Trump’s $100K H-1B Rule Is A Clean Fix For A Broken System
amuse – A decent immigration system begins with a modest moral premise. A government may welcome talent from abroad, but it owes special concern to its own citizens when law creates an incentive to undercut them. The modern H-1B program violated that premise in a predictable way.
The statute was written to admit specialty workers. The market discovered that the program could be used, at scale, as a wage arbitrage tool. When that happens, moral language about “skills gaps” becomes a fig leaf. The real driver is price.
President Trump’s $100K H-1B fee changes the price. It does so in the simplest way imaginable. If a firm truly needs a particular foreign worker, it can still hire that worker. But it must pay a real premium to do so. If it does not truly need the worker, it will not pay. This is the core of the idea. A high fee does what years of policy papers and halfhearted enforcement could not do. It makes abuse economically irrational. Continue reading
Brian C. Joondeph – President Donald Trump’s two recent executive orders, one imposing a $100,000 annual fee on H-1B visas and the other launching the “Gold Card” fast-track residency program, represent the most significant immigration reforms in decades.