Microsoft memo advises H1B employees to return immediately if currently abroad
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US Gov acknowledges that 100K fee does not apply to existing H-1B visas holders [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45318060 - Sept 2025 (43 comments)
Visa holders on vacation have 15 hours to return to US or pay $100k fee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312877 - Sept 2025 (218 comments)
New H-1B visa fee will not apply to existing holders, official says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45316226 - Sept 2025 (3 comments)
Also recent and related:
Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305845 - Sept 2025 (1675 comments)
The H-1B Visa Program and Its Impact on the U.S. Economy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45309740 - Sept 2025 (51 comments)
Their arbitrary nature is designed to consolidate executive branch authority that can be welded as a weapon against corporations that might consider supporting his opposition in the future.
It's a classic fascist ploy, and is further proof that executive orders should be banned. In America we do not have kings who rule by decree, or at least we should not..
Executive orders that violate, or direct the violation of, existing law are illegal (or, at least, without legal effect) to the extent they do that, but whether or not a particular order meets that description is frequently a matter of dispute, which can end up in litigation.
But now we run into the question of What is illegality without ethical-centric courts?
That's the theory anyhow. As you mention, the courts now just obey the executive rather than acting as a check and balance as intended.
The period between the inauguration of the first President under the US Constitution (April 30, 1789) and the first formal executive order (June 9, 1789) was 40 days, so I have no idea what you are thinking of.
EDIT: It’s worth noting that the first Act of Congress was only signed into law 8 days earlier than the first executive order was issued, so for most of the time before executive orders the executive had no actual laws to execute.
Sort of. The executive order was originally used for routine administrative orders. Later their usage expanded, but they were still required to be based on either an expressed or implied congressional law, or the constitution itself.
Now, presidents use them to invent law from scratch as Kings once did. They often do so under the flimsiest of pretense, if they bother with pretense at all.
It is this type that should be banned, or more accuratly: existing laws should be enforced.
There is no functioning mechanism in operation today that forces the government to follow the law. Any law. Not even the constitution.
-- Robert Caro
If they haven’t grown up thus far, I doubt yet another logical inconsistency will puncture their shallow and hermetic understanding.
Or as I read it somewhere, “We’ve created a group of technical people who can solve any technical problem but can’t explain why Nazism is bad.”
The only thing that might pierce that veil is this: they believed they were not workers, but more like a priestly class, “self made” but immune to the travails of “everyone else”. The massive spike in layoffs, the economic slump, our increased taxes (via tariff), the rights erosions - might get them to recognize their mistake in understanding, but only if it strikes them personally (this gets back to the naïveté mentioned above).
Yeah that just seems like corruption by design.
See https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
Nothing in there says it only applies to new applicants.
I also would think that if this fee is applied to some countries and not others, it would pass muster since its the same as with tariffs - they don't need to be universal (or uniform).
I am not clear on the mechanics of this though. Is the fee is annual, one-time or renewal; but i suppose this will be cleared up once the EO is released if it hasn't already ?
So that EO is almost certainly illegal, and will be litigated.
Personal Experience: H1B/Work PERM/Personal PERM/EADs/Naturalization
I'm not a lawyer so it's possible, even likely that there's something I'm missing but to my laymans reading of the law it would seem to me he has the authority to put basically whatever process he wants into place.
Section 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1185(a), states exactly:
Unless otherwise ordered by the President, it shall be unlawful—(1) for any alien to depart from or enter or attempt to depart from or enter the United States except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and orders, and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may prescribe;
Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f), states exactly:
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
Are they are getting off the aircraft because they believe the "fee" will be required of their employment imminently, and that their employer will not pay it, and this will lead to their visa getting cancelled before they could return to the United States?
Or the part that money from the state coffers is then laundered to friends of the political class via favored private enterprises that win contracts?
Let us be specific about the part that is the "unsubstantiated rumor", so that I can come up with "any evidence" which is a low bar to pass indeed.
Would it? Aren't ICE agents showing up to court hearings and deporting people?
Do you even have standing to sue from abroad about a visa revoked capriciously?
Hence, if you stay in the country nothing will change. And they can wait until this gets played out in the courts, media, congress etc.
If you're on an H-1B and you get fired or laid off, you have 60 days to find a new job or be deported. That creates an underclass of workers who are willing to put up with much worse working conditions and work longer hours. That drives down working conditions and wages for everyone.
A $100k per year fee doesn't fix that, but it does make them so expensive that they are really only viable for $300k+ positions.
Trump isn’t going after them, he is converting them into another channel for arbitrary favoritism and graft.
Being against the H-1b as a bad system does not conflict with being against the way Trump is making that system worse.
But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not saying people were anti H-1B visa and now they still are, but disagree with Trump's "solution" I'm seeing comments full of "H-1Bs are good actually".
There was abuse of the H1B program, but this new EO also has issues. The biggest one currently is the rollout. There is no guidance, no mechanism to pay the actual fee, no clarity on if it applies retroactively to existing visa holders etc.
To that point though, there were ~40k O visas issued last year. And presumably that number would have been much higher if the H-1Bs were harder to get.
And unlikely H-1B the O visas actually have requirements that the person does have above average skills.
To elaborate, I'm not pro or anti H1B per se. I'm for bringing in skilled immigrates with a reasonable qualification criteria. I agree that H1B has been abused in the past and should be reformed. I'm ALSO against just outright killing the H1B program without a replacement, which is what this EO seems to be trying to do. It's not because it's trump did it, it's because the of the chaos and confusion of this rollout (which I think is likely intentional) and because if this holds it'll cripple the H1B program which in turn will cripple the inflow of skilled immigrants.
Basically I'm against the H1B program as it was, but I'm in favor of keeping it as it was over what is being done here.
I think as usual Trump did things in the most disruptive, ridiculous way possible.
I think there are enough Tech and finance jobs to pay the 8.5 billion that this will cost to bring in 85k workers.
That's entirely true. But that's not what I've been hearing since this EO was announced. I've just heard pro immigration arguments about all the good H-1B visas accomplish with none of the downsides.
I can't speak for others, but for me this seems like
1) a shakedown of corporations and / or
2) a way to ban immigration without being technically a ban
But overall I see this as another anti-immigration "policy" that's coherent with the rest of the anti-immigration policies from this administration. Hence the pro-immigration arguments.
A shakedown of and a head tax on immigrants.
I wonder what's next. Maybe stealing their 401Ks and their SS contributions?
Here's Bernie Sanders comments on the H-1B visa.
"The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire “the best and the brightest,” but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad."
It's right up there with Oregon's stance on slavery. (The state banned it and fought for the Union on the basis that it didn't want any --------- living in it, even enslaved ones.)
I mean everything the Trump Whitehouse does is a mess, but they said that this only applies to new applicants, so it's not throwing anyone out.
Bernie's quote mentions 2 classes of people being mistreated. H-1B workers and American workers. Since the H-1B workers are being used as leverage to mistreat American workers, reducing the number of new H-1B workers coming in is certainly one way to mitigate harm to American workers.
I don't know how many people we should let in under H-1B, but I'd prefer they get rid of the requirements to find a new job within 60 days. That doesn't mean I don't think that making the program more expensive isn't beneficial.
It also incentivizes the CTO to promote a cost saving measure. For any job that doesn't absolutely require onshore presence, lets move it offshore. We can save 100k per position and also retain talent.
Companies have been offshoring jobs due to the tax rule change. Personally I know lot of Google teams which have been offshored. So, I don't understand why people think this will somehow cause job retention. Some jobs might be retained and more will be lost. Acting as if this $100k is somehow a good idea shows lack of understanding of how real world works.
In the meantime, rural medical teams who employ H1B doctors will be decimated. But before that these pesky billion dollar companies need to be taught a lesson.
That’s possible; it is also possible that it isn’t. And it is possible that even if it is, we are a few days or weeks away from an appeals court retroactively invalidating the injunction and allowing cancellations of visas based on failure to return when the injunction was in effect, or else “only” with immediate effect when the injunction is lifted.
If you are an employer who wants to keep your H-1B employees, you probably don’t want to gamble unnecessarily with this, you want the employees to act in a way which minimizes your risk.
> Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
It's a stupidly broad law, but Congress passed it, and now they're too dysfunctional to do anything about it. So I guess we're stuck with it.
Yes, you have to be a genius to go through a 1yr online remote masters program which is mostly group work and essentially a fee for undercutting others on the queue:
If H1B is gone we will see a decrease in wages not an increase.
https://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/The-Impact-of-H-...
What you said was “If H1B is gone we will see a decrease in wages not an increase.”
Then you said other random stuff that didn’t prove that statement in any way.
Not within the same job in the same location they aren't.
If you're on an H-1B and you get fired or laid off, you have 60 days to find a new job or be deported. That creates an underclass of workers who are willing to put up with much worse working conditions and work longer hours. That drives down working conditions and wages for everyone.
The actual data doesn't support this belief. 100% offer market wages and 78% offer higher than market wages.
2. It's a common tactic to employ people on H-1Bs in a lower paying job title while having the perform the work of a higher paying title.
3. You'd need to adjust for average number of hours worked.
https://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/The-Impact-of-H-...
https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wa...
Furthermore as we've seen with "return to office", companies are more concerned with having control than with the bottom line. This new dynamic gives them one more thing to hold over H1Bs heads. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of H1Bs increases.
As someone who works with colleagues from India (like, physically in India), I don't see any reason the company keeps me over some other random guy in India, to be honest.
> what is the big difference now?
What is the difference between pre-2020 full-time in-office, vs 3 day or even fully remote? Nothing, in my opinion (CEOs don't agree though). If people are productive with 3 days in office, that could have been the norm before 2020.
All you need is someone actually making it happen.
I know as a matter of fact that my company and other companies almost exclusively create new headcounts in India/UK/Germany. US headcounts are only for replacement or as exceptions. Even some replacement headcounts are moved overseas.
Edited to add: The local Indian economy doesn't sustain those many IBM employees. They are servicing the rest of the world.
The most likely outcome is that body shops can no longer afford H-1Bs, but big tech still can.
Amazon has over 10k H1B workers. Think about how much money it means.
Something like 0.3% of their yearly profit.
They're already paying probably somewhere near $200k a year more. Clearly it's not for no good reason. Clearly there is some advantage to employing them here if they are already willing to pay $200k more than they have to.
An extra $100k doesn't erase whatever that value is. The question is, is employing them here worth $200k to Amazon, but not $300k? Likely the case for some employees, but almost certainly not all.
>while paying a third of the salary
If they're paying $300k, they are paying $200k extra to employ that person in the US.
For publicly-held large tech, the equation isn't about affordability but about maximizing shareholder dividends. Moving jobs overseas has long been the preferred means to that end.
I think the newness (some period before 2020) of tech in general tended to intimidate those legacy shareholder groups who got in early. And I suspect that early shareholding was often dominated by employees, etc (not sure tho).
I think those interests plus the proximity to adjacent industries created strong interest in US Gov's (now-former) incentives to create to bring many of the best minds here.
We've dialed back all the above. We've put truly hostile interests in power that are weaponizing Gov assets & millions of supporters - against every manifestation of immigration. Our actual outcomes are flavored with rising Gov violence and populist animosity toward (mostly non-white) immigrants and those associated with them.
Considering what and where we are, I absolutely see this high-paying, historical class of jobs being shipped overseas.
Cheap labor exists because there is a demand for it. Body shops don't pay those wages - companies who hire those bodies from body shops do. So, body shops are going to raise prices accordingly.
"You need someone to manage your Oracle/SAP ERP systems and do a horrible job of it? And that person needs to be here locally? That will be an extra $60k from our last contract because we cannot bring in cheap bodies now." (assuming they eat $40k of the costs)
In the meantime rural medical centers will be devasted because many teams are made of H1B doctors.
H1B certainly requires more government oversight. But doing their jobs or applying critical thinking skills isn't a criteria for this administration.
If you have to pay 100k, you might as well hire an American worker. The "shortages" will mysteriously disappear.
And why these countries when I've already said the same about Indians vs. Chinese?
The U.S. is also much closer to Latin America, and has a large Latino community already. The disparity in H1bs (70% versus 2% for Mexico/Brazil/Colombia) is just too huge to explain by language preferences.
> since India has the largest population of all countries, those 130M college graduates must have gone through some very tough selection.
Not at all. Outside the top schools standards plummet. Half of those graduates are not qualified to work in their fields: https://www.tbsnews.net/bloomberg-special/worthless-degrees-...
> The disparity in H1bs (70% versus 2% for Mexico/Brazil/Colombia) is just too huge to explain by language preferences.
You base your position on these kind "hunches"? "Just too huge to explain". No, it isn't just too huge to explain. It's really that simple. India is the largest country of the world in terms of population, English is an official language of India, hence there is a substantial amount of people with high qualifications who use those qualifications to seek employment in major English speaking countries like the US and the UK with visas like the H1B. There are also many Chinese people in those countries but the language barrier makes it much harder for them.
People from Latin America have a hard time getting hired for highly qualified jobs in the US for various reasons, one of them being the language barrier.
By the way, if there was some conspiracy to hire Indians with low qualifications, then you'd still have not done anything to explain why these people should be Indians as opposed to Latin Americans. The argument makes no sense. Can't you see that? I'm genuinely puzzled.
I’m an armchair commenter, not a federal prosecutor. But this all seems very fishy. If I were in the administration, I’d start investigating all the major H1b employers to see whether there’s preferential hiring of Indians going on.
Current setup simply brings in foreign labor so that capitalists can reduce wages and they pocket the profit, while Americans pocket the costs. Not to mention migrating for purely economic reasons is obviously not going to make the locals like you very much.
I know the twitwall is frustrating (it is to us too) but we want HN posts to link to original sources, and for the site name to the right of the title to reflect that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
We're happy to pin the alt links to the top of a thread and/or to move them into the top text, as I did in the current case.
All through Trump's second term, and before, people have said things precisely like this. And here we are. At some point we realize that people just make such confident pronouncements because they think it bends reality towards their hopes.
>Only an act of congress can change visa requirements
It isn't a visa requirement. It's a processing fee. As of midnight no H1B will be considered without the fee. It is very real, and it is absolutely going into effect. Now places like Microsoft are panicking in the information gap currently, but the admin has clarified that it only applies to new H1B applicants.
As to the legal limbo, not only won't there be one, the Supreme Court has rubber stamped just about everything this admin has done.
The guy has both houses of congress, the courts, the DOJ, the full apparatus of government...at this point I find it simply amazing that people still dismiss the reality that he basically does whatever he wants.
The specific quote can be found in a number of media sources-
"Those who are visiting or leaving the country, or visiting India, they don't need to rush back before Sunday or pay the $100,000 fee. $100,000 is only for new and not current existing holders"
EDIT: Weirdly the parent edited in the "unnamed official" bit after I made my comment, then replied as if I'm illiterate.
Regardless, if "unnamed officials" are being cited by every major media source, it's obvious policy, especially given how vague and uncertain so many details of this are.
" Section 1. Restriction on Entry. (a) Pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000 — subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (c) of this section."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
Personally, I do not see anything vague and uncertain about that. I agree that how Trump has been handling things anything and everything is vague and uncertain. But the language of the actual executive order, which in any sane jurisdiction would be the only thing relevant, is pretty clear. Note how it says "restriction on entry", and zero about new applicants.