F%$# Me! Another Stopped Clock!

Donald Trump has announced a $100,000.00 fee to apply for an H1B visa.

For those of you unfamiliar with this visa, it is supposed to allow non-citizen workers with unique skills to live and work in the United States.

There have for many years been credible allegations (incredibly credible allegations) that employers have used the visa program to get cheap labor and lower wages.

While a flat fee is not my preferred mechanism, I have suggested an auction system, along with making the limits monthly rather than annual, so that smaller companies can use the program more easily, but it this fee is much better than the status quo.

Here is the money quote for this article:

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Congress started the H-1B scheme with the Immigration Act of 1990 as an effort to plug a gap in America's technology workforce and allow highly skilled foreign workers to come into the country, and bring their families with them. Now foreign workers make up nearly 20 percent of the US STEM workforce, and a much higher percentage in Silicon Valley.

Employers love the scheme, Professor Hira said, since it essentially provides indentured workers who face the prospect of being deported if their employer lets them go. While wage levels are supposed to be equal to local salaries, the same doesn't apply to overtime, he pointed out, and companies have become adept at gaming the salary scheme by reclassifying job positions.

Outsourcing companies such as Tata, which had the second-highest number of H-1B petition approvals in FY2025 with 5,505, are going to be hit hardest by the proclamation, unless they are friends with the Secretary of Homeland Security. Such firms, including Infosys (2,004 visas granted) and Wipro (1,523), are renowned for filing massive numbers of H-1B requests and fitting in workers for even relatively low-skilled jobs. Such a high fee level, if enforced, could kill that market dynamic.

The real goal of this program has always been indentured servitude and wage suppression.

This is a good first step at fixing it.