Professional services firms, tech groups and manufacturing conglomerates have found once-routine visa applications face longer wait times and are more likely to be denied — leaving some employees stuck abroad — as the president tries to narrow the pathways for legal immigration.
and:
White House policies including a $100,000 fee for new applicants to the H-1B scheme for specialised workers and enhanced social media activity reviews have upended multinationals’ abilities to bring top engineers, consultants and scientists from across the globe to the US, according to more than a dozen employees, executives and recruiters who spoke to the FT.
Oh, that, lol. (With the paywall I just figured they were moaning about ICE; that’s been the more popular topic of late.)
They’re moaning about the fee because it will work. Visas are supposed to be issued to the best of the best, to entice them to come to the US to work, or to foreign workers who can fill jobs that no American can be found for. But we both know how easy that is to abuse.
The employers who hire cheap foreign labor to replace Americans at ordinary jobs won’t pay that fee; it’ll be cheaper to pay an American $120k than to pay an Indian $50k with the extra $100k application fee. That solves that problem in one easy stroke.
Meanwhile the AI company who is paying a million a year and expecting to earn a hundred million or more per employee will pay the application fee in a heartbeat. They’re after profits that are literally 1000× higher than the fee, so the fee is irrelevant. Of course they’ll grumble about government overreach while telling their HR manager to write the check, but it won’t actually slow them down.
> They’re moaning about the fee because it will work. Visas are supposed to be issued to the best of the best, to entice them to come to the US to work, or to foreign workers who can fill jobs that no American can be found for. But we both know how easy that is to abuse.
not only will it not work it is already not working. H1B is just a smokescreen against an actual problem - off-shoring. and this is a problem that no one, not even "America First (American Last)" President wants to solve.
The other crazy party we have also does not want to solve this problem even though it would be an amazing political pitch. "MAGA is telling you America First but do nothing to put Americans first, in my administration we will charge 200% tax for every off-shore employee hired, you pay someone from Bangladesh $40k, you pay America $120k." of course this will never happen, especially not with the current administration. The H1B was just smokeshow for people like you that don't read the post and think that overstaying the visa is a problem that is plaguing America (it is not in the top 100,000 of the problems but easy to rile up folk)
> They’re moaning about the fee because it will work
If by "work" you mean "the same company employs the same person just in an office in a different country"?
You do you, if so.
> Visas are supposed to be issued to the best of the best
If you want that. But then don't be surprised when such people look at you and say "nah".
> But we both know how easy that is to abuse.
No, we don't "both" know. I never tried to [ab]use it. Because I (like several of my friends who said "no" to US companies asking them to move to the US) never cared about moving to the US in the first place.
> The employers who hire cheap foreign labor to replace Americans at ordinary jobs won’t pay that fee; it’ll be cheaper to pay an American $120k than to pay an Indian $50k with the extra $100k application fee. That solves that problem in one easy stroke.
$100k is just for H-1B, which is specifically work, and was already capped in number.
The, e.g. H-2A visa has a fee of apparently $460 (not thousand, just four sixty). That's the one for "temporary agricultural work", which is very much not "the best of the best".
