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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   33783 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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H1Bs now require a $100k payment per year (I believe, seeing some remarks saying it might be per visa) to the government due to Donald Trump executive order, plus if you are currently overseas and hold a H1B you need to pay $100k effective immediately on your next entry into the USA if you are not within the country by the 20th of September.

As a foreign non-Lawyer I don't know how effective this is going to be/liable to be immediately derailed in the courts, but I do think it's a positive step towards ensuring skilled immigration is used for the genuinely effective instead of ye olde 'I can import a foreigner who I have more power over at a 10% discount rate to domestic workers'. I'm also deeply skeptical of the 'productivity' of the vast majority of tech H1B hires and wish them the best of luck in attempting to offshore the competencies required to make AI-powered Grindr for Daily Fantasy Sports

Well there goes most of my complaints.

To be clear:

1.) This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition.

2.) Those who already hold H-1B visas and are currently outside of the country right now will NOT be charged $100,000 to re-enter.

H-1B visa holders can leave and re-enter the country to the same extent as they normally would; whatever ability they have to do that is not impacted by yesterday’s proclamation.

3.) This applies only to new visas, not renewals, and not current visa holders.

It will first apply in the next upcoming lottery cycle.

I'm surprised they removed the fee for renewals too.

Jeez-us. I mean, great that they've walked it back to a more sensible policy. But they literally had people convinced that anybody abroad would be paying a $100k fee to re-enter tomorrow. Apple's immigration lawyers sent me an official communique about this. It's the tariffs all over again. Sowing this kind of certainty is not ok.

Trump may not be Hitler, but he might be Hilter.

Right after Lutnick said yesterday that it would be an annual fee. LOL.

This administration acts weird. Announcing tariffs and then cancelling them, leaving manufacturing companies with no idea how to plan in the long term. Waving H1-B red meat in front of the voters and then snatching it away. Strange messaging.

And yet I'm here arguing with people who seem to think that the administration hasn't started any major wars yet, so its relationship with the truth is actually better than previous presidents, don't you get it?

Sort of like when driving, it's often more important to be predictable than anything else, big democratic economies like ours work best when there's some general stability and transparency. Bad communication leads to inefficiency and I believe it's partly why the economy is doing so poorly.

Sort of like when driving, it's often more important to be predictable than anything else, big democratic economies like ours work best when there's some general stability and transparency

I know what you mean and I don’t even disagree but equally stable, predictable managed decline like we have in the UK isn’t good either. It can be worth a bit of uncomfortable screwing around if that gets you out of a stable attractor.

Assuming it gets you into a better attractor

Of course. But you can't know until you try, so ultimately it's just a question of how dissatisfied you are with the status quo.

Ok, this turns the proposal from an absolute joke into something that you can put a (thin) veneer of respect on, which makes it much more dangerous as it might actually stick.

Of course I'm sure the original proposal from Trump himself was a $100k yearly/each entry fee and now footsoldiers of the administration in their characteristic fashion are trying to sanewash the policy.

Why was it an absolute joke, according to you?

I mean the whole idea that the correct thing to tax was every single entry of an H-1B worker into the US in the first place is ludicrous. Even if you believe H-1B workers damage the US the amount of damage they cause doesn't change if they take 0 or 4 visits outside the US for holidays/on work/to visit family etc. etc., there's no sensible reason why anyone would decide it's the individual entry of a H-1B worker into the US which causes detriment (not to mention the complete silence on how entries of people who are dependents of the H-1B worker would be handled). Calling the policy half-baked would be doing it a credit.

Ah, you're critiquing the details of the policy, not the idea of the policy.

Well yes, as with so many things Trump, the implementation concept is strange, the members of administration seem to not be on the same page about what it entails, and it's likely to be walked back.

Yeah, a $100,000 one-time fee feels a little high, but it's not a disaster (except to the Indian consulting companies, who totally deserve it). Still has Major Questions problems though; Trump is attempting to build an entirely new regulatory structure on a provision that simply allows denying or restricting classes of aliens. He's also claiming H-1Bs are harmful when I'm pretty sure the legislation establishing the visa says otherwise. If Roberts had any balls I'd expect this to fail, but it seems to me the prevailing winds have changed in Trump's favor and the wimpy move is to allow this to stand.

Still has Major Questions problems though

Which is silly because the law already allows the administration to set the salary floor for H1Bs and you can easily convince yourself that you can raise exactly the same revenue that way, using authority you already have.

One of the most common tools of effective leadership (LBJ was famous for this) is deciding what you want to do and then finding an existing legal authority for doing it.

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