Are new H1Bs a thing anymore?
Since the fee went up to $100k, I’m not aware of any companies still sponsoring hires who need a new H1B
Since the fee went up to $100k, I’m not aware of any companies still sponsoring hires who need a new H1B
We will see how much the $100k fee affects things during this H1B lottery round in few weeks.
> Only about 70 employers have paid a $100,000 Trump fee on H-1B workers from outside the US since it was imposed through a September White House proclamation, a government attorney said Thursday.
A 100k one-time fee is nothing for big employers. That's 25k/year for 4 years, and if you realize that H1B's can't easily leave their job it's obviously worth it.
Compare hiring an H1B that is stuck at their job, to an American who can leave at any time. You can pay the H1B a lower wage to compensate for the fee you paid to get them into the role. 25k/year for 4 years is worth it for not only the reduced churn that comes with training a new person, but also you don't have to pay any of the incentives that come with getting a new employee into the role like sign-on bonuses, wage bumps, benefits etc.
Pulling up my alma mater... https://www.openthebooks.com/wisconsin-state-employees/?Year...
The various roles that you'll find for software developers: Sr Is Specialist, Is Tech Srv Cons/Adm, Sr Inform Proc Conslt, Sr Systems Programmer
And you can pull up the pay scale at https://hr.wisc.edu/standard-job-descriptions/?job_group=Inf...
$80k/y isn't "we're paying H1-B half of what the going rate is" but rather "the state legislature has set this pay scale and we're paying everyone that amount" ... And many times, H-1B visas aren't eligible to work in those roles.
There's absolutely no reason government couldn't pay competitive rates for software engineers. They do it for doctors and administrators of state-owned medical centers. Not to mention football coaches
Trying to make state government competitive with Big Tech salaries (especially in states that aren't California) would not go over well with voters.
While private sector deals with layoffs and uncertainty, the public sector has things like "budget not good this year? Two weeks unpaid vacation for everyone" - https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/code/executive_orders/2003_... ... 401k matching? How about a fully funded pension instead. https://reason.org/commentary/the-wisconsin-retirement-syste...
Football coaches are revenue generating for universities... software developers at universities not so much. Doctors are licensed professionals that have a decade of schooling... software developers frequently reject licensure and celebrate their lack of a formal education.
It's supposedly a program for importing the best and brightest talent that doesn't exist in the US but somehow those best and brightest people get paid LESS than their American counterparts? It was never about the best and brightest it was always about bringing in cheap labor that can't leave.
Sadly I don't think we'll ever fix it either, right leaning industrialists support it because they benefit from cheap labor, and the left leaning politicians get to continue importing people who overwhelmingly vote for them. As usual the loser in the equation is the middle class American worker.
I don't think having an H1B helps you accelerate your citizenship application in anyway, and for many countries the wait for legal citizenship is decades long.
Just look at the data for how people vote by demographic group (race).
Nonwhite groups overwhelmingly vote blue, H1B's are overwhelmingly nonwhite. This is not controversial.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte...
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/aoodm8/how_the_...
This can be sped up if they marry a US citizen, speeding up the process quite a bit, but it will still be several years. Now their children would be citizens, but that's another 18 years before they can vote. Politicians aren't known for playing the long game...
There are plenty of politicians who have played the long game, also political parties take actions on longer time scales than individual politicians. Stances that politicians take on issues often come down from the party anyway. Many politicians don't care about many issues, but they vote based on their party's stance. The blue party is staffed with all types of people, many of whom will live to reap the benefits of changed demographics.
Heck many politicians are still in office 18 years later! Look at Nancy Pelosi, she was in office for 38 years. That's multiple batches of anchor babies.
It's not that long of an investment. We have seen this entire country go from 99% white in most places to below 50% in most places, in ONE generation and that change is clearly visible in national elections.
It seems that you are using the term "Great Replacement" as a tactic to dismiss the argument and all the data by which it is supported because you have no real counter argument.
I also did say that the other side benefits from importing cheap labor. Which is why both parties seem to do very little to slow immigration no matter which is in power, despite overwhelming demand from their constituents to slow immigration.
Except this is literally false. Every single study I’ve seen that claims this has no real evidence - just speculation without knowing the details of the jobs or the people being hired, based on their own self-serving false comparisons to make dubious claims that similar jobs are paid differently.
Since you said “across the board”, do you think Google or Amazon pay a software engineer at the starting level differently based on immigration status? No, they don’t. Literally every manager at big tech could tell you this confidently.
There is plenty of data to back this up.
>A total of 60% of all H-1B jobs are assigned wage levels that are well below the local median wage.
https://www.epi.org/press/a-majority-of-migrant-workers-empl...
As for your claims about Apple - I am guessing you aren’t a manager and don’t know about how their pay scale works. I’m not doubting your claims about the quality of some workers - although I bet you’ll find plenty of non immigrant people not doing work as well. But I know the claim on pay is wrong, once you adjust for performance ratings and levels.
I think in general we have to question what work one does - not in a negative way - I think its healthy to do so. Standard economic models and thinking are pretty dated and don't really reflect reality as the world of work evolves.
H1Bs are not cheap labor. They’re almost always pricier than the alternative to the company. This is a myth that is ultimately rooted in racism more than facts. Most of the top H1B filers - big tech companies in particular - pay literally identically for the same job. They have fixed pay structures internally, in part because if you don’t, you could face discrimination lawsuits - but mostly to just not lose the competition for talent.
But the cost to the company isn’t the cost of the pay anyways. It’s also the cost in lost time of the H1B process, the fees you pay as part of the process, the costs of law firms you have to hire, the cost of time delays, the risk of the immigration process not working out. Those work out to a lot more value than 25K/year.
An H1B is also not stuck in their job - you can transfer H1Bs.
The cleaner approach is the immigrant has to pay that value in visa expenses, taxes, or something else; while the company should have to pay market rate for the position.