this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
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Those jobs are just gonna disappear. They won’t rehire with citizens.
Disappear in the US and reappear elsewhere.
Right. Probably the entire company will re-open elsewhere. Good job capitalism!
How do you really solve the H-1B problem, though? I do agree that they exploit everyone and that there should be better protections for the workers and ideally a path to citizenship, but the whole corporate appeal of them is how easily exploitable they are. I feel like any effort to "fix" H-1B's is just going to end with the same result.
Which is not me implying that we shouldn't still try, but just ... how?
My armchair take: Don't tie the visa to the employer.
You come in, you get a visa for N years, you can immediately quit and it doesn't affect the visa.
If you had some amazing skill that we needed to import, someone else will want to employ you at the market rate. (If the skill is so amazing/rare, the original employer will be treating the employee like a princess anyway, so why would they leave?)
If you really want, require the original employer to subsidize any unemployment benefits until new employment as a risk to carry and a way to discourage unnecessary use of the visa. ie, make it more expensive than local talent.
Heck that last part might even be a separate solution: tax the crap out of having an H1-B employee to "nominally" cover the govt cost/risk so they cost more than local talent. Suddenly, the only reason to use the visa is for skills you actually can't find locally.
this. the need is for the skills in the country. they should request a visa should be given to someone with the skills and once they are here its up to them to convince them to work for them rather than someone else. Companies should be limited in requests so they better make those deals sweet.
If the reason they want to remove it was to stop the abuse, I might be more open. But it’s not.
Yup and they'll be over in China instead, ramping up their research and development in all areas, giving them the competitive advantage now.
Talk about cutting off your scientific and industrial competitive advantage to spite your racist face.
Thanks Republicans!
The anti-immigrant crowd won't care. It was never about the jobs anyway. This hurts the right people
You going to hire biomedical research post docs from US grad schools? hilarious.
You gonna hire them from Canada? Hilarious.