A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work, including highly experienced older workers suffering from age discrimination.<p>I'd be surprised if more than 5-10% of H-1B positions are ones where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants.
Seem like sensible changes, though more is still needed. Requiring H1B holders to leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism. The per-country caps also seem like a throwback to the early 1900's era immigration exclusion policies.<p>Re: the concerns over "immigrants taking our jobs!". As a native-born American working in a large tech company today - the threat is very clearly not from H1B's and other visas. The threat to American tech jobs is when US tech companies choose to build out offices in lower cost of living countries (and I'm very much including Europe in that, I think that's even a bigger problem).<p>It's much much better for America if tech companies hire workers in the US, regardless of whether they are citizens. Americans are eligible for those jobs, and that money stays within our economy. Versus employing workers elsewhere, where American's can't easily be hired, and those resources leave the US.<p>If we want to keep opportunities here - that's the issue we should be focus on fixing. What regulatory steps could we advocate for that would address this risk? Immigration is the wrong problem, and the focus on that in certain populist circles really demonstrates they are rather out of touch from what's actually happening in the industries that are driving the US economy today.
Ah, classic regulatory theater. The administration, after 4 years of not introducing these changes, is now suddenly scrambling to roll them out. They’re dropping them right before a major transition, with an implementation timeline conveniently set for after the transition.<p>It’s a clever little maneuver. When the inevitable reversal happens, they can show up at fundraising galas telling donors, “We tried! We were so close! It’s just those baddies who always come along and pull the rug.”
<a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/12/18/2024-29354/modernizing-h-1b-requirements-providing-flexibility-in-the-f-1-program-and-program-improvements" rel="nofollow">https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/12/18/2024-29...</a><p>The tweet is a super brief summary, reproduced below.<p>Founders can self petition (& spouses can work)<p><pre><code> - Own >50% of the entity, or have majority voting rights
</code></pre>
Roles tied to research institutions cap-exempt<p><pre><code> - Organizations where fundamental research is a key activity now qualify
- Startups can hire researchers (AI, health, hardware) year-round
</code></pre>
Students get seamless transition<p><pre><code> - Cap-gap work authorization extended to April 1
- Prevents employment gaps for F-1 OPT to H-1B switch
</code></pre>
Faster H1-B transfers for job changes<p><pre><code> - Flexibility to start working immediately upon petition filing
</code></pre>
Clarification of specialty role<p><pre><code> - Less strict on the direct link between degree/job responsibilities
- Recognizes that AI may require multiple academic background
</code></pre>
Cracking down on fraud<p><pre><code> - Stricter compliance rules
- Employers must demonstrate a bona fide job exists
- Site visit codified: refusal to comply = petition denial</code></pre>
I wonder if switching from a lottery to an auction would help curtail some of the abuse?<p>That is, for each position a company wants to fill with a non-citizen they also have to bid on the visa fee they're willing to pay. The highest ~7,000 bids that month are accepted and paid to the government in exchange for a visa.<p>We could debate things like sealed-bid versus open auction and uniform-price versus paying your bid but whatever details we pick I suspect this would allow us to discover which companies are actually desperate for skills and which primarily use it as a cost-savings measure.<p>(I'm also curious how much H-1B visas would cost if there was a market: thousands of dollars? tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? more?)
Surprised by all the negativity here.<p>The USA benefits enormously from skilled immigration:
"doubling the size of the US H1B visa program increases US and EU growth by 4% in the long-run"<p>From a recent paper here: <a href="https://academic.oup.com/qje/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/qje/qjae040/7912563" rel="nofollow">https://academic.oup.com/qje/advance-article-abstract/doi/10...</a>
The working conditions for Americans suck due to this fucking program. People come here to live subservient lives and bring along a toxic culture of submission. The level of ass licking that I see on the regular is akin to a well known Korean airline going into the side of a mountain. It is insane the level of deference you will find.<p>All this hype about the "smartest, brightest, etc." is nonsense. I've worked with hundreds of engineers in SV who are all on H1B. They are no better than anyone else. My main complaint with them is that their work is fine but the culture they bring is insanely toxic and does not allow for any psychological safety <i>at all</i>. I know enough people in industry for a long period of time to know that it wasn't always this way. There were always problems but it has hit a level that is insane. The fact that an American is a minority nationality when in almost any US tech company is bonkers.
Regarding this part:<p>Clarification of specialty role<p><pre><code> - Less strict on the direct link between degree/job responsibilities
- Recognizes that AI may require multiple academic background
</code></pre>
You really won't need to clarify whether the role is a specialty one or not if you just increase the minimum wage for H1Bs. I really don't know why we don't have some rule that pins H1B wages to like the 90th percentile wage.
The number one issue software engineers should care about is using foreign talent to undercut wages. A cursory look at H1B salaries shows this is rampant.<p>There’s a big difference between “we can’t find any talent” and “we can’t find any talent at our price point”.
The former should be granted an H1B. The latter is abusing the system.
It's encouraging to see DHS attempting to update the H-1B program in ways that address longstanding pain points like the unpredictability of transferring jobs, the complexity around defining a "specialty occupation," and the painfully slow application processes. The US economy benefits when companies can more easily hire and retain the talent they genuinely need, rather than having the system incentivise questionable staffing practices or endless guesswork over whether a given degree is "close enough" to the job description.<p>However, this final rule doesn't magically solve the deeper structural issues. For example, the per-country caps on green cards still leave many H-1B workers stuck in decades-long queues if they're from certain countries. That reality discourages risk-taking, entrepreneurship, and long-term roots,something that runs counter to the very idea of welcoming skilled people. While allowing spouses to work and making it easier to switch roles will improve day-to-day life for some, the broader immigration pipeline remains complicated and slow.<p>The real test will be in implementation and enforcement. Will the new definitions and stricter oversight actually reduce abuse by staffing firms who've flooded the lottery with dubious registrations? Will the simplified criteria for specialty occupations translate to smoother hiring and fewer headaches for workers and employers alike?<p>In short: good steps, but we're still a long way from a truly balanced system that reliably identifies, welcomes, and retains global talent without leaving them in extended legal limbo. It's progress, but the ultimate success depends on how these rules play out in the real world,and whether future administrations build on these changes instead of rolling them back.
Yup, as expected. Not dealing with the effects of clustering. Great job GOV. <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1fyx9hp/cognizant_discriminated_against_nonindian_workers/?rdt=44533" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1fyx9hp/cognizant...</a>
Great, as if we needed more outsourcing, I cannot even get a single interview despite being an ex FAANG software developer, unemployed for more than a year. Not even for entry level jobs. The final nail in the coffin.
I always see a lot of people arguing that H1bs are taking away jobs from qualified Americans by willing to work long hours and work cheaper. That may be true, but in my brief exposure to the tech industry it does not feel true because the salaries and perks are so high, it doesn’t seem like tech companies are exploiting workers and hiring “cheap H1b labour”.<p>A lot of my batch (all H1b masters) when to Meta and Amazon. All of them were paid 200k+ right out of masters, one was even paid 430k. So is the claim that if these H1bs did not exist, companies would pay 250k+ to those out of masters? And 500k+ to exceptional candidates? If OpenAI was legally allowed to hire anyone from India, China etc, would they stop providing 800k+ salaries? In fact, we know from experience that this is not true because if you go to OpenAI’a website they explicitly mention apply from wherever you want and they will handle immigration. And you also see that they did successfully hire some folks from remote countries with exorbitant salaries.<p>A much simpler explanation, is that in tech companies employees are not a cost center but a profit generation center. And so tech companies are not looking to save costs by paying H1bs less, but are simply looking to hire the best and pay whatever is needed to keep them. Market competition tends to determine salaries far more than employee labour pool, especially when talent is always in short supply.<p>This theory also seems more correct to me, in that it predicts places where H1b labor would shortchange existing tech workers. It would be wherever employees are a cost center, legacy businesses that need software but would like to just get it done as cheaply as possible. By definition most of these companies would not be FAANG adjacent, but would instead be companies like say Target that needs simple software that works reasonably well at a low cost. An equitable solution then would be to put a flat minimum salary on H1b’s, say 200k, that would remove most of the cases where H1bs are hired to short change Americans, and not affect much of the talent hiring that big tech does. It’s only negative affect would be on startups, which generally pay low salaries, but would now have to pay high salaries for immigrants.
The new administration will likely reform USCIS around eligibility criteria rather than speed of processing and these reforms will be undone as quickly as Mayorkas is gone.
I'm a highly specialized software developer with 30 years of experience.<p>I could save our customer, a huge US entity, a lot of money by moving to the states for the duration of the project. I don't have a college degree though, which seems to be a requirement for the H1-B.<p>What a bummer.
The biggest loop hole for not being allowed to hire non citizens or permanent residents is not the H-1B. It's actually B2B contracts that have absolutely no restrictions what so ever.<p>At least the H-1B lets us keep some tax revenue.
They still left the multiple applications for one person rule.<p>Seems the lobby was strong to allow consultancies like Tata and wipes to continue what they are doing to get most of cap.
Some highlights from the Federal Register:<p>> 2. Bar on Multiple Registrations Submitted by Related Entities<p>DHS will not finalize the proposed change at 8 CFR 214.2(h)(2)(i)(G) to expressly state in the regulations that related entities are prohibited from submitting multiple H-1B registrations for the same individual. On February 2, 2024, DHS published a final rule, “Improving the H-1B Registration Selection Process and Program Integrity,” 89 FR 7456 (Feb. 2, 2024), creating a beneficiary-centric selection process for registrations by employers and adding additional integrity measures related to the registration process to reduce the potential for fraud in the H-1B registration process. In that final rule, DHS states that it “intends to address and may finalize this proposed provision [expressly stating in the regulations that related entities are prohibited from submitting multiple registrations for the same individual] in a subsequent final rule,” but that “[m]ore time and data will help inform the utility of this proposed provision.” 89 FR 7456, 7469 (Feb. 2, 2024). Initial data from the FY 2025 H-1B registration process show a significant decrease in the total number of registrations submitted compared to FY 2024, including a decrease in the number of registrations submitted on behalf of beneficiaries with multiple registrations.[1]<p>This initial data indicate that there were far fewer attempts to gain an unfair advantage than in prior years owing, in large measure, to the implementation of the beneficiary-centric selection process.[2]<p>Under the beneficiary-centric selection process, individual beneficiaries do not benefit from an increased chance of selection if related entities each submit a registration on their behalf. As such, DHS has decided not to finalize the proposed change pertaining to multiple registrations submitted by related entities.<p>> C. Summary of Costs and Benefits<p>DHS analyzed two baselines for this final rule, the no action baselines and the without-policy baseline. The primary baseline for this final rule is the no action baseline. For the 10-year period of analysis of the final rule, DHS estimates the annualized net cost savings of this rulemaking will be $333,835 annualized at a 2 percent discount rate. DHS also estimates that there will be annualized monetized transfers of $1.4 million from newly cap-exempt petitioners to USCIS and $38.8 million from employers to F-1 workers, both annualized at a 2 percent discount rate.
I'd rather have H1-B visas be a 5 year unrestricted work permit.<p>America needs to keep attracting the world's best and brightest, but linking it to a specific employer is problematic. Opens up employees to mistreatment.<p>I'd say charge a straight up fee, 500k upon approval. That gets you 5 years, if your wiz making 400k a year it's a great deal.
let them all in! People can earn three times more just by being in the US and we benefit by lower inflation.<p>EDIT: I encourage people to read two stories<p>Qian Xuesen - what happens when you deport skilled laborers<p><a href="https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/mariel-impact.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/mariel-impact.pdf</a> - one of the first studies on immigration econ effects on wages. A good starting point
I wish USCIS was very strict about those guys who is coming in H1b from India incapable of doing anything and hire guy from india to do all their work.
I can say sth:
- particularly in SC market, the computer science or related areas (almost all JDs have this sentence). The 'related areas' brought in so many in-qualified that even can not answer what is a truth-table (we are not the DOJ).
- The whole thing has been abused for decades "."
H-1B is a terrible visa. I went through it with a few of my peers. Working in the US is great, but it’s not the only option. I moved out after two years and settled somewhere that values stability over the churn-and-burn culture. Couldn’t be happier.
No offense to the very hardworking H1B guys I've worked with, but I'm not a fan because they'll do anything the company says. They are used as scabs to undermine developers leverage. This was especially clear during RTO. It's the same issue of manufacturing stuff in china. Of course an H1B will be a good puppet, if you threaten to fire them you're sending them back home to another country!
Maybe it's just me, but the vast amount of illegal and semi legal migrant workers being exploited suggests what the US needs is a visa system for unskilled labour, not for skilled.<p>Why does everyone think the cure to the worlds ills is to have more doctors and not more toilet cleaners? People can die from dirty hands on doorknobs faster than from smoking: Basic sanitation work, food work is important. If current US residents won't do this stuff, pick food, clean up, then isn't the answer to bring them in or do we really prefer to have them live in a twilight, semi-illegal world? Really?
I’m very happy for everybody on H1-B whose live this improves! Does this include renewal in USA?<p>But as an American the “bonafide job requirement” makes me nervous. We have a massive ghost job problem that really needs to be a federal crime. Will this make that worse?
Seems like the current admin trying to stuff all the laws right in time for the next admin to dismantle...<p>Oh no, the 50% rule won't be exploited sir.
For everyone who thinks H-1B and its ilk make it possible to hire foreign workers at below what citizens are paid - have a look on your favorite search engine for:<p>“Prevailing wage condition”<p>It’s a requirement that’s part of the Labor Condition Application wherein based on the location you’ll work (the “Metropolitan Service Area” or MSA) to be granted a visa your employer must prove they’ll pay you above publicly available and published minimum wages for each job title.<p>These wages are public. If you have a problem with what they’re permitted to pay H-1B workers, the published prevailing wages are what you have a problem with. Spoiler though: they’re actually pretty accurate.<p>Here is one example of how hard it is to underpay workers on visas: during the pandemic, workers on visas were not legally allowed to be furloughed, because they would run the risk of not meeting the prevailing wage that year, putting the employer out of compliance with the LCA and subject to fines in the event of an audit. So what happened in practice was negotiated unpaid leave or in most cases the US gov covered wages via programs like PPP.<p>Now this is all out the window if the published prevailing wage for a given occupation is too low or the employer somehow sneaks one by the consular officials approving petitions - by selecting a title too junior for the applicant’s years of experience, for example. There will always be anecdata that makes this seem like a huge problem so be wary because one story does not a trend make. As mentioned above, by and large the prevailing wages are pretty on point with what American citizens are paid.<p>The reality of the way this system works is it’s WAY more technical than fearmongerers would have you believe. Visa holders are very much NOT undercutting anyone and the H-1B is not a completely broken system - even though the lottery and the fraudulent applications cause hell for applicants and employers it does basically do what it’s intended to do. So besides the exploitative situation these changes seem to proactively address, it mostly works and alongside the O-1 and a few other visa categories, has played a key role in the US’ ongoing supremacy in AI and many other industries.<p>Source: Australian citizen spent over 6 years working in SF on an E-3 visa which is very similar to H-1B.
Honestly insane how much racist rhetoric I’m reading online (and surprisingly now HN) regarding this news...<p>I suppose 2025 is starting early.<p>edit: case in point, downvoted for simply saying I’m noticing a lot of racism from the (you know who) crowd - as all the comments against this are often followed with “trump will fix this” or “your country needs birth control” or “india shouldn’t be allowed to get visas”
This H1B program is gamed so hard its a joke at this point.<p>I personally witnessed someone that submit multiple applications that this person won the H1B lottery. This person even had fake office, fake business address, etc for the fake entities.<p>I already reported it, but no action has been taken. This person is now happily employed in the US using H1B.<p>Unethical life pro tips but work: for those of you trying to get H1B, just submit multiple applications to multiple "companies". There are services like this out there, just need to find out where.<p>Good luck. This nation is for plunder.
Biden (or whoever actually runs the country, since it's most definitely not Biden) is trying to undermine Trump's plan to turn H1-B into an auction, which is how it should be run, IMO. That's all there is to it. This will be canceled next year.