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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
I think the modal American at this point has just had enough of the velocity of the demographic changes. And the short-term lockout effect where we seem to be importing the upper middle class rather than growing our own natives into it. Long-term it’s probably true that this kind of immigration is good for the economy and makes the pie larger for everybody, but it’s just too much too fast. Every professional job given to an immigrant is a loss for an American that could have grown into it, and god forbid the company actually trains people into it.
So I don’t really care about these immigrants, many of them my coworkers, who I agree are clean and relatively polite, orderly, etc. I want America to feel American, these people do not feel American, they are civil but distinctly not American.
My 22-year old cousin joined the wave of CS grads and had an absolutely brutal time finding a job. He’s probably not FAANG-level but he can absolutely do any of the bullshit WITCH jobs or be a database maintainer for some bank or insurance company. He was ready to go be a car mechanic like his father until he was lucky enough to get a bank to hire him on a temp basis about one year after he graduated. In real-time, this is the cost of the H1B program and the disgusting fraud associated with it. A young man, born in America, trying to better himself through education so he can be better than his car mechanic father, and he had to scratch and claw to find a temporary CS job in the 21st century in America despite being 100% capable because we somehow decided actually millions of dudes from India were necessary instead. Now play this out on a widespread scale in the aggregate and we see how damaging this shit actually is.
It doesn't. Countries with mass immigration like the UK, Canada, and Australia (most of Europe is not far behind) have had negative real GDP per capita growth in recent years (despite massive and increasing government spending as a major contributor to GDP I might add). US still has positive real GDP per capita growth, but that's probably due to US having a larger population able to absorb more immigration and the fact the US is still the centre of technology and innovation.
The pie technically does get bigger, but the number of people who eat the pie outpaces it. Liberal politicians love it, because it does technically grow GDP even if it makes their countrymen individually poorer. I'm reminded of the fact that Boris Johnson increased immigration ("Boriswave") because he wanted positive press coverage from the Financial Times. Any GDP growth is probably captured by the rich anyway, due to the wage suppression caused by immigration among other things.
Maybe once upon a time immigration does increase GDP (per capita) when immigrants were of a higher quality, able to integrate well, and came over to work and had no expectation of being supported by the state. Those days are long gone.
Apples and oranges. H1-B's are a tiny fraction of the total immigrant population and are selected for education and skills. The process could certainly be made more selective, but in no way does it compare to the kind of mass influx seen in Canada, Europe, or across the southern border.
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