Posted by b_mc2 9/12/2025
I think Trump’s position of forcing companies to pay a substantial fee in exchange for a fast tracked green card is really the most sensible position instead of H1B. It should be less than $5 million, but I think if a company had to pay $300k not have any or limited protection against that person quickly finding a job in the. united states, then companies would generally prefer american workers in a way that makes economic sense, because talented workers can be acquired for a price, but not be kept for peanuts in exchange for less than an American worker, because they are stuck with the employer for 20 years if they come from a quota country.
Plus, there seems to be some indicator tha the job you are applying is an H1B position and they are posting them on sites for Americans to apply too. So it’s not hard to imagine a bunch of highly qualified idealogue’s applying to jobs they never wanted in the first place and reporting them to the government when they get rejected.
It doesn’t seem like a good idea to try and manipulate the system with the current government’s willingness to go after companies.
If they’ll go after a US ally like Hyundai for using ESTA under the VWP illegally, when Hyundai could probably have easily applied for and been granted B-1 visas. Can you imagine what they would do to a company illegally sponsoring H1B visas?
Your country sold you down the river 30 years ago.
This is what my old employer did to sponsor the visa for the company’s CTO.
Newspapers are used for a surprising number of various public announcements. E.g. in New York you must publish a notice in a newspaper for 6 weeks (or something like that) when establishing a LLC.
There’s something to be said for reading the paper even in 2025! Although I suppose the notices are probably also online..
Update: source: https://radioszczecin-pl.translate.goog/1,116784,koszykarze-...
Jm2c but I think the harsh truth is that US while having a decently sized population of good software engineers, it is still nowhere near the required amount.
Thus, many companies would rather give 150/200k to someone who's actually good at it and will be impressed by that money rather than some half assed US graduate who only went into SE because he wanted a cushy well paying job.
The USA currently potentially hasn't enough programmers. If the market tide changes, one of course wants to be able to send these superfluous work migrants back to their home countries.
This solves many, many problems, including where should laborers live, fairness in interviews, etc.
How do you reconcile that with all of the SWE layoffs in the past few years?
This is not true now, if it ever was (maybe for very short periods); there is tremendous competition for every good SWE job out there, and has been for a long time.
> Thus, many companies would rather give 150/200k to someone who's actually good at it and will be impressed by that money rather than some half assed US graduate who only went into SE because he wanted a cushy well paying job.
The idea that Americans wouldn't fight tooth and nail for these jobs is just idiotic.
What do you think is going to happen to your bargaining power as an employee when your employer has an infinite workforce to draw from?
To assumption that there is a finite amount of work in the economy is called "lump of labour fallacy" in economics. It's not useful to ask "What if X were infinite and we held everything else constant?"
The two philosophies are not only not incompatible but are necessary to maintain our standard of living. Closed borders, protectionism, and relying on individual bargaining power is another path to a similar end so long as you can keep the US on top.
You ever consider that it's because those people are pro-workers everywhere and not just workers nearby? So yes enabling foreign workers to improve their lives by coming here makes perfect sense.
> What do you think is going to happen to your bargaining power as an employee when your employer has an infinite workforce to draw from?
I mean that's like saying "what do you think is gonna happen to your rights once all the slaves are free". The answer hinges on whether we continue to operate under the government that's comfortable with exploiting its citizens.
so then by doing this they hurt the worker here in favor of a worker in some other country?
> I mean that's like saying "what do you think is gonna happen to your rights once all the slaves are free".
when the word slave wasn’t mention at all by the parent, how did you conclude anything about slavery?
Sounds like fraud to me. Or a crime of some sort.
If they do it, and it clearly doesn’t work, it even sounds like something they could take to court.
In fact, something that is perhaps their duty to take to court.
The reason they are required to readvertise is because the visa they are on is for jobs that cannot be filled by a local, so if the job can actually be filled by a local, that person should lose the visa and have to leave (or find another job that supports them being here).
That isn’t a technicality, except the prior admins allowed it to be.
Does that suck for the person on the visa? Yeah. But guess what, it also sucks for the unemployed locals.
So either the gov’t actively throws locals under the bus, or follows the rules.
When everything is going up and to the right, or no one can see why they’re struggling, it’s easy to gloss over these ‘small details’. But they’re not so small in reality, eh?
First, a visa is not permission to stay in the U.S. A foreigner can have an expired visa and a valid status to be in the U.S. (they can take their time at their leisure to apply for one). Conversely they can have an unexpired visa but no permission to be in the U.S. (such as when they have a H-1B visa but is actually unemployed for a long time).
Second, this entire process of advertising fake job openings is not at all related to visas, H-1B or not. It's related to the employment based green card process. Hiring an H-1B requires a Labor Condition Application from Department of Labor, not a Permanent Labor Certification. The former does not require any attempt to hire American workers.
Third, even if some Americans apply for these fake job openings, that doesn't mean that foreigner must leave. After all, the foreigner still has valid H-1B status (see first point). It's a setback to their green card process only.
Fourth, whether or not the job can be filled by a local is determined by the company. Sure such determination will need to be submitted to the government for approval. Imagine that the company requires 10 years of experience with Ruby but the local has 9 years of experience. Guess whether the company will see this local as qualified? There's no good way to solve this problem. Companies can require whatever skill and experience they want in their job requirements. The government doesn't determine whether the job requirement itself is sensible. It just checks that no locals satisfy the job requirement. Do you get the point now? Companies can construct the job requirement however they want such that the job cannot be filled by a local. Companies are not abusing any law. Companies are exercising their right to choose qualifications for the jobs.
Fifth, you say "sucks for the unemployed locals" but there is no requirement for companies to check that the local applying is currently unemployed. This is not a joblessness reduction program. Maybe the locals who are applying are just switching jobs, in which case if they succeed their old employer loses a headcount. There's no net change in employment figures. The law doesn't care.
Next time before you spew falsehoods on HN, spend an afternoon learning about H-1B, LCA, PERM, EB-1, EB-2 and such topics. Before you accuse companies of committing fraud, consider whether the law actually allows what the companies are doing and whether it is the law that should be changed. Considering directing your anger from prior administrations to Congress instead.
Including currently having ‘Right to work’ in 3 hemispheres on this planet, 2 from visas from various governments. I’ve hired dozens of people in the US under H1B’s, married someone on a green card, etc.
Companies are, and have been, clearly abusing the law in the US for decades. It’s only ramped up over the years and has gotten quite absurd.
I have many friends on H1Bs, and am quite familiar with what is going on recently too.
Just because prior admins have been ignoring illegal behavior doesn’t mean it is actually legal. It just means the party is over, eh?
With H1B fired means deported.
The people following the guide are just making it impossible to review all of the applications.
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To be brutally honesty, why is it acceptable to bash H1B abuse but not B1/2 or VWP abuse on HN. In both cases, it is employers mislabeling and potentially breaking immigration and labor laws, yet it is acceptable to talk derogatorily about those on H1Bs and not on other visas, even though rates of visa misuse are consistent across most large nationalities.
I am of South Asian origin, but I have lived in North America for almost my entire life (aside from 6 months in the old country), but the persistent utilization of "H1B" as a code word for South Asian (primarily Indian) origin tech employees is tiring.
I understand that a lot of ICs are dealing with a significant amount of stress due to the downturn in the tech industry, but there is a nativist current on HN that is starting to morph into anti-South Asian sentiment.
This style of thread comes up almost daily on HN, and is something I have previously brought up to @Dang as well.
It is tiring and demeaning to those of us who are immigrants or the children of immigrants - a number of us who make up a major portion of the tech industry, and have leadership positions in YC as well.
South Asian Americans make up around 2-3% of the US, but almost every post on HN about the job market turns into "H1B"-bashing, which often devolves into bashing people on the visa instead of the companies themselves.
Almost never do I see conversations extending sympathy to those on work visas and also stuck with abusive employers - only nativist bashing that "they took our jobs".
I hope you can moderate these kinds of conversations or update the engagement rules of HN, because HN and the tech industry of 2025 is not HN or the tech industry of 2008.
It is legitimately demoralizing. I worked on the Hill for several years, have advised administrations on how to bring back manufacturing and "American dynamism" (to use the A16Z term), and have built, launched, and funded software products and companies that are used by backbone infra in the US, and even advised a number of YC startups that have exited.
I have done my part for the country, yet to a large portion of HN and the tech industry I and other South Asian Americans will continue to be termed as "H1Bs" until they hear our accent, or if we can pass as some other race or ethnicity.
I would love to have a good faith discussion with you about this, because I do heavily leverage HN and have found it to be a great resource to find technical discussions and have my portfolio companies show share their features, so the toxicity around H1B and work visas in the tech industry is heavily demoralizing.
Our role is not to moderate for or against any "side" in a debate. Our role is to uphold the guidelines, so that anyone with a reasonable position on any topic has fair opportunity to express it.
My perception from moderating HN for years is that there is generally much more criticism toward companies (including/especially Silicon Valley companies) for exploiting H1Bs than there has been towards holders of those visas.
But if you see evidence that contradicts that (i.e., comments that are unkind towards visa-holders or that discuss them in any way that breaks the guidelines), you can certainly flag them and email us so we can take a look. We can only moderate what we see and there's a lot of stuff that we don't see.
If there are patterns or trends of these kinds of comments, then the more you can show us, the better, so we can develop approaches to identifying and dealing with them.
> Our role is not to moderate for or against any "side" in a debate. Our role is to uphold the guidelines, so that anyone with a reasonable position on any topic has fair opportunity to express it.
Absolutely and no argument there
> But if you see evidence that contradicts that (i.e., comments that are unkind towards visa-holders or that discuss them in any way that breaks the guidelines), you can certainly flag them and email us so we can take a look. We can only moderate what we see and there's a lot of stuff that we don't see.
I have done so on multiple occasions, but have seen a number of those comments remain up.
For example, this comment [0].
Additionally, in this very thread, we have an unsourced comment [1] parroting a common trope, which is legimately false in most cases (and as a member of the YC community, I'm sure you can get this validated), and with significant controversial discussion about this
I also see constant mentions of Infosys and TCS, but never mentions of massive European firms like EPAM which do similar shenanigans and advertise it to new hires across the CEE [2] or Globant and LATAM [3]. While the Indian firms are large, and it is acceptable to have not heard about Globant, EPAM is absolutely massive and every F100 uses them.
I can provide more robust data on the general trend, but it is something that would take some time, but I would really really appreciate if the YC employees affiliated with HN do a deep dive into this.
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228366
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45224087
[2] - https://www.epam.com/careers/epam-without-borders/usa
[3] - https://stayrelevant.globant.com/en/culture/globant-experien...
At current US unemployment rates, no new H1B visas should be issued and existing visas should not be renewed based on criteria. If you're exceptional, prove it on an O-1 visa.
H-1B Middlemen Bring Cheap Labor to Citi, Capital One - https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-h1b-visa-middlemen-c... | https://archive.today/7JX9A - June 27th, 2025
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42454509 (citations)
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
HN Search: h1b - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
not geopolitical, but economical. US corporations ran labor arbitrage by shipping $20/hr jobs to China that was paid ~$0.20/hr and pocketed profits (you can lookup S&P 500 chart)
USA got S&P500 chart going up
China got industrialization
You have to consider two things in addendum to that:
- Those $0.20/hr jobs come with major financial burdens. Firstly, you now have to organize your supply chain around it as a labor base. That means your logistics are now many orders of magnitude more complex, and more expensive. On top of that, you have additional overhead because you're doing business across international lines, which raises organizational headcount and the kind of bright minds it takes to do that don't come cheap. Quite a lot of money is dumped into making maritime shipping cheap. It's not just subsidies and tax incentives applied to the maintenance and operation of container ships where even the fuel is a tax write-off and heavily subsidized. You need to also consider how much do those ports cost to operate? How much does it cost to maintain shipping lanes? Government attention, influence and dollars are spent at every single step of the way to ensure that foreign labor forces are affordable. A very, very large amount. It becomes apparent when you realize the end to end cost of building a cargo ship, loading it to the brim, and sailing it across the pacific is less than a nice house in Manhattan.
- The disparity in labor cost is also primarily driven by policy which exploits the 'decoupled' nature of local economies driving different costs of living. While this is traditionally framed as only working within the context of underindustrialized people being exploited, you can compare the cost of living in Taiwan with the US, as well as the relative prosperity of the two nations. Large picture, broad spectrum economic comparison is a bad joke because it's simply too lossy to support logical inference, but it's not a mistake that the dollar goes quite far in other places. The inflation of the US dollar was intentionally positioned as the oscillating circuit of the global economy, this way the US would be able to deflate it's currency to prevent bad exchange favorability when needed without suffering long-term economic damage like what happened to Britain in the 1920s.
It's a system of pulleys and levers which were carefully put together to make means to an end. It's not actually cheaper, think about it in a thermodynamic sense. It just looks cheaper because it was structured that way. Costs are hidden by opaque mechanisms that exist in plain sight, all at such a grand scale you can hardly conceive its orchestration. It works because men with a lot of power want it to.
They already do though. Do you own any items made in other countries? If so, you’re competing with other workers already. It seems weird to focus on immigrants workers in America versus citizens in America while importation is allowed at all. I find all of this also very much in conflict with HN’s anti tariff attitude.
https://www.moreno.senate.gov/press-releases/new-moreno-bill...
https://www.moreno.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/The...
(if you're a company with no US nexus or presence, and no access to the market, your hiring practices are up to your local jurisdiction; if you want access to the US market, you can hire in the US, I find this to be very reasonable)
I find this very reasonable.
It doesn’t walk anywhere. It’s another handout to finance and law. The B2B carve-out and lack of border adjustments makes this a regressive tax on consumers and manufacturers to fund tech, law and finance. (The only jobs this would materially cover are those in call centres for consumers. Which in practice, means voice LLMs.)
Like, I made money from tariffs. I will do well from the OBBA. I will do well from this bill. But American consumers and workers will keep getting screwed, and I’m not sure how this playbook keeps working.
Just toss 170 billion to one of your various police forces so you’ve got the manpower to tamp down any tantrums from the people. It’s a pretty well worn tactic
I am missing your argument.
Moreno’s bill pumps money out of the poor into the pockets of the wealthy. I am wealthy. I would benefit from his bill. My point is the exercise is a red herring. (I am not sure what yours is.)
My point was that I think the powers at be agree with you that this playbook is unstable and are preparing for that eventuality
Why not?
Also friendly reminder 99.999% of US population is made of immigrants.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/21/key-findi...
I really hope Congress acts to make Instacart's tactics felonious with harsh penalties that ruin the company so thoroughly that it terrifies the stock market to stop investing in companies with similar HR policies. Furthermore, if the HR employees who are responsible or even in the loop could be prosecuted and ruined, this would be good too.
The government has the power to allow corporations to incorporate and to continue to operate, but if these same corporations are harmful to our country's citizens then government also has both the power and responsibility to make it impossible for these corporations to continue to exist. There is no fundamental human right involved. Corporations exist at the sufferance of people, not the other way around.
https://usafacts.org/answers/what-percent-of-jobs-in-the-us-...
Immigrants are defined as foreign-born residents, including those who became US citizens
That said, it almost certainly has an outsized impact on the tech sector, which only accounts for about 7% of the FTE positions nationally.
What percentage are they of the top (preferable) quintile of jobs? Are they just 0.5% of those, or are they more like 4% of those? Is it higher still?
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/04/what-we-k...
https://www.epi.org/blog/tech-and-outsourcing-companies-cont...
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/U...
https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employe...
(if you email Pew Research, I've found their research team to be receptive to inquiries when they have the data but did not include it in a publication)
That's more than I thought!
On one hand, H1B holders can be paid below market rates because it is very hard for them to switch jobs. For this reason, they create resentment from American citizens.
On the other hand, it would be extremely detrimental to the US to kill the golden goose of our tech industry by turning it into some kind of forced welfare for citizens. Another country which is able to hire the best from around the world will take our place.
And then of course, the entire program is structured in an extremely bureaucratic way, with all this nonsense about publishing job ads in secret newspapers.
It seems that these issues could be addressed very simply by tweaking Trump's proposed "gold card" system: anyone can get a work visa, by paying $100,000 per year. This is not tied to a specific employer. The high payment ensures that the only people coming over are doing so to earn a high salary in a highly skilled field. There is no tying the employee to a specific company, so it is fairer for citizens to compete against them.
But not all of the H1B folks are the best from around the world; they're simply significantly cheaper, and the reality of the H1B Visa also means that they're very unlikely to quit their jobs for greener pastures.
This directly lowers the wage an American can earn. This is one way corporations pin the market to a wage they want rather than what is reasonable and fair for the worker. "That's the market rate" Is some serious bullshit, they manipulate it at every turn.
Though, it isn't like the US actually wants to fix its immigration system. It benefits from the resulting submissive population and takes great sadistic joy in having a group of people they can harass and blame for everything, while those outsiders pay into the system, often arriving in the US through an educational visa, thus helping to prop up universities.
The H1B system has been a wreck for decades, the lottery system encourages abuse and doesn't make any sense if your goal is for immigration to be for skilled people (compared to most other places, which just directly look at your skills compared to what they need). Politicians talk a lot about how if elected, they will fix it, only to never actually do so.