Every year US absorbs 120k+ H1B+L1+OPT new visa holders. Considering there are 1.9M software engineers, market has to grow by 5% every year just to stand still. Add US graduates and you are talking about 10% growth required just to maintain employment. It's not realistic long term.

Congress/president should pause H1B visas or hike up fee to 200-500K so that only truly exceptional talent are allowed in. Right now it's just give away to corporations that are laying off people by tens of thousands.

▲ knuppar 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

you're not factoring in a few specific things:

1) how many of these people leave the country in this analysis.

2) OPTs likely will get h1b/l1s/leave the country and are being counted distinctly.

3) not all h1b/l1/OPTs are for tech. majority for sure, but there's a conversation factor.

specially in the current situation that green cards are much harder to obtain and many OPTs don't find a job, I expect 1 to be much larger than in the past.

as a more general observation, this line of reasoning does fit lump of labor fallacies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

	▲	NikolaNovak 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Oh, there's a name for it! I've sometimes been struggling to verbalize in the past the logical issue I perceived with the "immigrants steal are jobs" absolutists, and this is a useful reference.

▲ shagie 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That makes the assumption that every H1B, L1, and OPT is going into software development.

https://apnews.com/article/teacher-jobs-h1b-j1-visa-online-s...

    Like many school systems facing teacher shortages, South Carolina’s Allendale County has looked overseas for help. A quarter of the teachers in the rural, high-poverty district come from other countries.

    The superintendent praises the international educators — mostly from Jamaica and the Philippines — for their skill and dedication, but she is preparing to lose some of them as the Trump administration reshapes visa programs.

    Facing higher visa sponsorship costs and uncertain immigration policies, Superintendent Vallerie Cave said it feels too risky to extend some international teachers whose contracts are up or bring on others.

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aantix 28 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

South Carolina's beginning teacher salary is $42,500.

That's at 125% above the poverty level.

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doomslayer999 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

	▲	shagie an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I personally believe that the H1 visa should get split into more distinct fields. That was the way that it started... the H-1A ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1A_visa ) was for nurses and H-1B was for other specialty occupations. Nurses transitioned to the H-1C visa (which expired in 2009 https://www.uscis.gov/archive/h-1c-registered-nurse-working-... ) So, split out technology careers from H-1B so that they can be regulated with less impact on the other careers that are currently under the H-1B. The other part would be to properly fund DOL so that they have the resources to inspect H-1B-dependent employers ( https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62c-h1b-depende... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B-dependent_employer ) more carefully and prosecute visa fraud in a more timely manner (note that this also gets to other parts that got struck down with Chevron deference so instead of DOL being able to do things administratively it requires going through the courts). And yes, I do believe that upping the filing fees for H-1B-dependent employers would be a good thing... and auditing them to make sure that they have a butt in seat position for their employees and aren't hiring to try to make a deeper bench of poorly qualified individuals doing routine tasks that do not require a specialty technology degree. The current (rather hamfisted) approach to trying to cut back on immigration has knock on effects that are impacting rural and remote parts America to a much greater degree than urban areas. https://kansasreflector.com/2025/10/18/how-new-foreign-worke... https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2026/03/14/sen-murkowski-i...

▲ ea550ff70a an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

this comment has so many bad assumptions is not even worth debating

▲ bequanna 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are new H1Bs a thing anymore?

Since the fee went up to $100k, I’m not aware of any companies still sponsoring hires who need a new H1B

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buzer 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As far as I understand the $100k fee applies only to consulate issued H1Bs. L1 -> H1B path (via AOS) is possible without fee. (Recent) US university graduates can also use similar path from what I understand.

We will see how much the $100k fee affects things during this H1B lottery round in few weeks.

	▲	klipt an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/few-us-busi... > Only about 70 employers have paid a $100,000 Trump fee on H-1B workers from outside the US since it was imposed through a September White House proclamation, a government attorney said Thursday.

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Dig1t 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We have hit the cap for H1B's every year and we will always do so until we get rid of the program. Cheap labor will always be in demand.

A 100k one-time fee is nothing for big employers. That's 25k/year for 4 years, and if you realize that H1B's can't easily leave their job it's obviously worth it.

Compare hiring an H1B that is stuck at their job, to an American who can leave at any time. You can pay the H1B a lower wage to compensate for the fee you paid to get them into the role. 25k/year for 4 years is worth it for not only the reduced churn that comes with training a new person, but also you don't have to pay any of the incentives that come with getting a new employee into the role like sign-on bonuses, wage bumps, benefits etc.

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guywithahat an hour ago | parent [-]

There's an X account which just posts universities hiring H1B's for ~half of what it would normally cost to hire people. An 80k/yr senior software developer will always be in demand, especially if the team is already predominantly non-american

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shagie an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Universities typically are in the public sector side of the equation... and the public sector doesn't pay any non-administrative role the Big Tech rate.

Pulling up my alma mater... https://www.openthebooks.com/wisconsin-state-employees/?Year...

The various roles that you'll find for software developers: Sr Is Specialist, Is Tech Srv Cons/Adm, Sr Inform Proc Conslt, Sr Systems Programmer

And you can pull up the pay scale at https://hr.wisc.edu/standard-job-descriptions/?job_group=Inf...

$80k/y isn't "we're paying H1-B half of what the going rate is" but rather "the state legislature has set this pay scale and we're paying everyone that amount" ... And many times, H-1B visas aren't eligible to work in those roles.

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Dig1t an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Exactly. The fact that H1B's get paid less than Americans across the board is all you really need to know about the issue. There IS no reasonable counter argument.

It's supposedly a program for importing the best and brightest talent that doesn't exist in the US but somehow those best and brightest people get paid LESS than their American counterparts? It was never about the best and brightest it was always about bringing in cheap labor that can't leave.

Sadly I don't think we'll ever fix it either, right leaning industrialists support it because they benefit from cheap labor, and the left leaning politicians get to continue importing people who overwhelmingly vote for them. As usual the loser in the equation is the middle class American worker.

	▲	greedo 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		How many H1B visa holders become citizens eligible to vote for those "left leaning politicians?" I don't think having an H1B helps you accelerate your citizenship application in anyway, and for many countries the wait for legal citizenship is decades long.

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guywithahat an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I think a lot of people have just moved to L1/O1/etc visas to get around it as OP pointed out, although a lot of people are still hiring H1B's. Amazon has applied for over 2000 H1B's so far this year, which puts them on track for ~7000 for the year https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employe...

▲ doomslayer999 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

▲ SilverElfin 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Half the Fortune 500 is founded by an immigrant or child of an immigrant. Most of the others rely on immigrants in key positions. Pausing visas or hiking fees up doesn’t protect jobs - it just causes a future decline in the American economy. I think it’s literally cheaper in terms of the country’s future to just pay those who can’t get jobs to take a one-way flight elsewhere, if they’re not able to compete, than to make it harder to get talented people to move here.

▲ mulakosag 23 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

So immigrants are in fact taking away the jobs? Do you have the same opinion of illegal immigrants jumping the border and taking jobs from average Americans?

I find this argument extremely funny because when immigrations are taking the white collar jobs, you guys get anti immigrants, tighten the visa stuff, but when blue collar and low level jobs are taken by illegal folks you turn and blind eye and noone is illegal in stolen land login.

I 100% agree that H1B has been extremely abused by folks from specific country running body shop tech consultancies but the solution is not to hike up the fees to 200k-500k.

The 100k fee by Trump admin is already showing effects in the job market. Most companies are not readily sponsoring H1B visa anymore, getting a big tech job as a intl student is already tough and only exceptional ones are getting such jobs.