Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program

https://archive.ph/5B8mZ not much in there beyond the headline but quotes from the admin

• superkuh · 1 hour ago

  Thanks! Unfortunately archive.ph requires passing an impassible computational paywall for some browsers/ips/etc. Since the article is so short it seem fine to just quote it in full here, "The Trump administration said Thursday that it would suspend an immigration program for multiple tech firms, including Microsoft Corp., alleging widespread abuse of a worker visa system. “There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft,” Vice President JD Vance said, during a briefing in Washington. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said other companies that would be suspended from the Permanent Labor Certification Program included Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., Infosys Ltd., Tata, Wipro Ltd., HCL Technologies Ltd., and Capgemini SE. He said there were multiple active federal investigations ongoing into the matter. The move is the latest by the Trump administration to crack down on legal and illegal pathways to migration. The program at issue allows US employers to help sponsor foreign workers for permanent residency. “Microsoft is a great American company, and we have a great relationship with them, they do a lot of important things,” Vance said Thursday. “Our message to Microsoft is not that we want to harm your company. It’s that we want your company to thrive, but we want it to thrive by employing and empowering your fellow Americans.” Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment."

  • garbawarb · 1 hour ago

    This is about these companies having the ability to sponsor employees for green cards. They can still employ people on visas. It's more accurate to say the government wants to prevent these workers from eventually becoming American.

    • egorfine · 1 hour ago

      As in: come here, work, pay taxes, contribute to the society but then fuck off.

    • peezd · 1 hour ago

      Yeah was about to post this, this reads that it's the PERM program so just about the path to getting a Greencard, different from H1B1s, etc.

  • falsemyrmidon · 1 hour ago

    What is a "computational paywall"?

    • verdverm · 1 hour ago

      Some proof of work type thing to prevent bots by changing the economics, presumably. It's that "checking you are a human" thing without forcing you to click images

    • swiftcoder · 1 hour ago

      https://anubis.techaro.lol or one of its brethren

• bradleyankrom · 1 hour ago

  The AP blurb[0] has different quotes and includes an accusation of fraud that's missing from the Bloomberg article. > Vance said Thursday, “If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants.” Vance spoke in a White House news conference announcing the decision. [0] https://apnews.com/live/trump-midterm-elections-news-updates...

  • drop_star · 1 hour ago

    Did he do the math? Or are they still eating cats and dogs?

    • verdverm · 1 hour ago

      Is that 2 or 10 nom's of furry friends, the numbers look the same to my binary eyes, math is hard with an ai buddy? This admin has demonstrated many times they will misuse Ai and blindly trust whatever it spits out. Would not be surprised in the slightest if that was the case here.

    • dpkirchner · 1 hour ago

      It's "funny" that organizations like the AP, NYT, etc, still quote Vance after that. He never really had credibility beforehand but any he may have had was lost, surely.

  • dfxm12 · 1 hour ago

    Narrator: He did not do the math. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/new-aclu-afl-cio-report-...

    • verdverm · 1 hour ago

      The Ministry of Truth has deemed you are not doing the right kind of math. /s gotta love our post-truth world...

    • Wojtkie · 1 hour ago

      >The report finds that a broad path to citizenship would stabilize jobs and prices across the construction, hospitality, and care industries that families depend on while raising wages for all American workers. The article posted is about suspending a Tech company's use of h1-b. The report makes no mention of the Tech sector and all the purported gains are in low-income high-physical labor industries like construction and hospitality. The whole wage and cost of living stabilization they're saying is due to immigrant labor is due to the fact you can exploit them for lower wages. It further argues that Citizenship, not temp work visas, is the correct path. All while calling out that Tech companies, like Microsoft, are the primary beneficiaries of the current system. In that light, I don't think linking this report arguing what you think it does.

      • dfxm12 · 20 minutes ago

        You're at best naive if you don't see the big picture of sum of the immigration policies of this administration.

  • Centigonal · 1 hour ago

    Accepting Vance's premise, is he saying that the solution to replacing American workers with indentured servants is... removing the path out of indentured servitude? It sounds like they're not touching H1-B itself, just the path from H1-B to residency.

    • vkou · 1 hour ago

      Correct.

    • eclipticplane · 32 minutes ago

      They've been limited in what changes to H1-b they can make without legislative support, so they will take any other option to make H1-b less desirable and harder.

    • parthdesai · 28 minutes ago

      If you remove the path from H1-B to residency, you reduce the incentive for a lot of people to go through the H1-B hell to begin with. Speaking personally, my Dad put me in a university in Canada instead of USA since the path to permanent immigration was so much smoother.

PERM certification it looks like

In the best case we could hope this will lead to increased wages to American citizens, but realistically I think the most likely impact is it pisses a lot of people off, causes a lot of headaches for a lot of people, and has no real impact for most. Edit: Would love to hear a coherent argument as to why my comment is off topic and deserving of downvotes but I'm sure that won't happen.

• InsideOutSanta · 1 hour ago

  I hope it causes some people to return to Europe and do some good work over here. I'm never sure how to feel about this kind of thing. On one hand, it's kind of interesting to see the self-destruction, and having qualified people return to Europe can only be a good thing for Europe. OTOH, it's scary to see, and I'm unsure whether I prefer a world where China gains much more power.

  • drstewart · 1 hour ago

    Is this the same Europe that's cutting work visas, tightening restrictions, and increasing naturalization requirements across the board? What's really interesting to see is your blindness to that self destruction.

    • carlosjobim · 1 hour ago

      A European returning to Europe from abroad doesn't need any visa, and doesn't face any restrictions.

      • jjtheblunt · 1 hour ago

        this made me chuckle, considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odyssey_(2026_film)

      • ben_w · 59 minutes ago

        While true, the question should be: is each European nation/the EU collectively doing those restrictions sensibly, or poorly? If done in a similar fashion as the US has chosen, i.e. due to incoherent populism, it would limit the number of competent e.g. Americas, Canadians, South Africans etc. from joining the European workforce. If done in a sensible fashion, it would only exclude the would-be migrants from those (or other) countries who have shown a wanton disregard for democracy and other constitutionally required values.

      • ImJamal · 54 minutes ago

        Well they do depending on which country they are citizen of and where they are working. The UK is considered non-EU so there would need to be a visa for a Brit working in the EU.

        • carlosjobim · 42 minutes ago

          Since the word used was "returning", that would mean that they go back to where they came from, where they are citizens.

        • throwaway219450 · 17 minutes ago

          A nitpick here, but "visa" gets tossed around a lot. A visa is a document which allows you to request permission to enter a country for some purpose. To work in a country you need a work and/or residency permit. Even in the US, there are situations where you can work with a an expired visa, provided your other immigration documents are current. But if you leave, you need a new one. Similarly UK citizens can still work in some European countries without a visa, because there is no requirement for them to enter with one (but the officer at the border might still refuse entry).

  • pc86 · 1 hour ago

    I think there are plenty of qualified and hard-working people in China, I'm not sure this change would increase the number of people there the same way it might in places like Europe or India.

    • nostrademons · 28 minutes ago

      For about 5-6 decades all the qualified and hard-working people in China came to the U.S, because they could enjoy more freedom, fewer arbitrary government dictates, and better economic opportunities. This brain drain was a huge factor in U.S. global dominance. That conveyor has now reversed, because all of the drivers have reversed as well. China will be fine; it's the U.S. I'm concerned about.

  • throwaway219450 · 23 minutes ago

    This ruling is not targeted towards Europeans. I doubt this will significantly affect European workers in the US. The reality is there aren't that many European immigrants in the US and not many at all on H1-Bs. The vast majority of immigrants are from the Americas (with over 22% from Mexico), India and China. European migrants as of ~2023 total around 10% and have been slowly decreasing over the past few years. Bear in mind a lot of people are still here from the post-WW2 period when immigration was much more liberal. Anecdotally from the people I've met, the majority of Europeans are here for academia on F/J/O, entertainment, are spouses of US citizens or get temporary transfer visas like the L1. Those who go to the US because of high salaries can afford to figure out employment based green cards and they don't have multiple year waiting periods. Otherwise it's a huge pain to get permanent residency or even a normal work visa compared to the EU, but qualified Europeans generally don't have much trouble.

• rvz · 1 hour ago

  That won't happen. There is no reason for it to happen anyway given that AI agents are more efficient anyway. Microsoft and others are more focused on building data centers (homes for AI agents) than hiring humans at this point.

  • pc86 · 54 minutes ago

    Fewer people means less qualified applicants for the same jobs, which means wages go up. Maybe companies like Microsoft have enough dead weight that they will just absorb the losses in growth but most companies don't have that luxury and this is hitting staff aug body shops so it will hit mid market and small employers as well unless it gets overturned.

Note that this appears to be about green cards/permanent residency rather than h1b. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said other companies that would be suspended from the Permanent Labor Certification Program included Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., Infosys Ltd., Tata, Wipro Ltd., HCL Technologies Ltd., and Capgemini SE. He said there were multiple active federal investigations ongoing into the matter.

• toomuchtodo · 1 hour ago

  Indentured servant body shop to perm pipeline, usual suspects.

  • QGQBGdeZREunxLe · 1 hour ago

    It's relatively straightforward to transfer a H1B, describing it as indentured servitude has always struck me as hyperbolic. The situation could be easier, make approved I140s portable and issue an EAD, but you aren't trapped with an employer.

    • joshheitzman · 1 hour ago

      The green card process is not transferable. Once its started the applicant is stuck. I personally saw the company slow roll the process for one of my directs. I kept hassling them to move it along but to no avail. I saw this happen to colleagues at numerous companies.

      • QGQBGdeZREunxLe · 39 minutes ago

        It is transferable under AC21. But that’s not the point. You are not stuck with an employer on H1B.

        • joshheitzman · 30 minutes ago

          Never heard of that. Apparently a lot of other people haven't either or consider it too risky as the government has to approve the transfer (as I found when searching for this now).

          • QGQBGdeZREunxLe · 24 minutes ago

            AC21 is the law that allows H1B to be renewed indefinitely with an approved I140. It’s the reason Indians are allowed to stay in the U.S. whilst their Green Card is being processed. A bandaid on a completely broken system that caps Green Card allocation by country of birth.

            • esseph · 11 minutes ago

              [delayed]

• raincom · 1 hour ago

  Earlier they included Cloudera and Cognizant.

• onlyrealcuzzo · 1 hour ago

  Now, you're going to continue attracting LESS of the top tier talent as you make it clearer and clearer that you don't want them. This is the talent we want most. Even if you're a laborer, it's quite hard to argue that the absolute pinnacle of the labor pool is dragging down your wages and not increasing total jobs. If other countries are giving you better alternatives, why bring your talents to the US?

  • toomuchtodo · 1 hour ago

    Top talent exists domestically, this is to hold wages down. It’s fine to impair the import conveyor and see what happens. If and when there is a labor shortage or wages spike horrendously (highly unlikely), certainly, we can revisit. Neoliberalism ignored domestic worker concerns for shareholder returns and corporatism, and an alternative was offered, here we are. It’s a natural experiment we might not otherwise had had the opportunity to run.

    • onlyrealcuzzo · 1 hour ago

      You are correct. It also exists non-domestically...

      • toomuchtodo · 1 hour ago

        If the US can bully countries into releasing 100M barrels of their own petroleum reserves, what makes you think the US can’t solve for that too? Other countries! Everyone has a leverage point, everyone has a point at which the pain is worse than the ask. Companies and executives are easy, and usually of weak constitution. They fold fast, based on the evidence so far. US Big Tech fell in line super fast, right? “Fall in line or else.” If trillions of dollars in enterprise value and the resources it commands won’t save you, I’m unsure if anything else would. It’s not right or wrong, it just is. We are living through a “might makes right” era. It’s not the first, won’t be the last (if history is our guide). This too shall pass.

    • superdisk · 38 minutes ago

      > wages spike horrendously Anything but that!

      • toomuchtodo · 28 minutes ago

        I’d be fine with it, but you’re always going to have some cohort arguing for importing labor under certain conditions so you have to cover it in the discussion. It’s always about tradeoffs.

      • gadders · 17 minutes ago

        WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE SHAREHOLDERS!!

  • meowkit · 1 hour ago

    Frankly talent doesn’t matter any more with AI - the skill floor for software has dropped to zero so an average dev now competes with the best devs. Marketing and capital matter way more. It still matters a bit for architectural direction - but those roles are so few I wouldn’t be concerned as an American.

  • glimshe · 1 hour ago

    I don't think "top talent" is very well represented in the companies listed above...

    • shimman · 42 minutes ago

      It is when you think high salaries = top talent.

      • Ancalagon · 28 minutes ago

        None of the above companies have what I would consider to be high salaries relative to their tech peers.

        • JumpCrisscross · 22 minutes ago

          Microsoft is also included [1]. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/5cfecbba-69ed-42d0-98fd-3ae019144...

  • csmiller · 1 hour ago

    most of these places are body shops, pretty much the opposite of “pinnacle of the labour pool”

  • xnx · 54 minutes ago

    > the absolute pinnacle of the labor pool You can't be saying this in seriousness

  • cheonic4040 · 40 minutes ago

    > Now, you're going to continue attracting LESS of the top tier talent as you make it clearer and clearer that you don't want them. This is the talent we want most. No. It’s not. > other companies that would be suspended from the Permanent Labor Certification Program included Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., Infosys Ltd., Tata, Wipro Ltd., HCL Technologies Ltd., and Capgemini SE. These companies are D tier talent, at best.

  • gadders · 19 minutes ago

    LOL. It's not "top talent" it's "cheap talent" or even just "more talent so the supply is larger and wages go down". If you're EG a PhD+ and working in a frontier AI lab on cutting edge problems, then fair enough. If you're developer x of 100 writing Java CRUD apps in the finance department of some corporate, you are not.

  • JumpCrisscross · 13 minutes ago

    > you're going to continue attracting LESS of the top tier talent Just hire them remote overseas. One of the competitive advantages of hybrid organizations is they natively support international teams.

• tlogan · 1 hour ago

  It is an open secret that consulting companies (Tata, Infosys, Capgemini, etc.) are abusing the employee sponsored green cards. But I'm surprised that Microsoft is accused doing it. I was under the impression that Microsoft will sponsor your green card but is still very strict about whom they hire and retain, regardless of immigration status. But maybe that has changed? Tata, Infosys, HCL, and similar body shops are definitely a different story.

  • orochimaaru · 1 hour ago

    If you’re laying off employees en masse and still processing green cards that in itself is a red flag. Companies have usually gotten around it saying we r laying off in 1 division but hiring in another. Maybe that hand waving can’t be swept under the rug anymore.

    • bpodgursky · 47 minutes ago

      How is it hand waving? It's literally true a large corporation can fire a customer support agent while sponsoring a software engineer, it is not interchangeable talent

      • tracerbulletx · 38 minutes ago

        I doubt that's the argument they're making. They're saying they are laying of a software engineer in one org, and hiring another software engineer in a different org. Not cross functional roles.

      • eastbound · 35 minutes ago

        Talent can be trained, less across jobs (although it's often what public services ask to entrepreneurs in some European countries), much more across departments.

      • dec0dedab0de · 32 minutes ago

        If we had a union we would be training people from customer support to engineer. I truly believe that software would be improved immensely if all developers spent a few years doing tech support for the elderly.

        • JumpCrisscross · 26 minutes ago

          > If we had a union we would be training people from customer support to engineer This, to my knowledge, very rarely works. > software would be improved immensely if all developers spent a few years doing tech support for the elderly This, on the other hand, absolutely does.

          • simonw · 18 minutes ago

            I've worked with several excellent people in my career who progressed from customer support to QA to QA engineer to software engineer. It's not common though, and I don't think it's a case of "training". Some people have the drive to figure that path out, and those people should be encouraged and supported.

          • gopher_space · 10 minutes ago

            > This, to my knowledge, very rarely works. Strictly a function of management quality and experience.

            • autoexec · 3 minutes ago

              Not everyone is interested in programing. Some people are amazing at customer support and extroverted and seek out jobs where they interact with customers and would be miserable looking at code all day. The opportunity should be there, but some people are just never going to be engineers.

        • bpodgursky · 8 minutes ago

          I'm sorry but this is just absurd. Not everyone has the same aptitude for every job. For a company or country to function you have to acknowledge this and put people in jobs suited to their natural talents.

      • franktankbank · 32 minutes ago

        Maybe they weren't exactly doing that. Calling a developer something else doesn't make it so.

      • penskymaterial · 20 minutes ago

        The army of developers stuck working helpdesk right now because they can't find work, would like a word.

    • thatfrenchguy · 37 minutes ago

      I mean in the LLM era you need fewer employees and you need them to be very good to not become 10x bad engineers, so you could be processing green cards for your super stars while having to do layoffs

      • ToucanLoucan · 24 minutes ago

        That's the playbook Microsoft has been accused of running in various tech press for years, and is backed up by the fact that all of their products are going to shit. Azure, Exchange, XBox & first-party titles, just to name a few of the things I've seen takedown posts about how the departments are staffed exclusively with inexperienced devs overseen by burnt-out seniors, using Copilot to duct tape shit into a somewhat-working state. I remember not to long ago we got a service impact email from Microsoft saying they expected exchange services to resume normal operation in a sodding WEEK. Completely unacceptable for a provider my company, a smaller one, pays six figures per year for services.

      • mh8h · 23 minutes ago

        In a lot of cases they are claiming that the layoffs are not based on performance. The government's argument is that if there are high-performing American nationals or green card holders that are being laid off, then there is no point in giving more green cards, or H1Bs.

    • kixiQu · 19 minutes ago

      That doesn't feel accurate to me. If you're laying off employees en masse while getting new h1b visas, maybe - but everybody I know who's gotten a green card from tech employment was employed and working for a long time before that process even started.

    • digitaltrees · 15 minutes ago

      Not if the category of employees is different. You are assuming all candidates and roles are fungible.

  • SpicyLemonZest · 1 hour ago

    As discussed upthread, the PERM process is widely understood to be a farce, so it wouldn’t be terribly surprising if the government has evidence of a Microsoft executive who wrote down that they didn’t want to replace a senior developer with 6 years of tenure. Everyone including JD Vance knows that’s a dumb outcome, but under the PERM regulations, you can only get that guy a visa if you tried and failed to replace him first.

  • brownguytoo · 1 hour ago

    From where is MS’ CEO now again?

  • KellyCriterion · 41 minutes ago

    > are abusing the employee sponsored green cards As a foreigner: How does this work and what do they do?

    • chung8123 · 37 minutes ago

      For one thing, if you get laid off you only have two weeks to find another job or you need to leave the country. This balance of power is lop sided so the employer can get away with abusing the employee unreported.

      • KellyCriterion · 31 minutes ago

        OK,got this part - this is referring to abusing the employees. I read the former comment like that they are abusing/missusing the "technical Greencard mechanics" to get their employees past some checks/approvals/permissions/whatever or acquire whatever "special benefits" by working around whatever rules

        • ExoticPearTree · 21 minutes ago

          It's pretty simple: you work as much as we tell you or we fire you. And good luck finding another job super fast with another company willing to sponsor a visa. This is the abuse. Plus, I think the pay is also not that great compared to US counterparts.

      • afthonos · 31 minutes ago

        No, green cards actually remove that constraint. You are a permanent resident, and you’re allowed to live in the US permanently. Irrespective of employment.

        • sarchertech · 12 minutes ago

          The future green card is dangled in front of the employee as the carrot to get them to put up with this situation for years. And depending on where you are in the green card process, you might have to start all over again if you change employers.

          • bijowo1676 · 7 minutes ago

            not true, you can only "dangle" the PERM which gives you an I-140 petition. PERM is usually approved within 12-24 months. That's it. You cant dangle anything and cant force a bona fide employee to be a "subservient slave labor" like some people would imagine this process. Once the I-140 petition is approved, it can be ported, and employee can easily leave to another employer, it only takes them to file couple forms like transfer of H1B and transfer of I-140. the immigration discourse is filled with false information, and for this reason I prefer only immigration attorneys discuss the matter as they are the most qualified of all the quirks and nuances of the US immigration law.

      • RobotToaster · 18 minutes ago

        Which also "conveniently" means those employees can effectively never unionise.

  • russdill · 29 minutes ago

    The government will take action on this, but not cruise ship visas. This has nothing to do with "explotation" and everything to do with trying to end immigration, even of (or especially of) highly skilled workers.

    • xp84 · 7 minutes ago

      > trying to end immigration, even of (or especially of) highly skilled workers No, it's not. I know plenty of of software engineers, good ones, who can't find work. Businesses which abuse the H1B and Green card programs to import cheaper workers when there is not a shortage of same here, are acting in bad faith and they know it. They are lying that the people they're bringing over are exceptionally skilled, and they are lying that they cannot find similar workers here at any price. There's not a shortage of workers domestically anywhere in IT. Especially not now. There's a shortage of them willing to work for the shitty wages Amazon, Microsoft, etc. wants to pay those roles. So they hire companies like Infosys etc. to supply them, which they have done for decades by means of lies and fraud. If they were bringing over truly exceptional individuals, that would be a different story. To be clear none of this is even a knock on the skill and integrity of these workers they're bringing over. I'm just saying they are very similar to the tons of US-citizen engineers early in their careers who are out of work, and that if we were a real country, we'd prioritize citizens' need for a job above FAANG profits, by saying "Tough shit, pay more if you can't fill a position."

  • cyanydeez · 23 minutes ago

    It's an open secret that the US administration uses regulatory system for bribes and kickbacks, and no one should take them seriously regarding any rationale.

• surfingdino · 1 hour ago

  Same guys who flooded the UK IT market. Can't shed a tear for them.

• dmix · 1 hour ago

  Not surprising seeing those names, that list of companies are notorious for exploiting H1B too. The main reason it needs stronger enforcement and per country caps/ratios.

  • throwaway85825 · 11 minutes ago

    Per country bans.

• anon291 · 32 minutes ago

  I mean those Indian firms do abuse the visa system so good riddance

• JumpCrisscross · 22 minutes ago

  And Microsoft and Adobe added [1]. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/5cfecbba-69ed-42d0-98fd-3ae019144...

• rayiner · 15 minutes ago

  This is an open secret. My dad was an H visa (H1B didn’t exist yet) in an industry that uses a lot of H visas because the job involves recruiting public health experts for projects in foreign countries. He said that companies never advertise these jobs to Americans and will hide the posting in some obscure newspaper or whatever to bypass that requirement of the law.

• newprint · 5 minutes ago

  As someone who had to interface with Cognizant,Infosys for many years while working for the US corporation - GOOD ! They should loose their privileges for H1B.

• kentm · 5 minutes ago

  Yep, these are the WITCH companies which have a reputation for bending the rules on things like this.

Is there a full list of companies?

What do ya'll think about the conjecture that the elites in the USA want to destroy the actual economy while keeping their world of financial bullshit going? The current K shaped economy being just the beginning. The elites realised that making more money wont change much for them, but they can make everyone else poor and then live as feudal lords.

• ortusdux · 1 hour ago

  Everything I've seen feels like the aftermath of a leveraged buyout.

  • fullshark · 55 minutes ago

    Yeah they don't want to destroy everything, they want to own everything, and shrink the costs of ownership by any means necessary. Labor costs are one of the more untolerable aspects of ownership of entire industries.

• tim333 · 30 minutes ago

  I haven't seem much evidence of them wanting to destroy the economy. Trump may do some damage with his trade war everyone and run up the debt policy but I think he wants America to do well even if the policies are kind of dumb? (Brit here - I may be quite wrong).

• saturn8601 · 9 minutes ago

  This only works if they are able to detach wealth from the cost of labor (ie. AI for service jobs robots for physical jobs). At that point the populace will have no way to generate value so the elites dont need them anymore. It remains to be seen if this comes to pass. My daily AI screwups need to be fixed if we are to even consider this.

I’m quite shocked that this was even open to abuse to begin with. Clearly, the US has very strict immigration and green card laws. So enforcement has been lax? Or were deals made under the table with these companies and previous administrations?

• readthenotes1 · 1 hour ago

  It's been abused for decades, if you're of the mindset that hiring H1B workers for cheaper is an abuse of the system instead of the intended result.

  • warkdarrior · 49 minutes ago

    H1B != green card

    • xp84 · 19 minutes ago

      It's part of the same system. The system is a largely fraudulent one throughout. Doesn't matter if you're applying for an initial H1B or a PERM. This system is ostensibly there so that we can draw that skilled 10X engineer or brilliant researcher in India, UK, Romania, Australia, whatever, to America - to boost our companies and get his/her productivity into our GDP instead of some other country's companies and GDP. If used that way, I am all for it. Most of us have met many non-citizens who are very obviously a net benefit to our country due to their talent and ambition. But this system is used in practice to depress all of our wages, to knock out rungs on the career ladder for new graduates, and to create a semi-indentured workforce more tolerant of low pay and poor working conditions, by bringing over completely average developers of the variety that you could just as easily get by putting up a table at your local college's career day. I don't blame the workers who accept this offer, as being paid on the low end of our scale here is obviously an upgrade or they wouldn't take it. But it's a betrayal of our domestic workers. A financial hit for some of us, and for those earlier in their career, a major blocker to them getting jobs in the first place.

• lenerdenator · 50 minutes ago

  An individual immigrant violating US immigration law is dealt with very strictly. A money-making interest violating US immigration law is a completely different matter, because capital loves nothing more than cheap labor and is willing to subject labor to the ordeal of being the individual immigrant dealing with US immigration law, so long as they don't cost as much as Americans.

• geraldwhen · 49 minutes ago

  Hmm? Green card fraud is pretty easy and very common. You put out an ad for the job role. Then you sort the fake resumes to the top and fail them in the interview. Boom, perm green card. Every big company does it.

  • foldr · 46 minutes ago

    I don't think you meant to write 'green card' there? At least, what you've written makes absolutely no sense as a description of how a green card might fraudulently be obtained.

    • geraldwhen · 40 minutes ago

      PERM is an employment based green card that requires a labor market test. In my own experience, I’ve been part of fake job postings and interviews. Effectively you put the persons role up as a job ad, then fail a few people in the interview and that’s all it takes for PERM. They weren’t real interviews. The job postings wasn’t real. I interviewed people so someone on the team already could get a PERM.

• calculatte · 46 minutes ago

  Visa programs have been widely abused for decades. This just addresses the PERM portion for a few companies. The abuses of the OPT, CPT programs are insidious and have resulted in a job market that completely disincentives the hiring of new grad Americans. It's not uncommon to find job postings that are "H1B only". Companies won't even consider citizens. H1B, H4 EAD have become a way for ethnic nepotism and kickback programs to operate without consequences and get American companies to fire Americans in favor of foreign workers. This is just the smallest step in the right direction.

You know who doesn't need visas? Remote workers

• samtp · 1 hour ago

  Yup, this is much more likely to lead to more offshoring than companies hiring more American workers. Which also means that communities in the US with a large amount of workers on visas will also suffer.

  • newtonianrules · 1 hour ago

    Then let them already. Relocate all the work to India. I’m tired of US companies threatening everyone with job losses. Just fucking do it already.

    • amsjunior · 36 minutes ago

      They already are.

  • joshheitzman · 55 minutes ago

    Offshoring it hardly new. Take Microsoft for example. They offshored heavily over 20 years ago. Allow more immigration or the jobs will be offshored is an idle threat. Companies have done tons of offshoring and reshored many things after it didn't work out. More or less immigration isn't going to move the need on offshoring much either way.

    • Daishiman · 51 minutes ago

      The post-Covid offshoring is looking quite a bit different though.

      • joshheitzman · 42 minutes ago

        How so?

        • andrewl-hn · 23 minutes ago

          For starters, compensation is almost entirely location-based now. Situations where a person lives in cheap city / country but paid close to US rates were never common, but in last 5 years or so they disappeared almost entirely. Moreover, every company seems to know about local rates, they all source this data from the same sources, so if you're job hunting they all give you the same offer. And, since there are so much competition for positions companies are very reluctant to bid on candidates, and most offers do not allow negotiations. Even if paying you slightly above market would still save the company quite a lot of money they don't do it. So, situations where you receive the same offer from multiple companies, and all of them are "take it or leave it", became pretty common. I haven't been on a job market for a long time, but this is what I hear from people around me.

    • samtp · 50 minutes ago

      Of course it's not new. And of course it never really stopped. But there is a new incentive for execs to give it a much bigger push given all the recent remote work tooling and when they now think a programmer is just monitoring AI output. So why not pay the monitor SE Asian wages rather than US wages.

      • joshheitzman · 42 minutes ago

        The trend is away from remote work though. So much more stuff is hybrid then it was a few years ago. SE Asian wages means a 12 hour time zone difference and that carries a real cost on efficiency (I personally experienced this at two companies). Future poorly thought offshoring attempts will go just as badly as they have in the past. If anything AI makes it worse, since each individual dev is responsible for a bigger slice of the output they need to be in the loop on business / customer needs and significant timezone differences make that harder.

        • bottle_roket · 30 minutes ago

          What about Central America?

          • joshheitzman · 22 minutes ago

            Plenty of offshoring to both Central America and South America has occurred in recent years. It was a somewhat untapped offshoring location, but that no longer seems to be the case.

    • bingohbangoh · 36 minutes ago

      A key difference is that at least one isn’t competing for limited housing with offshoring. That is the number 1 driver of the affordability crisis atm. I’m a fan of the YIMBY types but we aren’t building enough annd, until we are, it’s a problem to put more people where we already have little housing!

    • vrganj · 15 minutes ago

      Offshoring to India is an idle threat due to radically different work cultures and expectations. Offshoring to, say Poland or Portugal on the other hand...

      • joshheitzman · 4 minutes ago

        Offshoring (form the US) to Europe, especially eastern Europe is not new either. The newish offshoring location was Central America and South America, but those have been tapped as well. For example see https://theenterpriseworld.com/offshore-development-centers/ where they are listing well established locations for (US) offshoring.

  • HoldOnAMinute · 25 minutes ago

    "Suffer"? It might help bring home prices back down to reality. For the first time in my life I'm seeing high-income earners as a big drag on society.

• gwbas1c · 1 hour ago

  Which begs the question: What's better for the US economy? Compared to having someone move to the US, does hiring a remote worker help or hinder the US economy?

  • dfxm12 · 1 hour ago

    Probably not a simple question or answer on the face of it, but it's really not worth looking at this action in such a narrow lens, because this is not happening in a vacuum. Instead, we should look at it through the overall context of all of this admin's immigration policies, which have been bad for the US economy. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/new-aclu-afl-cio-report-... https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2026/05/12/g-s1-12...

  • m000 · 1 hour ago

    People need to stop asking what's better for the "economy" and start asking what's better for themselves. If the two don't align, it should be tough luck for the "economy", not the people.

    • jaredklewis · 4 minutes ago

      "The economy" is often just another way of saying "everyone in aggregate." Of course "the economy" is a vague, undefined term. But it's easy to think of various specific measures like median household income or the unemployment rate that capture this dynamic. So regarding your final sentiment, I think that often "the economy" and "the people" are the same thing. If something raises the unemployment rate, that will bad for "the economy" and also "the people."

• TrackerFF · 1 hour ago

  Not that salary expenses is a big problem for top tech companies, but remote workers don't warrant US west-coast comps either.

  • Gud · 1 hour ago

    Why not? Doesn’t that depend on the worker output?

    • ethanwillis · 1 hour ago

      Hatred of the labor theory of value. This isn't my judgement on it. Just my guess why certain people with certain interests argue against it

    • SauciestGNU · 1 hour ago

      One might argue that it should, but as a remote worker in a low cost area I don't mind making 20% less than my NYC/Bay colleagues as I can still live like a king in my midwest city on regionally adjusted swe comp.

  • swiftcoder · 1 hour ago

    > but remote workers don't warrant US west-coast comps either I mean, we don't really need that west coast comp either? If I was pulling my old FAANG comp here in Spain, I'd be in the top 0.1% of earners...

    • ethanwillis · 1 hour ago

      Why don't we need it? I wouldn't mind being in the 0.1% or 0.0001% of earners in a place.

      • swiftcoder · 1 hour ago

        Sure, who doesn't want unlimited money? That's decidedly different from "needing" it (I could in no way manage to live on the West Coast on a Spanish salary, for example)

• derivagral · 1 hour ago

  Regulated industries often have business language mandating onshore, citizens-only employment. If it isn't required by immigration, the businesses buying the product are requiring assurances (likely due to their own compliance). As for non-protected roles, global market participation has ups and downs.

• Longlius · 1 hour ago

  Remote workers in India don't compete for housing, energy, health care, education, and food. If an American isn't getting the job anyway, then why bring them here in the first place to drive prices up for everyone else?

  • p0w3n3d · 1 hour ago

    Sorry but there is no competition for health care in US. US basically has no health care. Unless of course you buy it (i.e. pay the fraudulent companies to give you false sense of security and leave you alone in the worst moment of your life)

  • monocasa · 1 hour ago

    To keep all of that money you just enumerated flowing in the local economy.

    • mc32 · 1 hour ago

      Do we need to make the rich richer or allow locals affordability?

      • ivell · 40 minutes ago

        Me buying food from restaurant would make the owner richer, but would also employ more people at the restaurant. The scarcity issue is valid when the resource is limited. In case of US, I was not aware of food scarcity. Even housing is more due to policies than actual land scarcity. Economic activity does have positive feeback. Yes, some people get unfairly rich - but the solution is not to stop the activity, instead try to get the rich pay their fair share of contribution to the country.

    • gimmeshelter369 · 40 minutes ago

      FWIW the "international" folks I work with hardly spend any money in the US. Most of it is saved and spent or invested during 2-month annual visits to homeland.

      • warkdarrior · 27 minutes ago

        That's probably just your company. In Silicon Valley, "international" folks spend a lot of money on buying houses (multiple of them sometimes), cars, home improvement, going out to restaurants, etc.

      • dubcanada · 25 minutes ago

        Your logic is incorrect, you are thinking that a "international" folk buying a TV is what they mean. But that's not correct. Paying income taxes, paying tax on cars, paying tax on gas, paying rent, these matter a lot more to the government then you buying an iphone from the apple store in the mall versus one in "international country".

  • JumpCrisscross · 9 minutes ago

    > Remote workers in India don't compete for housing, energy, health care, education, and food You’re talking about an immigrant population that is notably net tax paying, better educated and less unemployed than population. As for your list: housing is a political choice; residential energy use is increasingly a rounding error; nationally, we’re closing hospitals and schools more than finding them constrained; and we’re a major food (and energy) exporter.

    • throwaway85825 · 6 minutes ago

      If a mansion is surrounded by a slum is society better off? In India the answer is yes but in america we see slums as a failure.

      • JumpCrisscross · 4 minutes ago

        > If a mansion is surrounded by a slum is society better off? Who is in the mansion and who is in the slum?

• tlogan · 1 hour ago

  And AI.

• jmyeet · 1 hour ago

  This is an inane comment. Here are the two types of "remote" work: 1. Remote within the US. You still need valid work authorization; 2. Remote outside the US. This is just offshoring and if it really worked, every tech jobs would be offshored. Companies have been trying to do this for decades. Companies would love nothing more than to offshore every white collar job. They would if they could.

  • wrxd · 19 minutes ago

    So the exact same person working within the US, even better if sitting in an office, is a good employee but if they're working from abroad all of a sudden they're not that good?

• blhack · 1 hour ago

  That will come next.

• mahogany · 54 minutes ago

  Can you explain more? This statement is already true before this policy change, so I don't understand why this is not a non sequitur. But I know this is a common rhetoric so I am trying to understand what the logic is.

• asdff · 39 minutes ago

  Thats true but now they hate remote workers. They want you in that timezone.

  • morkalork · 30 minutes ago

    Plenty of tech workers in Canada and LATAM in the same time zones

• janalsncm · 31 minutes ago

  Hiring remote workers also doesn’t require filling out H1B applications and dealing with USCIS. If using remote workers was just as good, companies would already do that.

• rpowers · 18 minutes ago

  Don't worry, I'm sure their leadership is thinking "AI Bots" instead of remote workers.

The entire program is a farce. It's the process generating the fraudulent "golly, we just can't find a US citizen for the job" claims, complete with fake ads designed to be undiscoverable.

• Kevin_Flynn · 1 hour ago

  Well, the program may be poorly executed, but don't ignore the benefits of understanding and exchange between cultures. It does have that aspect to it. But that raises the debate ... does the US really need to export MORE of its culture at taxpayer/citizens expect ? :| As to the pause, repeal, destruction of this program, etc., however its characterized eventually, it seems to be inline with the idea of moving much of the manufacturing that left back home as well. The psychology experts on youtube are all lamenting the disconnection of people and communities due to internet usage and less face time. Framing that in terms of markets, the internet has empowered people to do more themselves, and rely on direct interaction with others less. Economic shifts are behavioral shifts at the core, and in 2026 every programmer has a staff of 1,000+ unpaid AI agents at their disposal. We can all just download programmers now. :|

  • Eddy_Viscosity2 · 1 hour ago

    > the benefits of understanding and exchange between cultures That's not what the program is for. If that's the goal they can create a visa program with that objective. The current one had the objective of filling positions that can't be met otherwise, and is indeed a farce and fully abused to suppress wages.

    • Kevin_Flynn · 1 hour ago

      I have no doubt everyone who has abused the program, has done so to the best of their abilities. We can count how many people are truly lamenting its loss, and follow the money.

    • well_ackshually · 1 hour ago

      > fully abused to suppress wages Anyone looking at the salaries in big tech will laugh you out of the room. You think the six figure salaries for writing shitty ass Go services is _wage suppression_ ?

      • ehe78qhe · 58 minutes ago

        When they're paying $125k instead of the market rate of $200k + equity, absolutely. Six figures isn't what it used to be. I know families making low six figures who are struggling financially because the cost of living is so high now, especially food, gasoline, healthcare, and housing.

        • well_ackshually · 6 minutes ago

          Golly gee if only that was a sign that the market is being highly distorted by the high six figure salaries, therefore demonstrating that there's no wage suppression... > I know families making low six figures who are struggling financially because the cost of living is so high now, especially food, gasoline, healthcare, and housing. Let's be very honest here: the only two in there that have massively increased are housing (due to the aforementioned non existent wage suppression) and healthcare (because america can't into healthcare). Families making 50k do more than fine when it comes to food and gasoline, merely because they don't have 4k of rent to pay.

      • kentm · 57 minutes ago

        Just because they are high doesn't mean they are high as they should be. Big tech companies were pulled into lawsuits several times over wage suppression tactics and ended up settling.

      • Kevin_Flynn · 50 minutes ago

        > fully abused to suppress wages We should all bear in mind, every government program is a market price distortion, and the workers are going to keep working. Who they work for is all that has changed.

      • saturn8601 · 28 minutes ago

        If the "shitty ass Go service" is delivering the value that software typically does then yes. The whole reason the wages were so high to begin with compared to something like a gas station clerk is that the clerk is delivering value for at most one customer at one time. Software allows a task that could only be done manually once at a time by one person to be infinitely replicated and scalable at speeds that no single human could do, and that value only requires one person to invest resources to develop it once. Afterwards you got that multiplier of value generated. This should be obvious but im merely describing the miracle of computing. So if that software is generating the multiplier of value it is entirely plausible that the company is not providing appropriate compensation to the person tasked with developing that multiplier.

• sophacles · 1 hour ago

  In my experience finding good people is hard when the entire world is on the table. Limiting the pool based on stupid concepts like "nationality" is just a jobs program for the low quality people.

  • ForHackernews · 1 hour ago

    Pay better.

    • digitaltrees · 1 hour ago

      It’s not always about pay. In some special disciplines there are only a handful of people with sufficient training or talent. We don’t hire more Americans by cutting the candidate pool. We hire more by growing the economy with innovation, startup formation, academic research for basic concepts that aren’t commercially viable, government investment in core infrastructure and long horizon moon shots that aren’t commercially feasible. There is only one Einstein and he wasn’t motivated by money. He was attracted to what America stood for. We are losing that

      • theodric · 57 minutes ago

        We could also try something that has not yet been attempted: investing heavily in developing people who show signs of talent at an early age and streaming ALL children's education according to their capabilities and interests at a young age, in order to eventually bolster the available pool of highly talented people without having to rely on poaching talent from elsewhere in the world (depriving those countries of an opportunity to benefit from the highly talented people that they sweated and paid to train).

        • triceratops · 53 minutes ago

          Is there something preventing this right now?

      • ForHackernews · 56 minutes ago

        Ok, but those people aren't H1B's. They were on O-1 visas. These body shop firms are not hiring world-leading geniuses, they are getting mostly-okay Java devs who will do boring scutwork for the chance at life in America.

        • budman1 · 12 minutes ago

          O-1 is a strictly regulated visa. Limited to Nobel Prize winners, Influencers, and Underwear models. H1B is for cheap java devs.

      • linuxftw · 54 minutes ago

        But it is always the pay. Corporations could easily hire American interns and train them, for money. There's millions of people that would love to leave their retain jobs for an internship at a tech company, but there's no economic incentive for the mega corps to train these people.

    • sophacles · 1 hour ago

      I've seen the comp packages. I'm pretty sure that's not the problem.

    • triceratops · 57 minutes ago

      Than $228k? That's what Microsoft pays an entry-level SWE right now. Where are all these qualified people for whom $228k out of college isn't enough money?

      • ForHackernews · 53 minutes ago

        I dunno, parent claimed he can't find good people. He could hire them away from his competitors by doubling their salary if he needs them that badly. Remember how competition was supposed to work? (psst https://conversableeconomist.com/2025/10/31/the-silicon-vall... )

        • triceratops · 49 minutes ago

          So the competitors also pay more. Existing workers get paid more (hurray). But it doesn't mean more domestic workers get jobs. Instead work is either not done (less revenue for the company to expand), or is sent overseas. If management gets more comfortable with work going overseas it becomes a very big problem for domestic workers.

  • harvey9 · 1 hour ago

    As long as you don't mind people remote working then no need to limit the pool nor pay visa fees.

  • ajsnigrutin · 1 hour ago

    Same words are said by hotel owners unable to find eg. cleaning ladies for hotels over here in my small country.... touristy area (=very few locals), relatively far away from larger towns with more local population, everything is expensive there (eg. lunch and parking), and they offer minimum wage and then complain. For minimum wage you can work in your home town, basically anywhere.. if you expect someone to spend 45minutes each direction on a bus for you and pack tupperware lunch, because there are no cheap "daily meal" restaurants around, you'll have to pay more... but hey, our government does the same, and there are always poorer countries with very desparate people. The same applies to every other job, but you seem to not pay enough to even get someone good from poorer countries. Just pay more, and you'll get good people, from your town even, not just across the whole country.

    • triceratops · 56 minutes ago

      This might sound controversial but an office job at Microsoft is a teensy-bit more desirable to a citizen than a job cleaning motels. Microsoft pays new grad SWEs close to a quarter million dollars. Plenty of citizens would gladly take that money if they could land the job.

      • ajsnigrutin · 38 minutes ago

        Sure, but op wants 'good', how much are those people paid? Also, how much does rent in a 20-minute-drive circle around microsoft cost? And proper health insurance? I live in a small european country and i know quite a few people who went this route (usually it's google), and after two-three years of burnout, those people come back, because while earning less in numbers over here, they can get a normal 8 hour job (no overtime, no weekends), proper time off (25, 30 days per year, unlimited sick days of course), and still save enough that even if the social pension system fails, they'll have enough to live comfortably.

  • adamrezich · 51 minutes ago

    I live near Mt. Rushmore. When my mom was a kid, working there during tourist season was a very common summer job for high school kids. Now it's not, because now temporary foreign labor by means of seasonal visa programs, complete with housing, fills those jobs each summer instead. Are American high schoolers physically/mentally unable to do these jobs? Of course not—yet these job opportunities have been taken from them regardless, replaced with what is essentially seasonal foreign-labor indentured servitude.

    • ForHackernews · 4 minutes ago

      Honestly, a lot fewer American teenagers want/are allowed summer jobs these days. They are all focused on doing enrichment activities that will look good on a college application, and low-wage menial jobs don't count for that. I actually think it's a great thing to let young people from around the world have working holidays in America https://www.usit.ie/experiences/working-holidays/j1-usa/

• linkregister · 1 hour ago

  As someone who interviews 10+ candidates per week for high-paying software engineering jobs, the US pool is not big enough to find qualified people. It feels like H1B shouldn't be needed. But empirically, we do need to invite talented people from other countries.

  • budman1 · 1 hour ago

    look harder.

  • disgruntledphd2 · 1 hour ago

    Are you hiring for in office or remote?

  • Kye · 1 hour ago

    That sounds like a serious systemic issue. What are US candidates lacking that you find in candidates elsewhere?

  • OutOfHere · 1 hour ago

    I don't buy your claim of "high-paying". If you don't pay as per US resident and urban standards, good domestic candidates obviously won't bother applying.

  • gosub100 · 1 hour ago

    "qualified" : adj , willing to work for 60% of market rate.

  • sandworm101 · 1 hour ago

    Then pay more or modify your requirements. Stop chasing unicorns.

  • bill_joy_fanboy · 1 hour ago

    When I see a comment like this, all I can say is that I don't believe you. You are a liar.

    • Daishiman · 52 minutes ago

      Do you interview people?