Notable due to it being written by Bloomberg's editorial board, acknowledging the failings of the program.
> First, the lottery — by design — doesn’t reward top talent. This deficiency, coupled with loose oversight, has made it vulnerable to gaming and doomed to mediocre results. A recent Bloomberg News investigation found that IT staffing firms routinely flood the pool with entries, often for more visas than they need, crowding out companies that play by the rules. These practices — which US officials have called fraudulent — prioritize a sector that tends to pay relatively low wages for routine IT work. (New rules to curb abuse don’t go far enough.) As a result, many of the world’s smartest engineers are shut out from the most lucrative, in-demand jobs, and shortages at the top end persist.
> Second, visa holders with middling skills are more likely to be substitutes for, rather than complements to, American workers. Replenishing the job market with extraordinary talent that can’t be filled domestically increases productivity, innovation and growth; saturating it with lower-paid workers will tend to drive down wages. Official data show that 85% of H-1B petitions are awarded to employers paying well below the median wage, as determined by occupation and location.
The obvious counter is to make it not be a lottery but rather an auction, the highest-paying employers wins the slot. This would get rid of the bottom-feeding body-shops that rent out H1-Bs by the hour.
It would also cut off non-tech businesses like restaurants employing specialized chefs. Perhaps do this in bands by industry (this info should already be collected as part of the Dept of Labor certification).
It will also cause a lot of things to be shut down. This Will work for the FAANGs of the world and for very very few of the industries where there is a genuine labor shortage and hiking the cost up on them makes it unproductive to stay in business
That will just give the FAANGs the opportunity to make more acquisitions and expand their power base, which is ultimately desorable from their standpoint.
Probably. I want to laugh at the idea that "startups" need H1Bs but I should cry. If someone is really a "key employee" of a startup they can't be subject to a game of chance.
Google, IBM, Infosys and others who file thousands of them can easily play the numbers.
I quit the ACM because I couldn't accept their policy of 100% advocacy of H1Bs and joined the IEEE Computer Society because it refused to take a position. (An anti policy could be easily misunderstood)
I am not against immigration, in fact I've seen H1Bs put people in a terrible position -- I knew a brilliant data scientist who was being dicked around and I wanted to tell them "your skills are in demand and you can get a better job" but it wasn't true. This person would tell me about his struggles with immigration and realized my story that my ancestors left a failing agricultural economy in Quebec and the horrors of WWI in what was then Austria-Hungary and made a new home here would be cruel to recount to him.
Perhaps I didn't explain that I'm not against having visas for people to work here (the individual that I'm talking about got in the position he did because he was educated here and already had some standing) but that putting them behind a lottery is something senseless and cruel that only a politician could think up.
As for Musk (as much as I admire Falcon 9 and Starship) I think he's self-centered and unprincipled and that, observing the success of Donald Trump, he thinks that these traits can win him admiration. He's for immigration when it's good for him, otherwise he's indifferent or against it if he thinks its good politics.
Lets not ignore O1 visas either. O1 visas are, in my opinion, what we should lean into instead of continuing with employer specific specialized worker visas - if you're accepted into the US you should be free to work for whomever you chose and the power to change jobs is requisite to ensuring a fair labor market.
O-1 is like H-1B, but worse. It's also tied to a single employer, the application process requires more work, and transitioning to a green card is a bit harder. Which means an O-1 worker is even more dependent of their employer than an H-1B worker.
The H-1B program is about wage suppression, not talent. If it was about talent we would just offer the top students & researchers in all countries immediate, strings-free citizenship.
US companies are far more concerned about wage suppression than talent, so the system will not change unless tremendous pressure comes from without.
Adding some data. Draw your own conclusions about wage suppression
Googles AI search
"As of January 2025, the median H-1B salary in the United States was $141,000 per year, or $11,750 per month. The average salary was $167,533 per year, or $13,961 per month."
Not to be pedantic, but this is exactly the scenario when you want to use the median or mode, not the average. Incomes are power law distributed, so one H1B or non-H1B borderline executive could be throwing off the average non-trivially.
It is not about wage suppression. It is about obedience. An H-1B visa is the biggest chance for upward mobility people from less wealthy countries will get. Listen to whatever we tell you to do, work however many hours we tell you to work, or get fired and sent back to your own country.
Maybe with the lottery, because getting another one is subject to luck. But H1Bs are transferable - why wouldn’t companies shut out of the lottery hire away another companies H1Bs ?
The company hiring an H-1B has to plenty of fees, needs authorizations, and then needs to submit a lot of documentation to the Immigration service for processing that can take 3 months and still get denied. Many companies just say they won't transfer H-1Bs rather than deal with the trouble.
I would argue its about improving labor productivity.
What you are saying is American corporations want labor with higher productivity and even willing pay more for more productive labor (by paying immigration costs).
Thats why SWE salaries overall increased and H1Bs are making the same salaries as citizens, because of higher competition leading to higher productivity.
Importing foreign workers (and culling bottom 10% via forcing curve/pip) forces average labor productivity to increase
It is not about wage-suppression, if it was there wouldn't be rules that stipulate the visa holders are paid market rate for their jobs (enforcement can be improved but the rule is there).
This logic cuts both ways.
Many US companies are concerned about wage suppression, but many are also concerned about talent. And when it comes to software devs, there are definitely H1Bs who outmatch their citizen peers.
I don't think the recent H1B debacle spread outside the boundary of tech very much simply because a) There is now an increasing abundance of domestic tech workers, and b) The layoffs haven't been so severe outside as much as in tech.
Fields like Architecture, Agriculture, Forestry, Medicine, etc still need a lot of skilled workers that may not be available domestically. So I'm increasingly skeptical whenever someone claims that the solution to H1B is auctioning or a significant increase in wages as other fields outside of tech may not have the resource to bid for talents. US already has a diversity based immigration system called DV, maybe a diversity based system w.r.t. jobs is warranted?
I agree. Additionally, there were always increasing tech workers, they just all got jobs when the market was hot. Now when there are less jobs, companies want the best candidates, and specifically in tech, a lot of times (not in the case of abusers like TCS) H1B holders are more qualified on paper due to usually having advanced degrees. School rank and ability matters more to employers these days, and that's tough for domestic grads who might not meet the bar
Replace H-1B with greencards. New arrivals to our country with valuable skills should be welcomed with a good path to citizenship, not beholden to whoever got the H-1B for them, and subject to being pushed out once it expires.
Intended purpose? I suspect it's purpose has been served as intended all along.
The "top talent" was the ruse to justify the program.
If it "accidentally" stopped serving that top talent purpose it was obvious years ago. Then , whoops! I guess we'll just have to keep letting in non-top talent...?!
It was a camels nose attack on IT sector workers salaries and the vitriol of anti-racism was used to defend it, along with other similar efforts to destroy American wages.
Oddly, in the 1970s, the Democrats would have spoken out against it, back when they cared about American jobs. Not any more.
Bernie speaks out against it. Unfortunately most politicians are totally owned on either side. I expect we will see (or not) a wild flip-flop of both parties similar to how Dems in the early 2000s were against gay marriage now its quite centered.
“In 2021, the proportion of foreign-born workers in STEM occupations (26%) was greater than the proportion of U.S.-born workers (24%), with more naturalized citizens in S&E-related occupations (11%) than noncitizens (5%) or U.S.-born citizens (9%).”
Does the US still need even more foreign visa workers given these statistics? What percentage is appropriate? How is this sustainable?
I think you may have misunderstood what those numbers represent. They aren't saying that there are more foreign-born STEM workers than US-born STEM workers.
They are saying that among all the foreign-born workers in the US, 26% of those workers are working in STEM. Among all the US-born workers, 24% are working in STEM.
There are around 29 million foreign-born workers in the US, and around 131 million US-born workers (if Google has given me correct numbers). In percentages 18.1% of workers in the US are foreign-born and 81.9% are US-born.
With 26% of the foreign-born workers in STEM and 24% of the US-born workers in STEM that would be about 7.5 million foreign-born STEM workers in the US and 31 million US-born STEM workers in the US.
Among STEM workers in the US then it would 19.5% are foreign-born and 80.5% are US-born.
Ok. Thanks for that clarification. Here is a more direct and startling statistic that demonstrates the point: Almost half of all software programmers are foreign born (in 2019 … probably higher now).
“In 2019, there were 647,000 immigrant software developers, making up 39.2 percent of all software developers (Table 4). In fact, software developers made up 47.3 percent of all foreign-born workers in the computer and math category in 2019.”
The more fundamental issue is that it’s legally a temporary visa program even though no one uses it that way. The law even acknowledges this with the dual intent doctrine.
If we are going to reform things we might as well scrap the visa altogether and roll whatever changes are needed into the employment based resident visas, including if necessary adjusting the numbers.
Of course that won’t happen because Congress doesn’t pass major overhauls of anything anymore. But if we are going to dream, might as well dream big.
This is true, but it’s also how basically every country runs their visa programs. They initially admit foreigners in a temporary status and after a few years grant a permanent status. This is how Mexico residency works in general, and even how marriage-based residency works in Colombia. I don’t really see it as much of a problem.
Contrast a new marriage. The government issues a conditional permanent residency and then two years later an application can be filed to remove the condition. It’s a similar story with the investor’s visa.
The H1B doesn’t lead to anything. It’s designed as if the alien is just going to leave after 3 or 6 years. Any kind of accommodations between it and the EB process are afterthoughts.
Yeah, personally I think they should keep the "temporary" aspect, that it's conditional on employment, and the lottery, but remove the employer lock-in. So an employer has to initially sponsor an H1-B, but they damn well better be paying competitive wages and benefits otherwise they're not going to be able to keep the H1-B. Once the H1-B immigrant enters the country and works one day, they personally can renew, transfer their employment, and make all the paperwork decisions.
There would probably need to be some tweaks (e.g. an employer looses sponsorship privileges if they can't keep the people they sponsor), but I think that's the right path.
H1B was never about the top talent, there is O-1 and EB-1 for top talent.
H1B is just about specialized (skilled) professions like engineer or nurse or designer or manager.
Lottery is because of oversubscription for h1b.
Oversubscription if because of poor oversight (that leads to rampant fraud), and low number of visas that have not kept up with demand. I think it was 85000 new visas per year for several decades.
Removing fraud, improving oversight, and increasing limit will fix h1B, but there is a bigger question: Why should Americans compete with the whole world for domestic jobs?
For some reason it is considered normal to protect American Capital by imposing tariffs on foreign goods, and at the same time there are no protections for American Labor.
Anyone can come in and just apply for jobs, get work visa and steal a job from an American citizen.
If American Labor is subjected to unchecked global competition from global talent pool, then so should be American Capital. No tariffs in Chinese EVs: let American consumers buy Chinese EVs for $10,000 instead of paying Elon Musk $45,000
That's why you see so many job requirements that are ultra specific, or just ghost requirements. They put that out and claim they couldn't find anybody domestically.
This is why the job title will be something obscure like “AI Scientist” which isn’t something anyone calls themselves. Since no one fits the bill domestically, this allowed Zoom to hire one for $75k in San Jose, CA, one of the most expensive COL cities in the country.
When I applied (and got H1B) in the 2000’s they threw every technology on my resume into the job requirement for DOL and suddenly I was one of the very few qualified candidates
> H1B is just about specialized (skilled) professions like engineer or nurse or designer or manager.
No domestic workers in those fields will work for the bottom tier of $38K. That is not a skilled professional's salary. The point is to get gullible foreigners to work for peanuts with the promise of maybe winning a green card. Maybe.
> Anyone can come in and just apply for jobs, get work visa and steal a job from an American citizen.
The main mistake being made here is assuming that employment is a fixed sum game. Bringing highly skilled individuals from around the world to the US promotes US growth. A study has even shown that higher H-1B denial rate results in a decrease of US positions by multinational companies. [0]
> If American Labor is subjected to unchecked global competition from global talent pool, then so should be American Capital.
I'm not sure how that follows. Protective tariffs as a response to state subsidies don't really have an equivalent for labor.
Just to note, American Immigration Council is made up with Immigration lawyers. I doubt they are going to be like "Wow, this is terrible idea, time to put myself out of a job by advocating against it."
Next up, getting advice from Microsoft Software Developer Foundation about best Desktop OS to run.
I know this will probably be an unpopular take on a forum of American software engineers —- but the reason the US even has a tech industry in the first place (and why the top 10 most valuable companies in the world is basically a list of former Silicon Valley startups), is because all the best talent wants to move here.
The basic misunderstanding of how value and jobs are created is mind boggling to me. We should fix the H1B program because it will make us all richer and better off, including the American engineers.
The import of goods is fundamentally different than the importing of talent. Importing goods boosts the competing countries economy. Importing talent strips competing countries of their best resources. Tech talent can create basically unlimited value due to the zero marginal cost nature of software replication.
Rather than looking at fixing a broken visa system that's specifically employee tied we should just look at relaxing the requirements for O1 visa qualification and allowing non-employer tied skilled immigration.
There's a classic story that used to be told about Cambridge and Silicon Valley - both were good candidates for the tech boom but Silicon Valley won because Massachusetts allowed extremely harsh non-competes that prevented employees from freely switching jobs. The H1B visa vs. O1 visa argument is basically the exact same scenario - forcing workers to stay in specific positions hurts innovation and competitiveness. Once you're accepted into the US you should be free to participate in the labor market like everyone else.
and I know plenty who won't because while you CAN, if anything goes wrong, you are going home. They prefer to play it safe with known quantity then roll the dice, have a paperwork SNAFU and end up on the plane home.
If you're of working age, you're going to likely be alive for say 30-50+ more years. And your kids for maybe 70-80+ years.
Tech adoption is now faster than ever, so there's numerous examples of Silicon Valley companies going from 0 to one of the most valuable companies in the world 5-15 years.
Stop thinking about the short term. You're going to be around for the long term, so you're only screwing over yourself.
> Why should Americans compete with the whole world for domestic jobs?
Because its the global market. Why should other countries allow Coke to sell in their markets and depress local soda companies? A person is just an LLC selling their goods/services. Immigration is no different to customs.
All countries are hypocrites, and everything sucks.
Why American corporations like automakers can lobby to impose tariffs and extract more money from American consumers, but there are no protections for labor?
If Tesla/GM are so good in this beautiful global market, they dont need no tariffs on Chinese EVs.
Zero tariffs in all imports since it is beautiful global market and competition is good and all tariffs are paid by American consumers
> Labor needs to start voting in better politicians.
who and where they are? these so called "better" politicians?
I think we cannot vote our way out of this and only next level solutions like revolution or protest or "Luigi solution" will make labor's voice heard.
Remember, labor/working class vastly outnumber capitalist class (and have more weapons thanks to 2nd amendment) and capitalists were, are, and will always be scared to death when American labor gains class conscience and starts demanding what they are owed by the capitalist class
The protections for labor are far stronger. Companies are allowed to do business in a foreign country by default, while employment is banned by default. If you want to get employed, you have to apply for a special permit, which can be difficult and time-consuming to get. The terms of the permit are often also very restrictive.
This is not about capitalists vs. working class. It's about upper middle class vs. capitalists, middle class, and working class.
When you grow up in an export-driven country, one thing you learn early is that high wages are bad for the economy. And when the economy is bad, it's the ordinary people who suffer the most.
You generally want to keep the labor share of GDP constant, which means that wages should grow about as fast as GDP per capita. If the wages grow faster than that in a field, it's probably bad for the economy. Especially if the field was already highly paid. Unusually high wages typically indicate low productivity (when measured in outputs per dollar). And when productivity is low, businesses that rely on the outputs of that field become less competitive. For example, if making software is more expensive in the US than in other developed countries, American businesses cannot afford to use it as much as their foreign competitors.
And? Yes, we know it doesn't benefit US citizens. How many citizens filter for products made by American workers when making purchasing decisions? People want cheap shit, except when it comes to their own jobs.
they shouldn't, but my point was everyone is a hypocrite here, because secretly we know that protectionism is necessary, and it works - despite proclamations that companies in a capitalist model embrace competition and employees want meritocracy.
You're much less likely to be able to get local talent into what amounts to indentured servitude, and local talent also is much more likely to want the real prevailing wage for their work. It's all just labor arbitrage.
>I think it was 85000 new visas per year for several decades.
This sounds close. I think it was lowered on or near Trump's first term. It was higher during Obama, I'm recalling 185K maybe. Also, this misleading to the public because it's 85,000 new visas that can be extended 6 years I believe, so that's ~510,000 at any given time.
Plus add the accumulation of H1Bs that get a green card to the labor pool. Also, there are exceptions to many of the H1B rules allowing extensions. True number is in the millions.
Yup, with that and no tariffs on inbound commits on software created by offshore labor, you know who the government supports, and it ain't the workers.
Considering there are around 1.5 - 3 million domestic software developers, that probably pushes down our salaries by about a third. Domestic software developers could be making around 50% more if it weren't for these policies. Imagine how much better off we'd be.
Politicians will sell their mothers for a campaign donation and they've been selling us out for decades. We need to stop buying into their distracting wedge issues and concentrate on what matters: our livelihoods.
Because some professions are valuable but we are also vulnerable in those industries to international competition, so jacking up our labor rates positions us worse. Think of semiconductors for example.
All visas will go to the highest bidder: bay area and NYC companies, and American heartland and South will have no nurses, civil engineers or anyone else for that matter
The H1B system sucks. Open the borders and just let everyone come here who wants to. We have plenty of room and immigration has resulted in so many great parts of the US due to the intermixing of cultures. If you're worried about crime well all the ICE agents will need new jobs.
Societies are complex, and humans are still very tribal. Any large influx of new population changes everything significantly, for good and for worse. And there will be resistance to change. Intermixing of cultures takes multiple generations, if at all and even then you will see silos.
We just need to look at how things are even now, even with the supposedly local population - caucasians, hispanics, african-americans and native americans. And they've all been together for centuries.
(1) Canada has never had an open border policy and (2) our skilled labor market is extremely robust. We have significant issues with housing in metro areas that are related more to extremely NIMBY zoning laws than anything else.
> First, the lottery — by design — doesn’t reward top talent. This deficiency, coupled with loose oversight, has made it vulnerable to gaming and doomed to mediocre results. A recent Bloomberg News investigation found that IT staffing firms routinely flood the pool with entries, often for more visas than they need, crowding out companies that play by the rules. These practices — which US officials have called fraudulent — prioritize a sector that tends to pay relatively low wages for routine IT work. (New rules to curb abuse don’t go far enough.) As a result, many of the world’s smartest engineers are shut out from the most lucrative, in-demand jobs, and shortages at the top end persist.
> Second, visa holders with middling skills are more likely to be substitutes for, rather than complements to, American workers. Replenishing the job market with extraordinary talent that can’t be filled domestically increases productivity, innovation and growth; saturating it with lower-paid workers will tend to drive down wages. Official data show that 85% of H-1B petitions are awarded to employers paying well below the median wage, as determined by occupation and location.