# Unintended Consequences From $100k Visas? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 22, 2025, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317 "2025-09-22T23:30:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2025, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/41 "2025-09-23T23:13:48Z")
Seems uttrrly clear & obvious to me. Substiute “talent+skill” for “IQ” in the earlier posts and the same logic applies. The distribution is long-tailed, and big successful companies need a large number of people from the far strong end of the talent+skill curve. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2025, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/42 "2025-09-23T23:35:17Z")
I’m not a genius so I feel free to ask a possibly stupid question: why does a programmer elite class need to live on site? Why not hire to collaborate as a telecommute with occasional travel for rare need? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2025, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/43 "2025-09-23T23:59:56Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > why does a programmer elite class need to live on site? Why not hire to collaborate as a telecommute with occasional travel for rare need? We do, do that. But, particularly with a ~12 hour time difference, there’s a day’s lag in any Q&A. Just imagine that @DMC and I were having the above conversation, where we each had to wait 12 hours, before getting a response and being able to issue a reply. That’s a few days down the toilet, just to arrive at a dead-ended conversation over misreadings, before you finally determine that you’ve just got to call a real meeting and work through things in real-time. The two groups are just on different thought lines, and nothing short of a sit-down will correct it. If HQ is in the US, having people in the US is important. Maybe, if you’ve developed a crew of designers, business managers, etc. then you can cede whole projects and products to be owned and lead out of India (or whichever location), but it’s generally a big tar pit when you’ve got to coordinate intricate maneuvers over the time gap. Outside of that case, you generally need to pass over requests for stand-alone tools that are purely internal, or help in monitoring things around the clock. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/44 "2025-09-24T00:18:54Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > I’m not a genius so I feel free to ask a possibly stupid question: why does a programmer elite class need to live on site? Why not hire to collaborate as a telecommute with occasional travel for rare need? My company won’t even allow remote employees in California or New York because we don’t want to deal with the employment laws there. An employer needs to be able to deal with a different set of employment laws, taxes, language barriers, culture, and sometimes even security concerns. Obviously this isn’t an insurmountable problem for all businesses, but even some companies with thousands of employees is going to find it difficult to move everything overseas. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/45 "2025-09-24T00:24:16Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Fair enough, I just wanted to make sure that we’re in agreement about what constitutes a real source and a fake one. My first source, from a Well known College is a real one, despite your opinion. You can certainly disagree with it, but it is very real. > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > More importantly, the $100k thing doesn’t help with any of that. Yes, I already said that. We agree here, trump tried to solve a complex issue with a hammer. > [@Odesio](#): > > My company won’t even allow remote employees in California or New York because we don’t want to deal with the employment laws there. An employer needs to be able to deal with a different set of employment laws, taxes, language barriers, culture, and sometimes even security concerns. That isnt as good look, imho. When i was consulting the company hired an outsourcing company, who paid me, by W2 with all legal benefits. They were competent to handle all state laws. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/46 "2025-09-24T00:25:41Z")
All 50 state employment laws is a considerably less complex set than international employment law. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/47 "2025-09-24T00:26:29Z")
I’m wondering if an unintended consequence could be hiring a bunch of people in India to work remotely. My son just spent nearly 3 weeks visiting us and kept on working the whole time. I don’t think his employer even knew he wasn’t at home. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/48 "2025-09-24T00:33:40Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > When i was consulting the company hired an outsourcing company, who paid me, by W2 with all legal benefits. They were competent to handle all state laws. There are quite a few employers in the United States across many different industries, and what makes sense for one company might not make sense for a different company. I imagine if management ever decides it’s in our best interest to have remote workers in California we’d hire/train people in payroll and HR who were more familiar with that state. We’re not exactly a national organization, so it hasn’t been an issue. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/49 "2025-09-24T00:36:17Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > All 50 state employment laws is a considerably less complex set than international employment law. True. I think the issue is that Amazon sent over $2 Million to Harris. and a mere $300K to trump. [https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/amazon-com/summary?id=D000023883](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/amazon-com/summary?id=D000023883) Amazon is the #1 user of H1B visas. Microsoft is the #2 user, and donated again over $2 million to Harris= and nothing to trump. And so forth. This is punishment. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/50 "2025-09-24T01:39:39Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > This is punishment. Nobody tell him about J-visas! ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/51 "2025-09-24T01:40:50Z")
> [@DMC](#): > > Both are true Let me ask it another way. Suppose Trump eliminates visas entirely so we are forced to hire Americans only. Are there not enough to fill the vacant jobs? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/52 "2025-09-24T01:51:22Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > The real actual consequence will be that all high-tech foreign talent will avoid America and go to rival nations instead and American industry will suffer. I think there’s a longer term consequence. If corporations can’t bring high-skilled foreign workers to the United States, they’ll relocate to other countries which have more intelligent visa policies. We’ll end up with high-skilled American workers going to other countries rather than high-skilled foreign workers coming to the United States. When people travel for education or work, a lot of them end up staying in their host country. The United States has benefitted from this because we’ve been getting high-skilled people from other countries. Not the flow will be reversed and we’ll be losing high-skilled people to other countries. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/53 "2025-09-24T02:42:34Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > I’m not a genius so I feel free to ask a possibly stupid question: why does a programmer elite class need to live on site? Why not hire to collaborate as a telecommute with occasional travel for rare need? We had a lot of programmers and engineers in India. It didn’t work out. It wasn’t culture, since most of our managers were Indian. Being far from headquarters made the workers there disconnected from the company, and we found that they changed jobs at a pace which was rapid even using Silicon Valley as a baseline. Brooks’ Law says that adding people to a late project makes it later. Churning people on a project is even worse. They encouraged engineers in California to move to India. A bunch did. They cut their salary cut in half, but were still better off. Not one lasted more than a couple of years in the company. Why would they stay? ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/54 "2025-09-24T11:44:05Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > Let me ask it another way. Suppose Trump eliminates visas entirely so we are forced to hire Americans only. Are there not enough to fill the vacant jobs? We could probably fill most of the software engineer jobs, but the upper level of data science jobs would be hard to fill with that limitation. With that said, there is a bit of title inflation these days with people who call themselves data scientists, some of whom I would consider similar to “vibe coders”. Able to write a python script that uses “CatBoost”, for example, but suck at setting the parameters and hyperparameters, because they don’t really know what they are doing. You could probably find enough of those people in the US. I grabbed one of the more famous recent data science papers, [“Attention Is All You Need”](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762), from an US-based research group (Google Brain). Here are the authors and their place of birth: Ashish Vaswani - India Noam Shazeer - Philadelphia - second generation American Niki Parmar - India Jakob Uszkoreit - Germany Llion Jones - Wales Aidan N. Gomez - Canada Lukasz Kaiser - Poland Illia Polosukhin - Ukraine While some of them were poached from American institutions such as Stanford, I’m pretty sure only one was a citizen at the time of hire. The “godfathers” of deep learning are usually referring to the trio of: Yoshua Bengio - Born in Paris Geoffrey Hinto - Born in the UK Yann LeCun - Born in Paris My first data science team had five members, one of who was born in the US. So yes, it would be very hard to fill all of the positions with US citizens. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/55 "2025-09-24T12:03:29Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > If corporations can’t bring high-skilled foreign workers to the United States These guys aren’t even that skilled. They’re low level _Indian_ tech workers. So not even as competent overall as some kid straight out of a US college for the most part. I think there’s a lot of overestimation of the competency of actual Indian IT firms and workers. They’re ok once they’ve been here a while, but in general they’re not quite up to snuff. But they’re cheap, and once they’re here, they’re stuck (that “handcuffed” aspect of @DrDeth’s study. Actual high-level workers like the ones @DMC talks about- those are the sorts of workers that H-1B is intended for. I’m all for that. But I’m skeptical of the idea that we’re short of entry level IT workers and _have_ to hire Indian workers to do those entry level help desk/admin/grunt coder jobs. ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/56 "2025-09-24T12:09:33Z")
> [@bump](#): > > These guys aren’t even that skilled. Since I can’t just give a +1, I agree with your entire post. There is absolutely a need for H1B, but it is often used to hire cheap programmers who just aren’t very good. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/57 "2025-09-24T12:17:25Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > You have a clock. It is a good clock, doing something important. But then it starts running 5 minutes slow every day. Obviously it is no longer so useful. So you have two options- > > have an expert make delicate adjustments > > OR > > Smash it with a hammer > > The hammer option is what trump did. The issue with your analogy is that Trump’s hammer option had nothing to do with the clock’s actual problem. He didn’t smash it because the clock was faulty, he smashed it because some very important people rely on that clock and with it smashed Trump has power over them. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/58 "2025-09-24T13:10:16Z")
I suppose one unintended consequence is that the only immigrants who can afford $100k visas are international criminals? > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The price of the workers really isn’t so important. They pay for themselves by inventing new products and new ways of doing things more cheaply. You don’t go poor by pulling in Thomas Edison and telling him to make things that make money. You go poor by telling Edison that you don’t want him because you don’t accept guys with beards. You don’t “pull in” the Thomas Edisons of the world by hiring Wipro, Cognizant, or TCS. These firms exist to provide cheap IT resources for large-scale projects. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/59 "2025-09-24T13:27:46Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The price of the workers really isn’t so important. [I haven’t read the entire thread] It does if you _aren’t_ Zuckerberg, Altman, Bezos, Musk, or equivalent. One thing this price tag _does_ do is tends to knock out of the running for The Best & The Brightest yappy little heel-nipping startups who are _not_ so incredibly well funded and who lack virtually unlimited access to capital. Like Trump’s Budget, this one seems to take from the poor and give to the rich. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2025, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317/60 "2025-09-24T14:40:22Z")
Curious - do you think they would have stared had they maintained their salary? “Better off” is more psychological than financial, sometimes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintended-consequences-from-100k-visas/1023317.md?page=4)