How's the $100K H1B fee that was announced to distract from the Trump Gold Card announcement [0] going? The HN hive mind said it would bring back the jerbs and those of us who warned [1][2] it would incentivize mass layoffs and offshoring were hounded.

Before the layoffs were announced Amazon also committed to expanding hiring and infra expansion in India [3], and depending on the org, affected employees on work visas were offered transfers to India in lieu of being laid off [4].

The Trump admin won't do anything about offshoring either - in fact technology transfers to India are being encouraged by the admin as part of Pax Sillica [5] and GOP leaders in Purple Ag states like Iowa [6] and Montana [7] are lobbying for India after China pivoted away from American soybeans [8] and India began leveraging the China playbook [9].

When forced to choose between swing state farmers and GOP leaning SWEs, it's going to be the farmers who win.

[0] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamati...

[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-09-25/a-100-...

[2] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sustainable-finance-r...

[3] - https://www.aboutamazon.in/news/economic-impact/amazon-econo...

[4] - https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonemployees/comments/1qfesvs/6_...

[5] - https://x.com/USAmbIndia/status/2010718052992618815

[6] - https://governor.iowa.gov/press-release/2025-09-07/gov-reyno...

[7] - https://www.daines.senate.gov/2026/01/20/daines-travels-to-i...

[8] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-favour-brazilian-s...

[9] - https://www.cramer.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cramer-dai...

This poster is right. Offshoring is a growing factor as US companies do to white collar work what they did to manufacturing

Ignoring the reality that the higher fee has only been in play for four months; have you considered that there are likely H1-B employees in the 16,000 that Amazon laid off?

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46805081 in re 6 and 7

I thought Bezos paid enough in bribes for it to not affect AWS/Amazon?

Sorry, donated.

Does the H1B fee only apply to people not yet in the country? I have a student on a student visa who claims I can do the h1b sponsor without the 100k fee because they are already there with their student visa.

> How's the $100K H1B fee that was announced to distract from the Trump Gold Card announcement [0] going? The HN hive mind said it would bring back the jobs and those of us who warned [1][2] it would incentivize offshoring were hounded.

Yep, offshoring needs to be heavily penalized as well.