponsor

H1B is not so bad. Many IT people I know came to the US by L1 visa. That is a true modern slavery! Don't like the work? Laid off? Go home, no other options.

partiallypro3• 11 months ago

That's the idea, but I don't think it's used like that in practice and is actually heavily abused.

yieldcrv• 11 months ago

Every controversial and disruptive problem occurring in this administration is solely because an activity was allowed to continue in a controversial and disruptive way for many administrations

On the topic of H1B’s specifically, I wish the minimum salary kept pace with inflation, and that overall our immigration system didn’t kick out mentally capable and educated people after finishing school or between employers. Intellectual fitness and those with the support system to flourish improve our society.

selkin4• 11 months ago

H1B is also for fashion models, which AFAIK, do not need their employer to prove they can not hire an American person for the role before being granted permission to hire a temporary foreign employee.

mikewarot2• 11 months ago

I think a tax of at least $100,000 per year per H-1B visa going forward would help eliminate abuse of the system. All current visa holders should get an expedited path to citizenship to keep them from being exploited as well

m463• 11 months ago

a lot of these sound like an import tariff on workers.

karakot• 11 months ago

or it will move remaining jobs from the US to India.

ipozgaj• 11 months ago

Any change that hurts WITCH (Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, HCL) is a good change. If they just plain banned those five, there probably wouldn't even be a lottery.

fredfoobar20• 11 months ago

I think this is true as well.

geodel2• 11 months ago

Hearing from multiple sources that there is big uptick in "offshore / global development centers" in India to support US companies who are currently using H1B in sizable numbers.

With the increasing standardization of application stacks, automation, AI (seems mostly just hype), companies are thinking even if they need developers in larger numbers they can most definitely do with cheaper offshore developers.

So US government, offshoring nation's government and American companies and their vendors are ironically on same page that H1B is going out. Even if they have different benefit or loss with current system.

master_crab• 11 months ago

Yup this is definitely happening. However, I’m not sure how effective it ultimately is. India is an incredibly inconvenient time zone for US based operations. And salaries are creeping up in Bangalore (the preferred city for this stuff).

horns4lyfe5• 11 months ago

Did you read the article? H1B isn’t going out, it just isn’t random anymore

cute_boi• 11 months ago

And these companies abuse employee a lot. It is a time government start targeting these 4 sweat shops.

duxup3• 11 months ago

Wipro

Oh man when I worked tech support for some computing equipment (going to try to keep it vague here) Wipro would call up for support, ask me to lie when they bought their client on and try to coach me what to say.

They did not like it when I refused... they tried to get me in trouble with my bosses many times. Thankfully my employer backed me every time.

Then when they couldn't get what they wanted that way, they'd just demand I fix the problem with the equipment and they'd try to lie to me about how "this has been working for months" but I'd check and it NEVER worked. Like never ever configured to work in any way ever... Some of their clients were under the impression their disaster recovery solutions were functional when they hadn't been for years.

The few times I talked to their clients it was clear Wipro was the only technical person on the call except myself, and the clients weren't knowledgeable enough to know they were being taken for a ride.

franktankbank5• 11 months ago

Western society doesn't work well with societies which lie at every turn. There's certain honor expected in our interactions, with India you have to nail them down and in my experience its entirely not worth the interaction at all (broad strokes).

TimPC• 11 months ago

Ranking by Salary probably makes the most sense if you're going to cap the numbers you want the most productive people who contribute the most to the tax base.

rahulgoel• 11 months ago

Welcome change. I studied engineering at a U.S. university, came here 10 years ago, and still did not make it through the lottery (while the ones gaming the system did).

insane_dreamer• 11 months ago

[Microsoft] applied for 9,491 H-1B visas during the last fiscal year, all of which were approved. The company has laid off nearly 16,000 people in total this year, out of a 228,000-strong global employee base.

It shouldn't be able to get new H-1B's if it's laying people off. Hard to believe that the new H-1B hires are more qualified than the people that were laid off.

At the same time we see articles about how after being told to get a STEM degree, new CS grads can't find jobs.[0]

I sympathize with those in India wanting to get a higher pay job in the US, but it does perpetuate abusive behavior by companies (who have that employee under their thumb because their visa is tied to their employment), and it makes things much harder for new grads in the US (especially given college tuition costs) to get jobs.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/coding-ai-jobs...

partiallypro3• 11 months ago

Obviously not all of those laid off met the new criteria for what Microsoft, et al were/are looking for, but there's no way you convince me that -probably- a majority of them do. The system is so ripe for abuse. I'm not sure I agree fully with the "if you're laying off people, you can't do X" aspect, but I do think sometimes it is cheaper for companies to lay people off, especially those with certain benefits, and hire immigrants than it is to move the original employee around the company. This very obviously happens, all the time.

While I understand from a purely capitalistic view that it makes sense, but Microsoft and others are multi-trillion/billion dollar companies, and they are skimming every last dime while also hurting Americans. The system needs heavy reform, this current change isn't close to enough. To me the rightward shift, especially among college aged men, is partially because of things like this. You can preach that the "replacement theory" is all nonsense, but if you're trying to convince people that have seen their friends or themselves literally replaced at the job with non-Americans...well, it's obvious they are going to start to lean into those ideas.

So much of the right-wing surge could be thwarted by simple policy reforms and it seems like no one wants to do it, or is too beholden to corporations, etc to do it. It's a bit baffling. I've always said politics is a pendulum and it should come as a shock to no one that a problem that is constantly ignored or written off will eventually swing back hard the other way. I think we're seeing that. I think that's why compromise is more important than purity a lot of the time. Unfortunately there will not be much compromise for a long while now.

leosanchez• 11 months ago

So much of the right-wing surge could be thwarted by simple policy reforms and it seems like no one wants to do it

I am not sure if you are talking about just USA or entire west but this can be said for most western countries.

ojosilva• 11 months ago

Off-topic, the article looks like AI slop: "Why it matters?" "What happens next?" Either AI is now running Newsweek, which is something we could even come to expect from a decaying magazine, or journalists are writing like that to compete with AI and/or sound natural to what readers come to expect lately.

Really concerning.

ojbyrne3• 11 months ago

My experience is if there’s no typos, it’s probably AI. I don’t see any typos.

jmyeet• 11 months ago

I'm torn on this.

I do think it's good to curb abuse by the Indian bodyshop companies like Infosys. They spam the system with applicants to the point that they get more than their fair share of visas for what turn out to be relatively low-paid jobs with fairly horrible working conditions.

At the same time, that couldn't happen if we didn't have the artificial per-country limit on employment-based green cards.

This will hurt new grads and non-engineering STEM applicants though.

But part of all thyis should be that if you did layoffs in the last 12 months (maybe even 2 years), you don't get to apply for H1Bs.

Oh and any system that uses artificial performance metrics to force people out should also count as layoffs. By this I mean that some companies will require a quota of 5-15% of the workforce to get subpar ratings and, in the current environment, that means more likely being put on a PIP and fired within months. If the goal is 5-10% of the workforce every year to be ushered out on PIPs, that's a layoff.

aprilthird20215• 11 months ago

A fairly sensible and nuanced take, imo. Thanks for sharing

seany• 11 months ago

The legislature is in the right set to eliminate h1bs.. why don't we?

486sx332• 11 months ago

H-1B visas should not be given to software devs. They can work from anywhere with just a laptop and starlink.

ProllyInfamous• 11 months ago

And yet they are the primary recipients [0]

"There aren't any tech jobs in this city..."

[0] http://www.h1bdata.info

esafak• 11 months ago

Citizens gripe about H1B, but getting visas or naturalized is getting harder ever year.

anon2916• 11 months ago

Which is fine... The purpose of the United States is not to be easy to become a citizen of but to better the lives of the people living here. No one is owed a visa or citizenship.

selkin4• 11 months ago

Emma Lazarus would beg to differ.

interloxia2• 11 months ago

I'm not so sure. For example, are partners not owed a visa or citizenship from that point of view? It seems like a cruel barrier if a citizen were to fall for the wrong type of person.

rizs12• 11 months ago

Time to smash offshoring too. Any American company that offshores jobs should be delisted from all American stock exchanges and banned from doing business in the United States.

gregw2• 11 months ago

I'm not sure how you implement this such that it couldn't quickly be worked around.

iamcreasy• 11 months ago

Isn't this already done during LCA filing?

hshdhdhj4444• 11 months ago

The H1B visa doesn’t compete with American workers as much as it does with the same people working in their home countries.

Especially in today’s extremely remote friendly environment (and H1B visas outside of maybe biomed research tend to be concentrated in remote friendly fields), if a company cannot hire a candidate on an H1B visa, and the candidate has to return to their home nation, why wouldn’t the company not be thrilled to hire the exact same person abroad for a fraction of the cost?

And with RTO failing miserably, and with nearly everyone on HN assuring us that WFH is as good, if not better, than RTO, it’s not like them working abroad is gonna be materially different from them working in a U.S. city.

duxup3• 11 months ago

It should be based on the salary paid to the employee ... but that article / proposal is suspiciously short on the actual weighting info ....

anon2916• 11 months ago

Four Indian companies take a large portion of the visas. These companies are using very sketchy practices and should be investigated. If just left to American companies, the entire quota would not even be hit.

ojbyrne3• 11 months ago

Define “Indian companies.” Define “American companies.” I think you will find that the companies you put in either of those categories are actually multinational companies.

anon2916• 11 months ago

Companies headquartered in India. COmpanies headquartered in America.

AbstractH24• 11 months ago

I’m no fan of most of what this administration does, but in the abstract I don’t think optimizing giving visas to the highest paying workers is the worst idea.

Keeps the as many dollars in the American economy as possible while incentivizing the upskilling of American citizens to meet demand for low wage roles.

Would be better to do it based on pay relative to the line of work, but that would be very easy to game. IT people working in fast food would be classified as fry cooks making $150k.

yalogin• 11 months ago

This solves the exploitation of H1B visas. However this tilts the scale towards the bigger companies. The small upstart cannot compete with Facebook or Tesla. I guess there is always someone disadvantaged with these proposals. Let’s see how this works and hopefully we have enough will to tweak it later

g_langenderfer• 11 months ago

this is solved so simply. Find the 90th percentile pay for the position, set that as the minimum for H-1b.

H-1B Visa Changes Approved by White House

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