This part is not exactly true. You can renew H1B indefinitely within the USA(every 3 years, need a pending Green card application from the 2nd extension onwards i.e after 6 years). However, if you leave the US for any reason you won't be able to re-enter the USA without a renewed visa stamp from a US embassy. The two exceptions are that you can visit Canada or Mexico for less than 30 days without triggering the visa stamp requirement.
But when the circumstances are that opportunistic actors have been behaving badly for many years and adjusting to small and medium changes in laws that they see coming, Friday night massacres are exactly what's needed. What would be nice (but unlikely) is a similar health care sea change.
I can do that in Tel Aviv over a week.
In a lot of technical subfields, the talent pipeline in the US is dead because of a mix of government, education, and (yes) personal apathy,
The US system only worked because the US had the right mix of openness to domestic and foreign capital and talent.
A lot of people on HN and in our industry in the US need to recognize that they are competing in a global market, and need to upskill accordingly.
Just having a CS degree and knowing Leetcode isn't enough, and I'm not going to pay $150k base for an MLE who only knows how to use PyTorch wrappers and basic math, but little-to-no CUDA or Infiniband background, or for a new grad SWE to work on a CNAPP if they don't understand how eBPF and LSMs work.
And no, it is not our responsibility as businesses to incubate that talent if American admins are not helping us (though I shouted myself hoarse about this when I used to be in that space). Everything has become hyper-politicized in the US now, and that is not the kind of environment any business can operate in.
The decision is hiring in the US (visa or citizen) versus hiring abroad.
Given that a large number of EMs, PMs, Directors, and even VPs are on some sort of immigration or work visa, this makes it easier to incentivize you as an employer to move some of them back to India or Czechia to open a GCC. This is what has been happening for the past 5 years now.
On top of that, vast swathes of STEM academia are dependent on H1B. You simply aren't going to find enough American citizens with a background in (say) battery chemistry to become a tenure track professor versus from Korea, Japan, or China.
Now you basically created an incentive for large swathes of junior faculty in STEM subfields to return to Asia, leading to a massive reverse brain drain.
True, but there’s a balance that employers have to maintain to get some in-state advantages from local or state governments for job creation.
That said, it makes more sense for America to get trainers or professors for niche subfields than actual workers so you can create homegrown talent, not sure why that isn’t done more.
True! The issue is local, state, and federal governments gives limited benefits compared to CEE countries, Israel, India, and others who roll the red carpet with multi-year tax holidays, subsidizes, and targeted hiring pipelines.
> makes more sense for America to get trainers or professors for niche subfields than actual workers so you can create homegrown talent
How? They overwhelmingly came on H1Bs as well, not O-1s.
This is why this is such a stupid approach, and is absolutely showing the hallmarks of a Stephen Miller policy. Interestingly, this seems to have overshadowed the Trump Gold Card and Platinum Card announcements (which part of me thinks was part of the reason this announcement happened).
OK, if I consider this interpretation, which of the following do you think will apply to already-approved H-1B petitioners: 1. Existing H-1B holder can amend their already-approved petition by "supplementing a payment" to become eligible for a visa and re-entry. 2. It's not possible to amend an already-approved H-1B petition. So existing H-1B holders can never satisfy the requirement. They cannot re-enter with H-1B visa anymore. 3. This EO is not retrospective. So already-approved H-1B petitioners (with or without visa) are fine.
With the current system, you must apply in April if you succeed in the lottery, and then you can start in a few months in October, once per year.
Looks very uncomfortable for those who were about to relocate.
a) Pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000 — subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (c) of this section. This restriction shall expire, absent extension, 12 months after the effective date of this proclamation, which shall be 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2025.
People are smoking if they think “talents” would still want to stay in the US given this series of policies (i.e. recent cuts/restrictions on science funding, international students, and visas) from Trump government.
This is a good time for EU to build its own digital economy.
This is ridiculously stupid given how vast swathes of industries we want to redevelop need talent from our partners in the EU, Japan, Korea (still opposed to Hyundai's visa shenanigans, but two wrongs don't make a right - also interesting how HN is so positive about this but so negative about that), etc
Agreed. Rest of the world needs to choke the USA and prevent our talent from improving the US.
Theres no reason to try and help Trump.
A real fix would be fantastic.
In tech industry, we already began slowing down H1B hiring after COVID, and remote work only exacerbated that trend (I can't justify spending $150k plus an additional 25-35% in withholdings, medical, and benefits when I can hire 2-3 people with a similar outlay in Praha or Bangalore or Tel Aviv).
At least with H1B hiring, there was some incentive for industries like cybersecurity to keep some engineering headcount in the US. Now I have no reason not to completely offshore to Tel Aviv or Praha becuase the talent is there and not in the US.
This H1B change does nothing to solve the pipeline crisis nor does it solve offshoring (though even with a services tax, I'd be hard pressed to find the same ecosystem in the US like I can in Israel or Poland or even India for significant swaths of cybersecurity).
Finally, charging $100k per year per H1B employee means I can now justify a $1-10M investment in building a GCC abroad in CEE or India and availing tax benefits, subsidies, and tax holidays.
All this did is now incentivize me to push my portfolio companies to move hiring almost entirely abroad and choose a couple of high level PMs and EMs on H1Bs who would be open to becoming a Director of PM or Director of Engineering at a GCC abroad.
On top of that, the cream of the crop you want with a brain drain like academics in STEM fields, nurses, and doctors are sponsored on H1Bs.
America has a pipeline and skills problem in a lot of STEM fields and subfields, and coding bootcamp grads aren't going to cut it.
Cutting down on processing abuse by consultancies is something everyone can get behind, but this is literally the stupidest way to approach that problem.
Your GCCs will be paying for the direct training of the US side people you overlooked and essentially a generous and well backed “pension” for the few that can’t be made current.
Unless you’re helping to fix the pipeline problem you allege exists, you’re expanding the problem space.
To handle the losses, have any firm and their downstream contractors and clients pay off displaced individuals many times over, with regional adjustments - such that it is cost prohibitively expensive to even think of bodyshopping people.
