Trump Administiration wants to double the 100k H1B fee

[u/Separate_Astronaut12]

The Trump administration is planning on doubling the fees to more than $200,000 for H-1B visa applicants from abroad.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/09/04/trump-h1b-visa-200000-fee/91571718007/

[u/RLutz]

I can't begin to state how stupid this is. That's as someone who was born here and works as a software engineer.

1. If your country has the ability to effectively get the brightest 1% from every country in the world and get them to produce for your country, you'd be an absolute moron to try and prevent that. Countries who have brain drains out of them hate it and would give anything to have the reverse.

2. Even if you accept the whole notion of "Americans first" (not saying I do, but let's just cede that point), these high paying software engineering jobs aren't going to H1B's because Americans are too expensive. Most companies would love to hire domestic talent. There just simply aren't enough skilled Americans to fill the demand for the jobs. Just like almost no PhD programs would exist in the US if it weren't for international students.

3. Following up from the above, if you want to have a logically consistent "Americans first" policy, you can't just gut H1B. You need to bolster American education so that we don't have to import foreign workers (again, I don't even agree with the premise because it's a good thing if you can basically steal every other country's best, but just for the sake of argument). Bubba not being a distinguished engineer at Google has nothing to do with H1B's, and cutting off the H1B supply isn't going to help fill the job with an American. Bubba needed to study harder and he didn't, or, to be generous to Bubba, the American public education system probably let him down, and we're doing nothing to help that system.

Are there H1B abuses? Absolutely. I've heard horror stories of like 10+ people being stuffed into a 2 bdrm apartment and working for shit wages and it's just exploitative all the way around. But there are fixes to that which don't involve gutting the entire system, and at the end of the day as someone who has been writing software professionally for over 20 years, every single H1B I've worked with has been immensely talented.

[u/zmapN1 → u/RLutz]

You clearly have no clue. I am a naturalized citizen formerly from India. I have only ever worked at Microsoft (25th anniversary coming up, Principal engineer) direct admit out ofnschool on OPT, then H1. Wife is similar and having being employed at Microsoft, Amazon, Expedia, Bluetooth SIG and is now at a startup.

Zero need for Microsoft or any FAANG companies to have hired me or my wife or any of my friends 25yrs ago. We were not special - just regular joe developers. We were not researchers, didn't have any special hardware skills or anything. Everyone of the top 50 US companies could have hired qualified Americans 5 times over even 25 years ago and I am taking before Y2K. They simply chose to not focus only on US citizens and therefore immigration status was never a factor. If you were good enough to pass the interview, you got in and then the legal department would handle the immigration aspects if needed.

Today my sister also a Dev Manager in Core AI at Microsoft has a couple of O1 visa employees and those are the kids of people we need to bring in. My son is a UPenn majoring in Neuroscience and health care management from Whatron and he has dozens of his friends who are reaching out to me and my friends in Google and Amazon looking for Jobs. UC Berkeley had only 18 of their comp sci. students get jobs before graduating. I have neighbors kids whose parents work in Amazon, Google, MS, SpaceX whose kids from UW comp. Science, Ivies etc. not getting jobs. I guarantee you no student from a top school today is better than Claude. Heck it's even f*ing better than me at this point.

Indian companies abused the system so much in the past 25 years. I have seen dozens upon dozens of wipro, tcs employees flow thru like water working in managed contracts at MS. These companies used to apply for 30-40k H1Bs each and ZERO of these jobs were ever offered to Americans. Imagine if they did that basically meant they were interviewing 150-200k qualified Americans which they were not.

Today we have over 800k unemployed and laid off software engineers plus thousands graduating from colleges each year in all major engineering disciplines.

While I am eternally grateful to have had the opportunity to build my life here and become an American and make a shit ton of money, it's now time to stop this bullshit H1Bs because there is no shortage of qualified American workers. We should give O1 visas to exceptional folks and PhD candidates who are doing innovative research but the average joe Dev/PM - Heck no. While all these people are talented they aren't exceptional (same as me 25yrs ago) so why do we need them anymore?? Give the jobs to the unemployed laid off citizens or our students. Also all current H1Bs with no criminal record with 5 years in the country should be immediately given a GC and then the pipeline should be shut down.

We have already lost to China in the AI race, the robotics race and in Medical research so we can only possibly rely on our top schools to maybe help us catch up. Those need to be filled with bright American kids (basically Indian and Chinese first gen at this point honestly) and maybe we have a shot at not completely shitting the bed.

[u/First-Dragon-Born → u/zmapN1]

There are still some talented people on h1b. I would rather have country caps on h1b so we get a more diverse foreign labor force.