Readers at Washington post have changed attitudes towards H-1B

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the 90s when I was an adventurous graduate I went to Hong Kong on a whim and got a job at a local company as an interior designer. The company applied for a work visa for me.
When I went to the visa office for the interview, I was aggressively asked why my job could not be done by a local Hong Konger. I was also asked what made my skills and education so special that they needed to hire me.
Those questions stayed with me for a long time because they were valid questions. I am Chinese (but not from British Hong Kong) and this interaction really made me think.
I did get get issued a work visa in the end.

Did you feel entitled to a job in Hong Kong?

Do you attack the Hong Kong government for not helping you get a job?

Like the Indians do?

No, I didn't feel entitled to it but it did make me wonder about American assumptions. I left that meeting wondering why the US doesn't protect its American workers the way that visa agent was for HKG. I could not disagree with his position.

I think Elon Musk answered that question for you when he suggested shutting down USAID for fraud. Our foreign agents were never working for us, they were always out for themselves

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lots of American kids want to be doctors. There is no reason to import foreign ones. The reason there are so many Indian doctors compared to Americans has nothing to do with skill or intelligence - it's that it costs roughly $6000 to become a doctor an all of 6 years in India - whereas in the US it is 10+ years and $300,000.

Lots of Indian-Americans and other Asian-Americans become doctors in US because they have the academic chops to study medicine, + their parents and family will sacrifice to fund them and support them.

There are lots of people who are tired of hearing about Asian family "sacrifice" for their children.
A casual perusal of the college threads will demonstrate that families of ALL ethnicities sacrifice a lot for their children. The gnashing about +90K tuition value, delaying having children until they acquire real estate in Bethesda/McLean, the handwringing over the impact of travel sports on family life, moving just to be in a better school pyramid, etc....
We all make decisions on behalf of the children. That's not sacrifice. It's called parenting.

Correct, it's just that Asian families go beyond the parent-child relationship where you are also expected to sacrifice for extended family. A coworker told me that she had to help pay for all her nieces and nephews educations in addition to her own children's (and the siblings helped hers in turn.) This is in contrast to American families where siblings will stop speaking to each other because someone voted the wrong way.

Asian here. It's a form of creating further enmeshment via family obligations. I've seen petty and extreme forms of this performing favors in expectation of future return.

My Asian dad paid for his nephews wedding and condos, and left me eating 1 meal per day throughout middle and high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gift article

https://wapo.st/4s7tygh

Thanks for the gift link. I hate everything Donald Trump stands for and all his lying and thieving. However, this is something I can get behind. I think the abuse of the H1B visa is or should be a bipartisan issue. There is no reason that a kid graduating from undergrad in engineering or computer science should not be hired over someone who obtained a similar situated job through the India H1B hiring mill. Ridiculous. Microsoft, Google, Meta, IBM, Amazon all fired thousands of tech workers in 2025, I guess now some of these American employees might have a chance of getting one of those jobs that Microsoft, Google, Meta, IBM, Amazon has been holding for H1B worker.

Agreed. My brother, who has at least a 3.9 from a flagship state university, can’t even find an internship and graduate right now from a computer science degree. My husband lost his FAANG job and ended up as a fed (before current administration) after 6 months of searching. I think we’re set on H1Bs in tech. Plus H1Bs tend to be exploited more, so it’s not a great system for them either.

[Anonymous]

Great news!!!!

The PERM program has been shut down by our activism.

I just reviewed the 2025 Q4 DOL Data.

There are 1426 PERM applications that have had newspaper ads run this year. Only researched this subset of 10,000 applications .

But for this subset from 2025 - Only 2 were CERTIFIED.

All others WITHDRAWN or DENIED.

Thank you to https://www.jobs.now/

[Anonymous]

Foreign students should be capped at 5% (truly the best of the best) AND they should be charged much higher fees than American citizens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great news!!!!

The PERM program has been shut down by our activism.

I just reviewed the 2025 Q4 DOL Data.

There are 1426 PERM applications that have had newspaper ads run this year. Only researched this subset of 10,000 applications .

But for this subset from 2025 - Only 2 were CERTIFIED.

All others WITHDRAWN or DENIED.

Thank you to https://www.jobs.now/

I wish this is true.

This is entirely false. Pure misinformation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Foreign students should be capped at 5% (truly the best of the best) AND they should be charged much higher fees than American citizens.

I think you need to do one or the other. Like cap it at 5% and you are either recruiting the best of the best (and giving them incentives for coming the US in order to induce them not only to come for college but to stay here after), OR you cap it at 5% and have more normal standards but charge them an insane amount.

If you try to do both it won't work because the people who can afford to pay really high fees PLUS travel to the US and pay the higher cost of living here easily, are not necessarily the best of the best. Those are just the offspring of the ultra-wealthy in places like Singapore and Hong Kong. Maybe Russian oligarch kids, etc. If you want the best of the best, you need to be able to compete with what they might be offered elsewhere. Cambridge would offer a truly extraordinary student free tuition and room and board and a guaranteed work visa for a certain length of time after graduation, for instance. You want Harvard to be able to offer the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gift article

https://wapo.st/4s7tygh

Thanks for the gift link. I hate everything Donald Trump stands for and all his lying and thieving. However, this is something I can get behind. I think the abuse of the H1B visa is or should be a bipartisan issue. There is no reason that a kid graduating from undergrad in engineering or computer science should not be hired over someone who obtained a similar situated job through the India H1B hiring mill. Ridiculous. Microsoft, Google, Meta, IBM, Amazon all fired thousands of tech workers in 2025, I guess now some of these American employees might have a chance of getting one of those jobs that Microsoft, Google, Meta, IBM, Amazon has been holding for H1B worker.

Agreed. My brother, who has at least a 3.9 from a flagship state university, can’t even find an internship and graduate right now from a computer science degree. My husband lost his FAANG job and ended up as a fed (before current administration) after 6 months of searching. I think we’re set on H1Bs in tech. Plus H1Bs tend to be exploited more, so it’s not a great system for them either.

A big part of the problem is the tech industry exploiting a combination of factors in order to capture capital. They pushed hard for schools to expand computer science programs so that they would have more graduates to choose from (and be able to pay them less -- the more competition there is for these jobs, the lower the pay). At the same time they pushed for expansion of H1B for the same reasons. More workers for fewer jobs, leads to lower pay and less competition among firms for workers because the market is flooded.

And then at the same time, they are developing AI that will replace the demand for both the US grads AND the H1B workers. Or they can use the H1B workers at a lower cost to oversee the AI. If they get rid of H1B, they just offshore those oversight roles. American grads are SOL either way.

This is also partly the result of American companies for years demanding that college graduates appear in entry level positions in need of little or no training. That what they dont' have to invest in workers, making them more disposable.

All fo this could be solved by passing laws demanding tech companies, and all companies, follow some minimal standards that will help support an American workforce. But the tech industry has captured the federal governement (both parties) so that's not happening any time soon either.

This is the result of American-style capitalism. H1B was just one tool in an overall scheme.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They also need to fix what is happening at our top universities.

My kid is at one of the top 12 engineering schools.

Easily 30-35% of the students in the program are foreign students, many from hostile adversarial countries.

We know of several incredibly talented kids from our local high school with the same stats as my kid, or better stars, who also applied to that school and were rejected.

Before anyone says well the foreign students are smarter and more hard working than the American kids, my kid coming out of northern Virginia public schools is holding their own with these foreign students, with a more difficult program than many of those kids due to a double major, and my kid was not the smartest or most prepared of the top students at their public high school. I am sure there are hundreds or perhaps close to a thousand kids in just the DC area public and private schools who are just as smart, prepared, hard working and capable of those foreign students, who should have been accepted into the top engineering programs in this country.

I am very supportive of putting a hard cap, maybe 10%, on the percentage of foreign students allowed into any security critical degree program such as sciences and engineering, at any university that receives a dime of federal aide, grants, pell grants or federal loans

We have American kids prepared, brilliant and innovative enough to fill our engineering schools.

This needs to be fixed, not just the work visas.

I majored in chemistry at Michigan in the 2000s and my program was easily majority foreign. It makes science unappealing because the foreign students stick together like glue making friendships and socializing impossible for American-born kids.. American women have no one to date when all the American men in their classes are enamored with quiet-as-mice Chinese girls. The elective classes I took were the only places to meet people. It's obvious why American kids opt for business majors...more fun.

American kids are applying for these stem programs... with stellar stats.

The universities are choosing international students over American students.

There are qualified, talented US students who could pack our top university programs several times over.

My kid wasn't the top kid from our high school applying to this school, but they got the holden ticket. There were many equally or superior classmates who were rejected from this program and similar programs, who would have been hust as successful as my kid and just as successful as any international student in the program.

Something is very broken with the system pushing away talented American students in favor of students from countries that are open enemies to the US.

t's not just in STEM. People on DCUM don't discuss this because it's so niche, but in the arts many top undergrad programs/conservatories have very large international enrollment. Julliard for example is over 30% international for undergrad and 40% for grad. They don't break their numbers down by department, but my guess is that if you could look at the data for just music students it would be an even larger percentage of international students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Foreign students should be capped at 5% (truly the best of the best) AND they should be charged much higher fees than American citizens.

Just make it mandatory to have gone through 4 year education in a US institution. We shouldn’t air lift someone with sub par / dirt cheap college degrees from another country and have them on payroll on day one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They also need to fix what is happening at our top universities.

My kid is at one of the top 12 engineering schools.

Easily 30-35% of the students in the program are foreign students, many from hostile adversarial countries.

We know of several incredibly talented kids from our local high school with the same stats as my kid, or better stars, who also applied to that school and were rejected.

Before anyone says well the foreign students are smarter and more hard working than the American kids, my kid coming out of northern Virginia public schools is holding their own with these foreign students, with a more difficult program than many of those kids due to a double major, and my kid was not the smartest or most prepared of the top students at their public high school. I am sure there are hundreds or perhaps close to a thousand kids in just the DC area public and private schools who are just as smart, prepared, hard working and capable of those foreign students, who should have been accepted into the top engineering programs in this country.

I am very supportive of putting a hard cap, maybe 10%, on the percentage of foreign students allowed into any security critical degree program such as sciences and engineering, at any university that receives a dime of federal aide, grants, pell grants or federal loans

We have American kids prepared, brilliant and innovative enough to fill our engineering schools.

This needs to be fixed, not just the work visas.

I majored in chemistry at Michigan in the 2000s and my program was easily majority foreign. It makes science unappealing because the foreign students stick together like glue making friendships and socializing impossible for American-born kids.. American women have no one to date when all the American men in their classes are enamored with quiet-as-mice Chinese girls. The elective classes I took were the only places to meet people. It's obvious why American kids opt for business majors...more fun.

American kids are applying for these stem programs... with stellar stats.

The universities are choosing international students over American students.

There are qualified, talented US students who could pack our top university programs several times over.

My kid wasn't the top kid from our high school applying to this school, but they got the holden ticket. There were many equally or superior classmates who were rejected from this program and similar programs, who would have been hust as successful as my kid and just as successful as any international student in the program.

Something is very broken with the system pushing away talented American students in favor of students from countries that are open enemies to the US.

t's not just in STEM. People on DCUM don't discuss this because it's so niche, but in the arts many top undergrad programs/conservatories have very large international enrollment. Julliard for example is over 30% international for undergrad and 40% for grad. They don't break their numbers down by department, but my guess is that if you could look at the data for just music students it would be an even larger percentage of international students.

Art is different, you are paying 100k for arts education to come out and make 32k/year.

[Anonymous]

Did you know that the federal government was subsidizing homeownership loans for Indian H-1Bs? And did you know that Trump just killed that program?

Got what I voted for again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did you know that the federal government was subsidizing homeownership loans for Indian H-1Bs? And did you know that Trump just killed that program?

Got what I voted for again.

FHA loan access ends for H-1B visa holders and other non-permanent residents, squeezing them out of US housing market

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/invest/fha-loan-access-ends-for-h-1b-visa-holders-and-other-non-permanent-residents-squeezing-them-out-of-us-housing-market/articleshow/124622829.cms?from=mdr

why is the US taxpayer subsidizing home purchases for foreigners on a temporary work visa, a work visa for 3 years in which they are supposed to go back home afterwards??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did you know that the federal government was subsidizing homeownership loans for Indian H-1Bs? And did you know that Trump just killed that program?

Got what I voted for again.

Ashburn hit hardest.

[Anonymous]

I am 100% behind getting rid of the H-1B program. It is a giveaway to tech companies and disincentivizes American kids from working hard (there is literally no hope in some career fields, it doesn't matter how good you are.) It is a scam, it's always been a scam, and now it's worse as H-1Bs are creating insular "we only hire our nationality" companies and departments.