Government Proposes New Six-Figure Fee for H1B Visas
wsj.com
wsj.com
Whatever tax and living + lifestyle expenses that USA economy was making from H1B's will be gone.
Good for the rest of the world.
This is not avoidable, and trying to make it illegal would just kill of American software companies.
As an example: a friend of mine worked for a large consultancy that worked on menu screens for gaming companies. The reason for this is that game companies aren't interested in developing specialized UIs for each game but there are outsourcing agencies that already have entire pipelines set up for this and are basically a sausage factory of game menus for most major game engines.
Ohio senator introduces 25% tax on companies that outsource jobs overseas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45146528 - September 2025
Or has the Trump Administration found a workaround for this?
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The proposed ~$8.78B/year in H-1B fee revenue would be allocated roughly as follows:
USCIS: $3.00B (34.2%)
EOIR / immigration courts: $2.96B (33.7%)
DOL: $1.21B (13.8%)
ICE: $1.05B (11.9%)
State Department: $484M (5.5%)
CBP: $76.2M (0.9%)
Total: ~$8.78B/year
> Notably, only $79.2M of the $8.78B is specifically allocated to DOL's H-1B program.
It’s not a new problem but Democrats and non Trump Republicans have done nothing and here comes Trump trying to something. It won’t survive court challenges most likely.
Why is there not a highly significant fee or compensation threshold to prevent abuse?
Good grief no wonder SV + SF have the political instincts of a soiled diaper.
This is not due to bribery. Everyone using H1B have already done the bribing.
The Republican base is demanding this. They want jobs for themselves and their kids.
If Americans can’t compete on merit, that’s their own fault. We don’t need reverse DEI.
I thought the argument and attacks on DEI policies were about not hiring solely based on merit.
Now you’re asking for a safe space where unqualified Americans get jobs over more qualified candidates.
How is encouraging brain drain looking out for best interests?
However, the vast majority of H-1Bs are not better than Citizens/Perm residents. And my personal experience working with them side-by-side would actually say that outside of the big-tech the majority of typical H-1Bs are actually significantly worse than their US Citizen peers.
The argument of that we need to import H-1Bs due to shortage on the local market is also laughable given the state the market has been in the last 5 years (constant layoffs, many qualified candidates can't land a job for 1.5-2 years).
Milton Friedman would have a couple of things to say about that
But for me, a larger concern is elite overproduction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Turchin#Elite_overproduc...). We've basically massively expanded the number of highly credentialed people in the country and this might not be a good idea.
>But for me, a larger concern is elite overproduction.
Props for finding incredibly niche and out-there theories to support your worldview. This is kind of nice about HN. Normally, people would just cite the great replacement theory or other leftist slop to support protectionism, but you found something even more bizarre. It reminds me of how Vance talks. He'll bring up latin incantations like ordo amoris to justify otherwise mundane cruelties.
Oh yes, yeesh, my bad, this is for green cards only, there's some hilariously low bar for H-1B yet it still exists. But let's just go back to my point that H-1B is used to lower wages. You can just search for it unless you think it's a conspiracy theory. For all your frothing hostility, I noticed you didn't try to defend lowered wages. What are you defending here? Corporate profits? Some kind of moral issue? Do you have evidence H-1B was vitally necessary?
> incredibly niche and out-there theories
It's a scientific theory.
> support protectionism
I think that misses the point if you mean trade protectionism. I am saying H-1B (also EB-2 and other degree to green card pipelines) presents a danger of destabilizing society. I already think that's obviously the case.
Everything is used to lower wages. Uber, waymo, doordash, LLMs, etc. all reduce wages. There is no requirement in the statute that it should not lower wages. Congress considered the tradeoff and decided that it was worth having the program. It is a minuscule number, btw. 85k per year, which given the size of the US economy should not even register anywhere in any discussions. In any case, these econ 101 discussions are beyond the scope here.
That brings us to
Americans are too dumb to get these jobs so we still need it:
Americans are not too dumb but we need H-1B anyway for reasons:
The cap is 85k, which is never exceeded, as that is a statutory limit. There are other cap exempt categories for non-profits and universities.
>That brings us to
It doesn't bring us to any of these conclusions. The vehicle for the change you seek is the legislature. Lobby Congress to change the law. You have a house rep and 2 state senators. Talk to them about your concerns.
>the vehicle for change you seek is the legislature
I never argued the fee was legal for reference. And oop must've forgotten that Congress cared about my concerns, thanks for the tip!
I don't know if protectionism is the right word.