This was never about talent. It's about companies hiring foreigners on h1b visas at below market wages where their life in the USA is contingent on their job performance forcing them to work harder and longer than their peers to remain in the country. It's a situation that only benefits companies, while harming US citizens who have to compete with the lower wages of foreigners.
I work in a global company. As an interviewer, I don't even know if the person I interview is a US citizen. I don't even know if they live in the US or another country, and I'm probably not allowed to ask. I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same.
I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar, or would they expand their Shanghai or Zurich offices? Are US citizens entitled to work at Google more than others for the sole reason they have a particular citizenship?
The “lack of local talent” is a fallacy. It’s “lack of talent at the prices I want”. Some people don’t take kindly to having their “product” replaced by a 1/2 price aliexpress clone
> Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
Yes, at the lowest wages they can get. Increase supply -> lower prices (wages) -> more corporate profits!
However, there are those who believe that corporate profits are not the highest good. Some of us also care about the earnings of American workers.
Also, "best candidates" alone does not "best company" make. You need people who can work well together—which requires some degree of culture fit. Immigration restrictions help preserve the cultural homogeneity that makes collaboration and social trust possible.
> Yes, at the lowest wages they can get. Increase supply -> lower prices (wages) -> more corporate profits!
I don't understand this.
At least in tech megacorps, immigrants get paid the same as americans. They're also very good, and if they were to hire only americans, their talent pool would be worse. They're not 'cashing in' on cheaper labor.
> At least in tech megacorps, immigrants get paid the same as americans
… which is less than the Americans would otherwise get paid if there were fewer immigrants. A larger labor pool depresses wages for everybody.
> which is less than the Americans would otherwise get paid if there were fewer immigrants
Why do you think so?
Where are all the people good enough to work in Big Tech but they have better options than a job that pays $300k to a new grad?
Your entire comment assumes people of different cultural backgrounds cannot collaborate on technical challenges. As someone who manages a team where almost everyone is from a different country I don't see where you got this from. A Laplace transform is a Laplace transform, whether you learn it in a school in India or Nigeria or Lichtenstein.
Your comment is veering uncomfortably close to bigotry.
> Your entire comment assumes people of different cultural backgrounds cannot collaborate on technical challenges.
No it doesn't. It's not black and white. Of course, some amount of cross-cultural collaboration is not only possible, but desirable. But there are also challenges that need to be managed, and some degree of shared assumptions that need to be instilled. If you don't carefully control and limit immigration to a sustainable level, you get stuff like this: https://slate.com/technology/2022/07/caste-silicon-valley-th...
> I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
Respectfully, this sounds terribly naive.
Why? All big and even medium tech companies have dev offices in EU and India. As example since it's much easier to deal with visas say in Ireland a lot of hiring was shifted to Irish offices.
Having worked at a few large companies, this was the case at all of them. I do think there is a messy middle of companies built on vibes.
There are 2 issues:
1/ Employment provides training and experience. If the h1bs are given access to the jobs (training and experience), then is it the American's fault that they are no longer considered "best"?
2/ h1b increases labor supply, not the demand. More supply, means lower wages for everyone.
1/ Training is only effective if you can fill the function of the job and learn from it. Many software engineering jobs people claim are stolen by H1B hires are filled by human beings more likely to meet the bar. Many American candidates just don’t. Filling a software role is hard.
2/ Demand for software is not static. Good software drives demand for more engineers in many cases, intra or extra-company. There is probably a non zero rate of wage suppression per marginal h1b currently. But an American economy with no h1b employees could feasibly have a much lower average sde salary. It is not an Econ 101 problem.
1/ Training goes all the way down the pipeline to colleges. If x% of students are foreign, then Americans didn't have the opportunity to get the education.
Again... the skill issue falls apart when you consider teams at tech companies having 1 non-American national origin or caste. I'm very skeptical that, between two foreign candidates with the same U.S. education and experience but different national origins, the fact that the candidate whose nationality matches the current team composition is selected can be explained purely as a matter of skill.
2/ Great, lets train up more American engineers to push the demand higher.
People are not as capable as you think they are and software engineering (well) is actually difficult. You cannot just push more people in. People are not fungible.
There is truth to your statement, but high salaries and demand encourage locally capable people to enter the industry.
Consider growth of CS graduates in the past 5 years or the number of people that transitioned into tech (like myself).
In 2026, this signal is not as clear: with the uncertainty of tech, increased output with less labor due to AI, and growing competition amongst workers (citizen or otherwise). We may see a shift in studies to other fields.
> As an interviewer, I don't even know if the person I interview is a US citizen
I don't either, but my guess is almost none are
That seems like a bias you should work on.
If the h1bs are given access to the jobs (training and experience), then is it the American's fault that they are no longer considered "best"?
Google (and friends) famously have teams composed of a single national origin (or caste...). What does that say about their hiring bar?
Google (and friends) are already expanding the Shanghai and Zurich offices.
> Google (and friends) famously have teams composed of a single national origin (or caste...). What does that say about their hiring bar?
That racism isn't only something white people are capable of.
> Companies want the best candidates they can get
Every global company I've worked at has had extensive ethnic networks and sometimes teams of only one ethnicity.
It's painfully obvious that they're not just taking the most qualified candidates.
> I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same.
For some visa classes, the law says you should hire an American citizen if they can do the job - not if they rank first at whiteboards or fizz-buzz.
> If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar
Does it really matter? To a point, obviously, but a lot of people are good enough for the role without being the world's best. The bar for getting into Google has dropped since its early days, and Google keeps breaking profit records quarter after quarter.
This entire "hire the best or nothing" mindset has led to a dysfunctional hiring process that's a pain to both employers and employees, and is prima facie unachievable.
> you should hire an American citizen if they can do the job
I went for a job in the US back in the late 80's (Specialist on hardware).
California it was exceptionally strict. While I was more than qualified it took months of the company advertising in the US, and at the end of it all an American was hired.
The second job for another company in California, same deal except they only advertised in the local newspaper (which felt off), and when I finally got an interview they said they couldn't hire me but recommended places in Mexico to jump the border if I ever wanted a job. Noped out of that fast.
Did eventually get to a spend a couple of years in the US in the 90's. It was the same hoops to jump through as the first company. Wasn't easy or fast.
No idea what it is like now. But I had seen the racism of "They are an immigrant, so they were only hired because we can pay them cheap", not as bad as my Indian co-workers though.
> not if they rank first at whiteboards or fizz-buzz.
As an interviewer, I don't rank candidates. I have my set of questions, some candidates solve them, others don't. You can argue that it's the bar to do your job properly. Should politicians tell big tech companies what's the bar for being a successful SWE?
> When it comes to national interest, the argument for "meritocracy" falls apart quickly.
A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers. I'm not sure what would be the tech industry without them.
> As an interviewer, I don't rank candidates
Someone in your org does - an individual or committee: that's the entire purpose of the hiring pipeline. I've interviewed candidates at multiple companies small and (extremely) big, and interviews always have to give recommendations for ranking purposes (out of 10/100, or (strong-/)yes / maybe / (strong-/)no)
I am not attacking you personally, but the fact remains: in some circumstances hiring "the best" - when they happen to be a non-citizen - can be in contravention with the law depending on the visa class and whether you failed to find an American capable of doing the job.
Don't just take my word for it, big tech companies have lost or settled multiple AG suits because they tried to hide job postings from Americans, e.g. by posting SWE/PM jobs in some podunk, print-only Farmers-Weekly-type magazines.
> A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers.
I fully agree. Unfortunately being skilled doesn't grant them the right to vote, and as young people keep finding out, those who write (and sign) laws care a lot about what actual voters think and feel. You have to get into office first before you can do the hard labor-policy stuff.
> A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers. I'm not sure what would be the tech industry without them.
Relevant historical footnotes: The Manhattan Project [0], where an international team of scientists and engineers built the world's first atomic bomb.
Operation Paperclip [1] where Nazi scientists and engineers were hired by the US government to work on the space program, amongst other things.
and of course, there's this Andrew Grove guy, [2] who convinced the tech industry to obsessively focus on KPIs, for better or worse.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Grove
bingo. capital, talent has no borders.
I was a hiring manager. H1B candidates got exactly the same wage as native born. There were no differences.
Being paid the same as the other guy doesn't necessarily mean the wages themselves stayed the same. Adding H1B candidates to the talent pool exerts downward pressure on salary due to the law of supply and demand. I can't say for sure whether the allure of a green card or threat of deportation play a material factor in lowering the average salary that H1B immigrants are willing to accept. But in an environment where talent is treated as fungible (even if it isn't always so), any such downward pressure affects everyone.
The prevailing wage for H1B software engineers is a very good salary for most software engineers in the world.
It's common for the prevailing wage to be double what that person could earn in their country of origin.
That's the parent's argument. Prevailing wage in country A is X. Prevailing wage in country B is Y, and according to your numbers X > 2Y. Person from country B emigrates to country A and accepts wage 1.9Y, putting downward pressure on the jobs in country A at wage X.
Yeah, I'm agreeing.
You don't need the carrot of a green card or the stick of deportation to make a software engineer on an H1B accept a depressed wage, because it's not depressed relative to their alternatives.
And still exert downward pressure on wages. Just by virtue of having more people in the pool.
This would only make sense if there are a finite number of possible jobs and that more jobs are never added as an economy grows.
This would be interesting data to collect - given some field F, for each immigrant that enters the workforce, what is the delta between:
* The expected marginal increase in supply, from immigrants looking for jobs in F
* The expected marginal increase in demand, from immigrants (or non-immigrants identifying an opportunity) starting companies that need experts in F
And how strongly does that delta correlate with average salary in F?
When they're on visa managers know you can work them harder, especially during the PERM process
The idea is that the "same wage" you are talking about is too low to hire enough employees in the time needed that the company needed so they had to look abroad for people willing to work for that amount.
I was an H1B and this is a fucking lie.
The problem is the H1B visa is a lottery not a points based system. As someone who applied for an H1B 5 times and never got it, despite being highly skilled and having a PhD and a well paying job. The only way in was on an intern visa or an Einstein visa. Insane system
Then fix that. This administration is eager to point out problems and propose "just don't do that" as a solution. The problem is that to them, pretty much everything is a problem, so they're proposing we do nothing.
Actually they get normal wages now. H1B’s get hired because H1B’s are now in hiring, recruiting, HR, etc.. they stack the candidate pool with their own shamelessly. I’ve seen it first hand.
Isn't that a work visa and not an immigrant visa
Employment based and immigrant are not opposite categories of visa - these are orthogonal axes.
There are employment-based nonimmigrant visas like H1B and L1. Being a nonimmigrant visa means it doesn’t grant you a right to immigrate but some (including H1B and L1) are ‘dual intent’ visas meaning you can apply for an immigrant visa while in the US as a nonimmigrant.
There are employment-based immigrant visas, which have categories like EB1, EB2. Like all immigrant visas these are also known as ‘legal permanent residency’, LPR, or ‘green cards’.
There are also non-employment-based visas that are both nonimmigrant (eg visitor visas, student visas) and immigrant (eg family based green cards)
H-1B / L-1 are non-immigrant visas, immigrant visas are green cards yes. Pausing green card processing in consulates after (on sketchy legal grounds) forcing folks to not do adjustment of status for getting an immigrant visa inside the country is, indeed, how the admin is trying to get around doing their job the way the INA intends them to.
H-1B is dual intent, isn't it?
That only means you won't be denied if you express immigration intent during interview. Besides that it's nothing special. There is no special path to GC/naturalization for H1Bs.
If you mean the memo earlier this year, it was about tourist visas and similar doing aos in country when they are not dual intent visas, which makes it iffy.
They explicitly said that for h1b and l1 aos wouldn’t be affected as they are dual intent visas.
Recently[1] Microsoft laid off several thousand domestic employees while simultaneously hiring a couple thousand employer-sponsored-Visa workers.
[1]https://www.newsweek.com/microsoft-layoffs-2026-xbox-h1b-vis...
That is not actually what that article says.
It’s a common pattern to say ‘company X laid off thousands of employees but then applied for thousands of H1B visas’ which very much gives the impression that the company has just fired a few thousand Americans and hired a few thousand foreigners.
What actually happens is: a company has a global workforce of 100000 or so. 50000 of them are in the US. 5000 of them are in the US on H1Bs, 45000 of them are Americans.
Company does a 10% layoff: 4500 Americans, 500 people who are in the us on visas, and 5000 people around the world.
Headline: “Company X lays off 10000”
Then the H1B renewal numbers come out and what do you know company X is applying for 4500 H1Bs, to retain their existing H1B staff who weren’t affected by the layoff.
Headline: “After laying off 10,000 staff company x applies for 4500 H1B visas”
Unstated in such a headline: 5500 of those layoffs were foreigners; the company still employs 40500 Americans.
To bring it back to your point: you cited this article as evidence for the claim that Microsoft laid off ‘thousands of domestic employees’; the article does not say where the thousands of layoffs were and explicitly contains a quote from an MS spokesperson that says “H-1B employees were also impacted by job eliminations in the U.S.”
OP and you are obviously on different end of the spectrum. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
As a hiring manager no one tells you who is an immigrant and who isn’t when you interview them.
As an interviewee I've read "we're not sponsoring visas at this time" a million times.
At the HR/JD level, not at the actual interview.
The news is about immigrant visas and H1B is temporary non-immigrant visa...
There are minimum salary requirements for H1-B visas which are actually above market rate. Be careful, your racism shows.
And yet, they never applied the simple option of ranking the visa applications by salary, and approving in order of demand for the talent.
That would be a market based solution that allows everyone to get the talent they need without driving down American wages.
But the point isn't about helping Americans, it's about being peedormatively against letting in brown people.
They are doing that now too, however the problem is that h1b is used for roles outside of tech, believe it or not, and if you measure everything by Bay Area tech salaries a bunch of necessary but lower paying jobs will go unfilled
If it's truly necessary, the fact that it's unfilled would be directly related to it being low paid.
And if the employer isn't willing to pay the cost of labor to fill the position, it directly raises the question of whether its "necessary".
They can pay more, or hire American.
How does companies hiring h1b-holders (a non-immigrant visa) relate to a pause on immigrant visa applications?
Oh cool, good thing labor isn't fungible and nobody ever outsources.
What a brilliant plan. Lets make sure that we restrict the supply of doctors and medical personell, that's sure to improve care!