The Republican party is frequently in a contradictory state with immigration, where they speak loudly against it, but then yield in to business demands for immigrant labor.
It's possible Trump is uniquely different there, but he's talked about being sympathetic to farm and hospitality businesses. It's hard to tell. Everything is up to his whims now.
That was obvious ever since they claimed asylum seekers that had followed the legal asylum process were “illegal immigrants” and society and the media just went along with that phrasing despite it being factually incorrect.
Is this sarcasm? Not that Trump's word means anything, but Trump has been against it since his first term. Having cancelled it temporarily in that first term, has said that he'll end H1B if he gets reelected, and that US shouldn't have the H1B program.
It's only since 2025 when Elon was in his good books and told Republicans to not vote for a bill that Trump woke up that day and decided he'd be pro-H1B.
Companies have been trying that since the 90s, yet the quality of work done by offshore teams is consistently crap. Better to import the entire team to the US, pay them below average wages, make them work 80 hour weeks under the watchful eye of a manager and threaten to fire them (which means deportation) if they dare to complain.
> the quality of work done by offshore teams is consistently crap
This isn't nearly true anymore, and hasn't been for a long time. Especially since everyone is using the same AI tooling as everyone else now.
What is true (in my experience) is that they do tend to lack a sense of ownership and craft. But I think companies care less and less about that all the time.
If you are a good software developer in India then you move abroad. It's not that India doesn't make great software developers, it's just they don't tend to stick around.
> A U.S. official confirmed the full list of countries will include Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
Grenada is here because the US asked to install radars here for their Venezuelan operation("drug boat interception") and Grenada declined. They also raised the The Level 2 advisory for US citizen.
The State Department said[1]:
"The State Department will pause immigrant visa processing from 75 countries whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates."
Whether or not that's a good/true reason is another discussion.
Trump and his whole administration is extremely pro-Israel, even by the standards of US administrations. Jordan is 95% Muslim and around a quarter of the population are Palestinian refugees, so I suspect that has something to do with it
Not only Azerbaijan, but the whole Caucasia is included (Armenia and Georgia too). Given Trump's recent peace middlemanship between Azerbaijan and Armenia, this is actually somewhat surprising.
I pulled the latest overstay data from the CBP website (2024) and compared it to the list of countries. Some of the countries have high overstay rates (Haiti and Laos >24%), but others don't. Barbados (0.44%) has a lower overstay rate than France (0.48%). Libya (1.59%) has a lower rate than Portugal (1.68%). Some countries with high rates aren't on the list entirely, like Malawi (22.05%). Also, the hypothesis fails a chi square test. It's not that.
This is stupid and weakens the U.S. We have benefited so much from the visa program over the history of this country. If the smartest people of Russia and various other countries want to flee and join the U.S., we would be at an advantage.
Because like most political threads here, it will largely consist of people with a crayon-and-coloring-book understanding of geopolitics posting low-effort snipes and trading insults while contributing basically zero to furthering discussion.
It’s bound to generate some heated discussion. A lot of people on that discussion asks the same question. There’s a lack of transparency on why some posts get flagged.
A pause in processing of immigration visas affects the tech industry and is relevant to most of the audience who lives in the US.
My biggest issue with work visas is they're treated as an under-class that literally competes at upwards of half the pay or less and used to suppress wages. Especially in the past 5 years.
I'd like to see a 100% tax on Visa workers combined with salary floors per work classification. A tech worker that needs to be imported from another country shouldn't be paid less than 6 figures IMO, and depending on the position upwards of twice that. The tax itself should specifically be used to fund grants for STEM undergrads and graduates.
Just my own take on this, and I do have a personal stake and took a 40% pay cut last year just to be able to keep working.
>On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
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The one that I'm at a complete loss for is Uruguay - it is one of the wealthiest countries per capita in South America as well as the least corrupt and most egalitarian... not exactly a huge source of desperate immigrants. Did their government scold ours too harshly for the recent Venezuela shenanigans or something?
It continues to be clear that the administration opposes legal immigration (except perhaps in narrow cases, like white South Africans).
The Republican party is frequently in a contradictory state with immigration, where they speak loudly against it, but then yield in to business demands for immigrant labor.
It's possible Trump is uniquely different there, but he's talked about being sympathetic to farm and hospitality businesses. It's hard to tell. Everything is up to his whims now.
That was obvious ever since they claimed asylum seekers that had followed the legal asylum process were “illegal immigrants” and society and the media just went along with that phrasing despite it being factually incorrect.
That definitely isn't true. Trump has repeatedly been effusive about how important H1B labor is.
How so? In September he added a requirement that any future H1B visas from people abroad will require an unprecedented $100,000 payment.
Well either $100,000 per person or an large one time direct donation to Trump to be legally exempted from that charge.
Is this sarcasm? Not that Trump's word means anything, but Trump has been against it since his first term. Having cancelled it temporarily in that first term, has said that he'll end H1B if he gets reelected, and that US shouldn't have the H1B program.
It's only since 2025 when Elon was in his good books and told Republicans to not vote for a bill that Trump woke up that day and decided he'd be pro-H1B.
Uruguay is on the list. I remember when Uruguayans didn't even need a visa to visit the US.
Well then technically the US wasn't processing their visa's back then either.
An interesting way to make make lots of friends in many countries around the world all at the same time.
There is a German saying:
"Ist der Ruf erst ruiniert lebt es sich ganz ungeniert"
translates to: “Once your reputation is ruined, you can live completely uninhibited.”
Perhaps that was their reasoning when starting two world wars?
I'm glad India is not yet included
Well yeah Trump's big tech friends need cheap H-1B labor.
I don't think tech companies need H-1Bs anymore. From my experience they just set up a subsidiary in India and move all their dev teams there.
Companies have been trying that since the 90s, yet the quality of work done by offshore teams is consistently crap. Better to import the entire team to the US, pay them below average wages, make them work 80 hour weeks under the watchful eye of a manager and threaten to fire them (which means deportation) if they dare to complain.
> the quality of work done by offshore teams is consistently crap
This isn't nearly true anymore, and hasn't been for a long time. Especially since everyone is using the same AI tooling as everyone else now.
What is true (in my experience) is that they do tend to lack a sense of ownership and craft. But I think companies care less and less about that all the time.
If you are a good software developer in India then you move abroad. It's not that India doesn't make great software developers, it's just they don't tend to stick around.
I wish it was.
Does anyone have the list?
NBC has posted the full list here: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/us-sto...
> A U.S. official confirmed the full list of countries will include Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
Grenada is here because the US asked to install radars here for their Venezuelan operation("drug boat interception") and Grenada declined. They also raised the The Level 2 advisory for US citizen.
Both Armenia and Azerbaijan? At least they aren’t playing favorites.
> Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan
They forgor Tajikistan. Or may be it was just too hard to spell.
Tajikistan is used by the US for training against Iran. This is why Iran will often deny visas to Americans who have Tajikistan passport stamps.
What did Jordan, Azerbaijan, Macedonia or Uruguay do?
The State Department said[1]: "The State Department will pause immigrant visa processing from 75 countries whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates."
Whether or not that's a good/true reason is another discussion.
1: https://x.com/StateDept/status/2011478657680757214
Jordan has been a key ally of the US. No one will make that mistake again.
So was Denmark.
Trump and his whole administration is extremely pro-Israel, even by the standards of US administrations. Jordan is 95% Muslim and around a quarter of the population are Palestinian refugees, so I suspect that has something to do with it
Not only Azerbaijan, but the whole Caucasia is included (Armenia and Georgia too). Given Trump's recent peace middlemanship between Azerbaijan and Armenia, this is actually somewhat surprising.
Crazy that Macedonia and Montenegro are there, and Serbia is not. Even Albania and Kosovo are there, despite them being US puppets
What did Fiji do!?
Not white enough I presume.
It's hard to get more Caucasian than Azerbaijan.
It’s telling that Russia stands out in this list. “One of these is not like the others”
Overstay visas more often than South Koreans or Norwegians?
I pulled the latest overstay data from the CBP website (2024) and compared it to the list of countries. Some of the countries have high overstay rates (Haiti and Laos >24%), but others don't. Barbados (0.44%) has a lower overstay rate than France (0.48%). Libya (1.59%) has a lower rate than Portugal (1.68%). Some countries with high rates aren't on the list entirely, like Malawi (22.05%). Also, the hypothesis fails a chi square test. It's not that.
> Afghanistan Iraq
Comparing to US immigration support following the Vietnam war this is shameful.
> Saint Kitts and Nevis
How many immigrants from an island with less than 50k inhabitants are there?
Also, Cuba surprises me, doesn't the USA usually love to make a big deal about people fleeing big bad evil communists?
Saint Kitts and Nevis sells passports, so I imagine that is the rationale. I see some other microstates on the list that fit that pattern as well.
Turkmenistan made it through? lol
They just want foreigners to be Indians and the remaining Europeans that will actually want to go to the US.
And chinese
This is stupid and weakens the U.S. We have benefited so much from the visa program over the history of this country. If the smartest people of Russia and various other countries want to flee and join the U.S., we would be at an advantage.
Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618809
Huh, actually checked first few pages before posting. I wonder why the thread got flagged.
Because like most political threads here, it will largely consist of people with a crayon-and-coloring-book understanding of geopolitics posting low-effort snipes and trading insults while contributing basically zero to furthering discussion.
While I didn't flag it, I closed that article without reading after the fourth popup. Thank you for submitting a better source.
It’s bound to generate some heated discussion. A lot of people on that discussion asks the same question. There’s a lack of transparency on why some posts get flagged.
A pause in processing of immigration visas affects the tech industry and is relevant to most of the audience who lives in the US.
My biggest issue with work visas is they're treated as an under-class that literally competes at upwards of half the pay or less and used to suppress wages. Especially in the past 5 years.
I'd like to see a 100% tax on Visa workers combined with salary floors per work classification. A tech worker that needs to be imported from another country shouldn't be paid less than 6 figures IMO, and depending on the position upwards of twice that. The tax itself should specifically be used to fund grants for STEM undergrads and graduates.
Just my own take on this, and I do have a personal stake and took a 40% pay cut last year just to be able to keep working.
Not sure on the downvotes, I'm literally advocating for paying VISA workers MORE.
>I wonder why the thread got flagged.
It is off-topic.
>On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
It looks like we’re trying to beat Japan, China, South Korea, Italy and Germany in who can age and shrink their population the fastest.
We used to be great shape in regards to the age depopulation bomb.
The presence of Brazil and Thailand on this list stumped me. But the State Department probably has the data to back that up.
The one that I'm at a complete loss for is Uruguay - it is one of the wealthiest countries per capita in South America as well as the least corrupt and most egalitarian... not exactly a huge source of desperate immigrants. Did their government scold ours too harshly for the recent Venezuela shenanigans or something?