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(CNN) Trump to impose $100K fee on H-1B visas in new immigration action

Chomsky

Chomsky

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(CNN) Trump to impose $100K fee on H-1B visas in new immigration action
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President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive action on Friday that would impose a $100,000 application fee for H-1B visas — an effort to curb overuse of the program, a White House official told CNN.
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The executive action claims that “abuse of the H-1B pathway has displaced US workers” and will restrict entry under the program unless accompanied by the payment, the official said.
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From time-to-time, an opponent I'm debating will remark,

"You're against anything Trump does, because it's Trump!"

I usually respond with,

"I'm willing to give Trump credit where credit is due, but I haven't yet found anything deserving of credit!"

Well, mark the calendar! I may have something of Trump's, to which I agree! I think I like this idea.

As with anything, the Devil is in the details. I'll need to know more. But on the surface, this idea may have merit. It allows American industry to hire all the talent it needs, from anywhere in the world. Yet, it incentivizes hiring American workers., firstly. A win-win, I think.

According to the above article, H1B Visas last for 3 years, and then must be re-applied. If that $100K fee is required every application & reapplication, in effect there will be a $33K per year incentive to hire an American. That sounds like it might be about in the ballpark for H1B savings, otherwise.

I'd need to see more specific numbers and how they work out. But, I like the concept.

Did Trump do good? Or, is a broken clock paradoxically right twice a day? You guys tell me!
 
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Its an annual fee according to other sources. Just another tax on business and Americans.
 
PeteEU said:
Its an annual fee according to other sources. Just another tax on business and Americans.
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A tax, true. But a tax encouraging using American labour firstly, while not precluding the importation of labour when needed.

There might be merit in this.
 
This just makes us less competitive on the world market.
 
PeteEU said:
Its an annual fee according to other sources. Just another tax on business and Americans.
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Just to touch on this, again.

If this is a 100K annual fee, then it does strike me as too high to use for run-of-the-mill line level engineers and software jocks. It still would allow for the hiring of high-level, niche, and more esoteric talent though.
 
Guess you guys are against the same kind of fees E.U. charges for these kind of visas? And they can be very hard to get, take months and also has administrative and filing fees on top of that.
 
Loulit01 said:
This just makes us less competitive on the world market.
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If it's 100K every three years, it might be a good compromise - though.

Virtually all technologists are getting total pay & benefit packages solidly into six figures. 33K to hire what's often cheaper labour sounds about right.
 
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Trump to impose $100K fee on H-1B visas in new immigration action
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That's absurd. There is no reason whatsoever why a H-1B should cost more than $98,000.

This is outrageous. 😠
 
Chomsky said:
Just to touch on this, again.

If this is a 100K annual fee, then it does strike me as too high to use for run-of-the-mill line level engineers and software jocks. It still would allow for the hiring of high-level, niche, and more esoteric talent though.
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It won't work regardless. It is a tariff on humans basically. So right now the average minimum annual salary for a software developer in the US is about 80k according to the Department of Labour. So "importing" such a developer will cost 180k a year for the company. Does that mean they will hire the non existent American developer? Of course not. Why do I say non existing.. because do you really think that an American software developer will refuse a 80k a year job if they are right out of school?

Instead they will find another country where they can set up or have a development studio and place the 80k developer... Probably are way less than 80 k.

I know several US companies have development studios in Europe and India, where living costs and wages are lower. In Spain you can actually get tax incentives if you set up digital jobs.. They even have digital nomad tax incentives here. So an American company could send an European software dev to Spain and pay her less that 80k...way less.

Also companies have been for decades moving this stuff overseas because getting talent in from places like India has not been easy...so it will just accelerate.
 
PeteEU said:
It won't work regardless. It is a tariff on humans basically. So right now the average minimum annual salary for a software developer in the US is about 80k according to the Department of Labour. So "importing" such a developer will cost 180k a year for the company. Does that mean they will hire the non existent American developer? Of course not. Why do I say non existing.. because do you really think that an American software developer will refuse a 80k a year job if they are right out of school?

Instead they will find another country where they can set up or have a development studio and place the 80k developer... Probably are way less than 80 k.

I know several US companies have development studios in Europe and India, where living costs and wages are lower. In Spain you can actually get tax incentives if you set up digital jobs.. They even have digital nomad tax incentives here. So an American company could send an European software dev to Spain and pay her less that 80k...way less.

Also companies have been for decades moving this stuff overseas because getting talent in from places like India has not been easy...so it will just accelerate.
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It's not a "tariff on humans", for Krissakes. It's a tax incentifying the hiring of Americans.

An American with the brains and ambition to work at 80K as a s/w jock, has the aptitude to also do other well paying careers like law & finance. But when wages go up, a s/w career becomes more desirable and more may choose to take their degrees in it.
 
Chomsky said:
It's not a "tariff on humans", for Krissakes. It's a tax incentifying the hiring of Americans.

An American with the brains and ambition to work at 80K as a s/w jock, has the aptitude to also do other well paying careers like law & finance. But when wages go up, a s/w career becomes more desirable and more may choose to take their degrees in it.
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AI models will render a great many of these lower level software jobs obsolete in the coming years so in the longer term I don’t see this having too much of an impact either way.

I don’t have a strong feeling on this policy, and it won’t affect me much. Even as an annual fee the cost is in the noise of what it costs to attract a top notch machine learning engineer from abroad.
 
PeteEU said:
Its an annual fee according to other sources. Just another tax on business and Americans.
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No.


It's not designed to add to the coffers, but rather DETER entry of high and middle income people. In order to make the payment each year an individual would have to be making $750,000 to $1,000,000 or better, which indicates a highly educated or trained professional...

Who would likely rather accept a cash grant of $100,000 to $250,000 from a third world country along with that salary for the right professional.

He's eliminating the cream of the crop.

Typical MAGA policy
 
phoenix2020 said:
AI models will render a great many of these lower level software jobs obsolete in the coming years so in the longer term I don’t see this having too much of an impact either way.

I don’t have a strong feeling on this policy, and it won’t affect me much. Even as an annual fee the cost is in the noise of what it costs to attract a top notch machine learning engineer from abroad.
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I was hoping you'd chime in, and I assumed you'd pretty much opine what you indeed did.

Thanks.
 
If it works great. If needs adjusting do it.

At least someone is trying.
 
So much for small business and agricultural. Predictable.
 
Companies that exploit H-1Bs (especially from India) will pay this. Green cards take a while and the margin these companies get on H-1bs make it worthwhile.
 
Not good. I would be all in favor of an auction for H-1B visas, or even a reasonable flat-fee, since we have more applicants than available H-1B visas and the current system really sucks. (The visas are currently awarded by random lottery.)

But Trump's plan is also not good because $100K is too much. It will probably reduce the amount of applicants to fewer than the total number of available H-1B visas. And after all, that's the point.

We need more skilled immigration to America, not less. That means we either need to fix the H-1B visa system with a more reasonable visa fee, or just entirely replace the H-1B visa with something better. But naturally, we aren't going to do that.
 
This dumb-as-shit administration seems determined to knee-cap innovation in the U.S.

Every single day it's just more stupid piled on top of stupid.
 
This isn't like a few years ago. STEM graduates are struggling to find a job right after all the talking head experts told them to go into STEM and never worry about finding a job. This is like 2004 all over again. We are now no different than China who has a huge oversupply of engineers who will work for peanuts. These STEM graduates are smart people, they will land on their feet one way or another. But their skills are going to be under utilized. That's bad for society. Trump is choosing to invest in America and American workers. I don't see how people can see that as a bad thing.
 
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