Source: Olga Nesterova on X/Twitter — Private front-end.
People also share that this is causing travel disruption:
Relevant: President Donald J. Trump Suspends the Entry of Certain Alien Nonimmigrant Workers
Comments
After Trump tariffs, firing federal workers, deporting friends and loved ones, and censoring the media; ordinary people be like:
This is not what we voted for!
After April 2025 stock market crash, farms and corporations can’t find workers and oligarchs be like:
This is not what we paid for!
Just introducing shit with a few hours deadline is insane
Pray I don’t alter it any further.
Trapping hard-working H-1B immigrants—who are already (relative to American citizens without a visa at stake) in a weak bargaining position regarding salary increases—in the country unless their employers pay a $100,000 bribe is such a despicable thing to do.
Edit: As a reply pointed out, the law mandates that such employees be paid at par with other employees. Despite this, the dependence on the benevolence of one’s employer to remain in the country, in addition to the filing fees associated with any job transfer, already puts such employees at an inherent disadvantage.
Nah, you can un-cross-out “underpaid;” it’s accurate. The other employees are underpaid, too.
Edited it again to avoid implying that they’re not underpaid, as the billions in profits that those companies make is certainly exorbitant.
underpaid relative to American citizens
The H1-B visa requires you to pay at least the prevailing wage, which is the average wage people are paid for the same position. At big companies like Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, etc., people on H1-B and similar visas (E-3, H1B1, etc) have the exact same starting salary and are in the exact same salary bands as US citizens.
There’s some companies that abuse H1-Bs by doing things like using weird obscure job titles and (contracting companies like Tata and Accenture come to mind), but just because some companies abuse a system doesn’t mean every company should be punished.
You’re not mentioning salary bands which allow the same position and responsibilities to have up to 40% variation in salary, and promotions which allow you to officially state someone is not proven to work at the same level as another individual. Ah, and the restriction on the employee most powerful salary negotiation, the typical “I got a job offer and I’m leaving unless you match the salary”.
Also, you can’t really move jobs either. So a H1B friend of mine was in fact underpaid for the work he was doing because actually moving to the job title he was doing would’ve restarted the clock on his citizenship.
restarted the clock on his citizenship
You can’t apply for citizenship from a H1-B. You have to get permanent residency (green card) first, then be a permanent resident for 5 years.
I’m not sure about other companies, but the big tech companies pay exactly the same regardless of whether you’re on a work visa or not. At the company I work at, bonuses and raises are formulaic based on performance, and the performance discussions/calibrations for ratings and promotions don’t take visa status into account at all (I’ve participated in them).
Smaller companies are less ethical, but they get a much smaller proportion of the H1-B visas.
Your point?
I’d prefer to be living in a liberal democracy than in a xenophobic, conservative, fascist state is all.
Fair enough then.
Message could have been: don’t worry, we are going to pay the fee immediately. Have a nice vacation.
Why wouldn’t they pay immediately unless they plan on terminating most of them?
Already backtracking, they said it’ll only apply to new H1bs.
Holding people hostage outside of the US for a 100k fee just seems like on-the-nose corruption. Which is par for the course with this administration…
The H1-B system has been abused for decades, so I agree that it needed to be addressed. This is not it. This was done the way it was done and when it was done (Friday evening) for only one reason. To create as much chaos as possible and inflict as much pain as possible.
Surely this is the astronomically expensive and unpredictable rule change that will return stability to the economy
I wonder how much micro$quash gave the demented rapist. At least a few million, right? Pennies, to them, really.
Ah well. Table stakes.
Aaaaand… when they can’t or don’t, MSFT will happily inform ICE of all of their locations, and those of their family members.
star spangled banner plays in the background
Surely if they don’t it means they are not in the US, so ICE can get fucked?
Lots of wires get tangled and details mixed up internally, all the time, at MSFT.
I would know, I used to work for them.
They could easily think someone was abroad when they actually weren’t.
If you thought they were abroad what would telling ICE achieve?
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It’s great when the people actually making this country worse identify themselves like you just did.
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People from India are the same as people anywhere else. I’ve worked with a lot of good engineers who were from India.
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Yes, that’s clearly the problem, nothing else.
Honestly, this isn’t a terrible concept. The execution leaves a lot to be desired, however.
That $100,000/yr would presumably be paid by the employer, because what employee would agree to that?
This increases the cost of their previously-dirt cheap labour by a lot, opening positions for Americans.
actually it wont, it means they will just solely hire international without having them move to the states for work.
That’s a terrible take. If that was the case, why do they hire in the US AT ALL? Just cut out the middle man of dealing with visas at all and just hire everyone in Asia. But they don’t because there’s value to having people on the ground in the US.
opening positions for Americans.
Sure dude. Not like companies will offshore entire teams to Asia to save money. They can hire entire team there for a salary of American employee.
Then no H1b workers earning and spending money in USA. That should do wonders for the economy.
Microsoft has ~4 major office buildings in Vancouver.
Amazon has two(one massive) and two warehouses that I know of.
Nintendo has an office.
Salesforce had one of their core dev hubs there.
EA has two massive compounds, their main one which just added 50% capacity.
They won’t offshore them to Asia. They’ll move them back across the border.
Yeah I suppose that’s a good point.
However, you’d have higher paid Americans spending more money in America.
I dunno. I’m not an economist, but there’s a housing crisis and I feel like companies importing cheap labour is a piece of the problem.
Also, I’m Canadian, so I’m kinda using our TFW program as an analogue, I’m not entirely sure how H1Bs work.
There’s more housing than demand in the US. The cause of the “housing crisis” is institutional landlords who snapped up foreclosures after 2008 for pennies and jacked up rents beyond affordability, as well as keeping units vacant to make it appear that there is constrained supply. There aren’t nearly enough H1B holders to impact nationwide affordability.
It’s a multi-pronged problem, all of which lead you back to the same root problem of corporate greed.
So another “tariff” tax for Americans lol.
Technically yes, but if it keeps jobs in America it’s a much more worthwhile one.
The way it was done is ridiculous though. I’d rather have it stsy the same than this crap. Having a fee so companies can’t just outsource for cheaper labor is probably what’s been needed for a while though. $100k is too much and is basically never going to be worth it. And having it apply to everyone instantly is stupid as well.
It’s not a zero sum game. If you make the workforce more expensive guess what, your products gets more expensive, and thus less competitive so you’ll export less and the cycle continues. The production of competitive items will just shift to another country, and if you try to block that (say more tariffs) from coming to the USA, bravo you played yourselves and only now have access to inferior products.
if it keeps jobs in America
Making it harder for people to move to the US to work is not going to keep jobs in America. It means companies are more likely to hire foreign talent as remote workers instead.
if it keeps jobs in America
How would it do that? If anything, the opposite will happen. Instead of bringing skilled workers from other countries into the USA (which benefits the US as they pay US taxes and spend money in the US), companies will instead hire those same people to work at their other offices (London, Sydney, Singapore, wherever), or just outsource the work.
Well, I did say if. Not every company has international offices. And not all of those positions can be filled overseas either.
Yea I suppose, but if they pay Americans a fair rate instead of immigrants dirt rates, that tax will be less and Americans on average will have slightly more money.
its not because of the wages, eventhough it has an effect. they would have to pay benefits in terms of insurance, or retirement plans to us citizens, which cost more than just paying wages for a visa worker.
