Good analysis, but who is listening? What lawmaker or political coalition is going to turn this around?
Also, the H-1B program is even worse than you lay out here. It has transformed—and as a result ruined—entire neighborhoods and cities, with the only benefit being that these supposedly intelligent people usually pay more for real estate than they should, giving the native sellers an easier exit strategy from the mess.
Explaining the logic is not enough, but when it comes time to have that conversation with a congressman, having a factual and defensible article like this to show them goes a long way.
It’s been a bane for native born IT workers. I assure you that many of them are paid at least 40% less than the prevailing wage and are often woefully under skilled. The thing is that AI is rumored to be cutting into the lower ranks of IT, and this may well reduce the demand for the H1-B. I agree the whole program should be scrapped.
not only that - the "immature" comment by a still wet behind the ears "journalist" trying to cut his teeth in the industry is a foolish attempt to seem informed and relevant. He hasn't yet learned not to insult his audience if he wants to make inroads with them intellectually...
Thank you. Just.....thank you. As an American graduate student in a top American University, my chance at a career was destroyed in part because of the H1B competition for positions. H1B's are the "illegal immigrants" of the educated world where they bring with them a cutthroat attitude because they want to rise from their country and will do anything once here to satisfy their slaveholder or be sent back if fired. So an American is not geared to such competition because an American will not be treated the way an H1B will be allow himself to be treated thus changing the overall culture of the educational institutions. Illegal immigrants will work for less and do more work simply because they are threatened with being forced out. This makes H1B's more desirable than an American with an ego. Who does an employer want? A slave or a free-willed individual. Slaves are nice. And Americans are forced to compete with them by becoming like them.
Even if all Americans were ego less, we can’t sign away our rights to quit and remain in the country. So no matter how we act or how much we will work, employers have one less lever with which to exert force on us.
I agree with your subheading completely. Thought you were talking about Congress or DOJ at first, but no, you were talking about the H1B program. It’s been a legal form of indentured servitude for decades, so yeah, it needs to go.
If you have policies that increase the number of aspiring elites through immigration while you are already overproducing elites through excessive college enrollment, you might be looking for serious trouble. Check out @peterturchin and his theories.
Diversity can be a strength, but not in the mold of the last administration - you can only import 3rd world peoples for so long, before we become 3rd world ourselves.
REGULATED immigration of the best and brightest, excluding those with an extremist ideology largely, could very well be a strength, but that's not where we are any longer...
I aqgee. My toughts went back to a prior employer of mine that brought in an Indian Lab Technician under a H1B for a job that could have been done by any reasonably competent HS graduate.
I was privileged to work with some fine people who came here on the H1-B visas, but was singularly unimpressed when they started families here that allowed them to stay indefinitely. I only know of one of my colleagues who returned to her homeland when her visa expired; the rest stayed and presumably are still here.
I never knew until now that companies don't have to prove they looked for a qualified hire in America before petitioning for a foreign worker using the H-1B visa. That right there opens the door to a flood of foreign workers taking the jobs of Americans!!!
I also wondered how could we not have our own qualified workers when we have most of the best universities in the world? I mean, everyone elsewhere wants to study here. This H-1B visa thing seemed fishy from the start.
Then, even though they're supposed to be ultra-qualified and no American can do that job, to learn they can be paid at rates lower than their supposedly subpar American counterparts. No wonder so many companies want the H-1B visa. These companies don't seem very patriotic, by the way. I was born and live in Silicon Valley, and many, many Indians work at tech companies here.
It's time, or shall we say, it's way past time, to abolish the H-1B visa.
H1-Bs are definitely not cheap, not sure from where the author is sourcing his information. H1-Bs are among the best paid workers in the country. The author's description makes it sound like H1-Bs are working in the tech industry on minimum wage.
There is so much BS being thrown around with respect to the H1-B program by people who know nothing about how the tech industry works today.
One important issue that is not high lighted at all. The H-1B visa is issued ONLY for 40 hours per week maximum. Almost all companies make H-1B holders to work for 60-90 hours per week. This is violation of law still most companies do it. This way per hour wage is reduced to less than half. Employer do not have to pay any extra benefit as medical, 401 K, social security etc. remain same. Employees in India are made to work even more as they are promised of H-1B, L-1, J-1m B-1 etc. visa sponsorship. This enhances outsourcing.
The way around that is to hire them on as salary exempt. That way they can be made to work any number of hours, as long as their effective rate doesn't drop below minimum wage.
Worth noting that the Department of Labor is consiering a change to how prevailing wage rates are set that it argues will "essentially end wage arbitrage," i.e. the ability to pay visa holders less than similarly qualified Americans doing the same job. More here:
The article is overly simplistic and flawed in many ways. I am glad that the Trump administration has taken a much better strategy than ‘throwing the baby out with bath water’ approach that the author is advocating. The sausage making of any legislature is never pretty. That alone should not be the reason to abandon it. The scale of abuse of the H1B visa is magnitude less than the Biden legacy of open border policies that allowed 10+ million of illegal immigrants into our great country. Throwing the two problems into the same basket as the author did is just as bad politics as the legislative abuse of the H1B visa program. I came to this country on the original H-1 visa and have worked in the IT industry for more than 20 years. Yes, H1B visa has been abused. But the story is more nuanced than the author attempted to depict or mislead. I wrote about it when it first blew up in 2024. https://yansong.substack.com/p/the-h1b-controversy?r=o1gg5&utm_medium=ios
Good analysis, but who is listening? What lawmaker or political coalition is going to turn this around?
Also, the H-1B program is even worse than you lay out here. It has transformed—and as a result ruined—entire neighborhoods and cities, with the only benefit being that these supposedly intelligent people usually pay more for real estate than they should, giving the native sellers an easier exit strategy from the mess.
Explaining the logic is not enough, but when it comes time to have that conversation with a congressman, having a factual and defensible article like this to show them goes a long way.
It is interesting that the those that praise China's Green "cost effective" technology ignore both the pollution issues (https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/03/rare-earths-race-risks-environmental-disaster ) and the labor issues inside and now outside of China even by the top company BYD (see https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-14/byd-accused-by-labor-rights-group-of-violations-at-hungary-plant and https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/brazils-top-labor-inspector-fired-190110706.html. It may be that the entire full EV car growth is itself not sustainable.
Great article thanks Sam. Keep'em coming very interesting.
It’s been a bane for native born IT workers. I assure you that many of them are paid at least 40% less than the prevailing wage and are often woefully under skilled. The thing is that AI is rumored to be cutting into the lower ranks of IT, and this may well reduce the demand for the H1-B. I agree the whole program should be scrapped.
Boomer here and not nostalgic for Dole or Ted Kennedy. I loathed them then and still do. Just stop that crap
not only that - the "immature" comment by a still wet behind the ears "journalist" trying to cut his teeth in the industry is a foolish attempt to seem informed and relevant. He hasn't yet learned not to insult his audience if he wants to make inroads with them intellectually...
Thank you. Just.....thank you. As an American graduate student in a top American University, my chance at a career was destroyed in part because of the H1B competition for positions. H1B's are the "illegal immigrants" of the educated world where they bring with them a cutthroat attitude because they want to rise from their country and will do anything once here to satisfy their slaveholder or be sent back if fired. So an American is not geared to such competition because an American will not be treated the way an H1B will be allow himself to be treated thus changing the overall culture of the educational institutions. Illegal immigrants will work for less and do more work simply because they are threatened with being forced out. This makes H1B's more desirable than an American with an ego. Who does an employer want? A slave or a free-willed individual. Slaves are nice. And Americans are forced to compete with them by becoming like them.
Even if all Americans were ego less, we can’t sign away our rights to quit and remain in the country. So no matter how we act or how much we will work, employers have one less lever with which to exert force on us.
I agree with your subheading completely. Thought you were talking about Congress or DOJ at first, but no, you were talking about the H1B program. It’s been a legal form of indentured servitude for decades, so yeah, it needs to go.
If you have policies that increase the number of aspiring elites through immigration while you are already overproducing elites through excessive college enrollment, you might be looking for serious trouble. Check out @peterturchin and his theories.
Yeah. Elite overproduction is definitely a thing.
Yale recently added 2 more residential colleges.
I was opposed, but they did not listen. . .
The competition just got a little bit harder, for the recent graduates.
Diversity has never been a strength.
Overly broad and lacks context.
Diversity can be a strength, but not in the mold of the last administration - you can only import 3rd world peoples for so long, before we become 3rd world ourselves.
REGULATED immigration of the best and brightest, excluding those with an extremist ideology largely, could very well be a strength, but that's not where we are any longer...
I aqgee. My toughts went back to a prior employer of mine that brought in an Indian Lab Technician under a H1B for a job that could have been done by any reasonably competent HS graduate.
H1-B Delenda Est.
I was privileged to work with some fine people who came here on the H1-B visas, but was singularly unimpressed when they started families here that allowed them to stay indefinitely. I only know of one of my colleagues who returned to her homeland when her visa expired; the rest stayed and presumably are still here.
I never knew until now that companies don't have to prove they looked for a qualified hire in America before petitioning for a foreign worker using the H-1B visa. That right there opens the door to a flood of foreign workers taking the jobs of Americans!!!
I also wondered how could we not have our own qualified workers when we have most of the best universities in the world? I mean, everyone elsewhere wants to study here. This H-1B visa thing seemed fishy from the start.
Then, even though they're supposed to be ultra-qualified and no American can do that job, to learn they can be paid at rates lower than their supposedly subpar American counterparts. No wonder so many companies want the H-1B visa. These companies don't seem very patriotic, by the way. I was born and live in Silicon Valley, and many, many Indians work at tech companies here.
It's time, or shall we say, it's way past time, to abolish the H-1B visa.
H1-Bs are definitely not cheap, not sure from where the author is sourcing his information. H1-Bs are among the best paid workers in the country. The author's description makes it sound like H1-Bs are working in the tech industry on minimum wage.
There is so much BS being thrown around with respect to the H1-B program by people who know nothing about how the tech industry works today.
Having been displaced more than once by the much cheaper (and less experienced) visa imports, I have to disagree.
One important issue that is not high lighted at all. The H-1B visa is issued ONLY for 40 hours per week maximum. Almost all companies make H-1B holders to work for 60-90 hours per week. This is violation of law still most companies do it. This way per hour wage is reduced to less than half. Employer do not have to pay any extra benefit as medical, 401 K, social security etc. remain same. Employees in India are made to work even more as they are promised of H-1B, L-1, J-1m B-1 etc. visa sponsorship. This enhances outsourcing.
The way around that is to hire them on as salary exempt. That way they can be made to work any number of hours, as long as their effective rate doesn't drop below minimum wage.
Worth noting that the Department of Labor is consiering a change to how prevailing wage rates are set that it argues will "essentially end wage arbitrage," i.e. the ability to pay visa holders less than similarly qualified Americans doing the same job. More here:
https://ifp.org/prevailing-wage-benchmarking/
The article is overly simplistic and flawed in many ways. I am glad that the Trump administration has taken a much better strategy than ‘throwing the baby out with bath water’ approach that the author is advocating. The sausage making of any legislature is never pretty. That alone should not be the reason to abandon it. The scale of abuse of the H1B visa is magnitude less than the Biden legacy of open border policies that allowed 10+ million of illegal immigrants into our great country. Throwing the two problems into the same basket as the author did is just as bad politics as the legislative abuse of the H1B visa program. I came to this country on the original H-1 visa and have worked in the IT industry for more than 20 years. Yes, H1B visa has been abused. But the story is more nuanced than the author attempted to depict or mislead. I wrote about it when it first blew up in 2024. https://yansong.substack.com/p/the-h1b-controversy?r=o1gg5&utm_medium=ios
Go home.