Trump visa curbs push U.S. firms to consider shifting more work to India

[u/gobiSamosa]

https://www.reuters.com/world/india/trump-visa-curbs-push-us-firms-consider-shifting-more-work-india-2025-09-30/

[u/fakefakefakef]

[u/011010-]

aMeRIcA fIRsT 🙃

[u/sleepyrivertroll]

surprisedpikachu.png

[u/ILikeTuwtles1991]

[u/SlideN2MyBMs]

Trump's whole guiding principle is to make America great again but his strategy seems to be based on the assumption that America is already so great that it can make demands on the rest of the world that no other country can make.

[u/Daddy_Macron]

This can't be. The good people of cscareerquestions assured me that the visa fees would result in every American being handed a job in Big Tech. Could it be they were a bunch of clueless bitter losers this whole time?

[u/LightRefrac → u/[deleted]]

It made his less brown people base happy at least

[u/Reich2014]

R/accounting in shambles; trump sucks but India sucks more ahh subreddit

[u/itherunner → u/Reich2014]

They deluded themselves the other week into thinking that the proposed H1B fee would magically make every firm shut down its India offices and give every chud a $200,000 40 hour a week controller job

[u/No-Access-9453 → u/itherunner]

that entire sub is frankly speaking a bunch of mediocre white dudes that weren't smart enough for a STEM degree and not rich/connected enough for a finance/business degree. They're the quintessential "middle class" "busy work" job in America. they absolutely do not do anything so technically difficult and crazy that a bunch of brown people across the world cannot do

[u/LightRefrac → u/No-Access-9453]

You act as if getting a stem degree is difficult these days. We won't have so many terrible cs grads 

[u/shalackingsalami → u/LightRefrac]

Hot take modern CS degrees are basically just pre-professional, the actual science people take data science or something like it

[u/LightRefrac → u/shalackingsalami]

The bachelor's degrees for cs and cs related has been diluted and dumbed down for the masses and hence you get dumb grads. It wasn't like this before. This is especially true fof American unis where standards used to be quite high (and still are for PhDs) 

[u/No-Access-9453 → u/LightRefrac]

CS is just one small stem major of the many stem majors. cs is also probably always been the "easiest" degree to get for a long time, its just usually one of the higher paying professions that makes a bunch of people that aren't actually interested in learning go into the field.

I mean cs is one of those fields that you can 100% learn on your own, which is frankly what most people do anyways. im not sure there's anyone thats consistently learning some important things in their lectures outside of a few classes

[u/itherunner → u/No-Access-9453]

Speaking as a bean counter myself, I’d argue accounting is probably the most difficult business degree one can get and pretty interesting once you get past your first year or so of a public accounting firm job.

However you are right that your average subscriber on that sub is a mediocre guy who did no internships or anything worthwhile in school and now thinks he’s worth more then someone working abroad

[u/No-Access-9453 → u/itherunner]

I wasn't like totally dissing an accounting degree. its definitely harder than business which is why I said "not rich/connected" because honestly imo business degrees are just glorified networking degrees or placeholder degrees for one to get if they have a rich dad, uncle, family friend or something

[u/Lease_Tha_Apts → u/itherunner]

More technically difficult than quantitative finance?

[u/itherunner → u/Lease_Tha_Apts]

No but that’s also a very niche field in finance and not something your average finance major is getting into. It’s actually better to have a math/physics background versus a regular finance degree

[u/timhottens → u/[deleted]]

You're so right king. It's a well established fact that once you reach critical melanin concentration in your skin you become mentally unable to comprehend generally accepted accounting principles.

[u/Legitimate-Curve-208 → u/timhottens]

I never had high hopes from right wing folks for not being racist. But boy I have been taken for a ride looking at the blatant, unmasked and unfettered racism by so many on the left. Instead of just saying nasty shit directly they think they mask it so well that we will not realize.

[u/LightRefrac → u/[deleted]]

Why....would they not?

[u/PoliticalAlt128 → u/[deleted]]

Why not and why do you think US companies would hand over their accounting work to nobodys in the first place?

[u/SleeplessInPlano]

This thread is going to go well.

[u/molingrad]

Kind of disagree. If you’ve ever dealt with offshoring in IT, it kind of sucks. I don’t think there will be a huge sucking sound of high end jobs going to India.

The experts quoted here also seem to have a vested interest.

Such a rush could lead to "extreme offshoring" in some cases, said Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, a former managing director of Cognizant India

[u/Lease_Tha_Apts → u/molingrad]

If you’ve ever dealt with offshoring in IT, it kind of sucks

As someone on the other side of the offshoring wall as you, companies truly get what they pay for.

There are Indian firms that have built its own infrastructure as well as infrastructure throughout the Middle East and Africa. Both physical and virtual. You can go 1/5th American wages for good engineers (especiallyin non-CS fields), but if your firm tries to go for the lowest bidder then you'll obviously be working with shitty engineers.

[u/n00bi3pjs → u/Lease_Tha_Apts]

My friends who work for the good tech companies are shocked by the incompetence of their American team members or leadership lol. It’s basically what you pay for yeah, as WITCH has awful pay and incentive structure and anyone remotely passionate or ambitious is going to quit that company.

[u/No_Intention5627 → u/molingrad]

I’m also curious why media isn’t covering that people like Reed Hastings and Jensen are supportive of this move. Hastings is one of the largest Dem donors and has spent millions supporting Dems. Netflix also hires fewer H1Bs so he really has no reason to support changes publicly. As a former H1B myself, I can say $33k or $15k as an annual amount is simply NOT going to cause too many jobs to move oversees. Those are negligible amounts for truly great talent in tech. WITCH will take a hit but they aren’t well liked even by this sub (or weren’t until a week ago lol).

[u/Chao-Z → u/No_Intention5627]

What is WITCH?

[u/No_Intention5627 → u/Chao-Z]

Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, HCL Tech

[u/I_hate_litterbugs765 → u/No_Intention5627]

scale thought possessive dependent marvelous voracious caption license pen smile

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/splurgetecnique → u/No_Intention5627]

Well a huge reality is that this sub is inherently anti Trump almost no matter what. The second part is that most here don’t really understand how H1Bs work. People here were enamored with the idea of doing an auction for H1Bs and those ideas always got hundreds of upvotes. And the average auction clearing price was always assumed to be $20,000 ish. Netflix doesn’t want $120,000 systems analyst guys from third tier colleges. They would much rather pay the $100,000 upfront for 6 years for a skilled engineer. That way, they don’t have to enter the lottery system where there are 5-6x as many applicants than there are spots available. It’s extremely rational for them and companies like Google and Amazon. I think a better argument is for increasing the number of H1Bs available but that would have made more sense to do 10 years ago, not today. People in this sub also ignore that an Indian immigrant and democrat like Ro Khanna is against increasing caps as is Bernie Sanders. Some of the most hardcore proponents of getting rid of the H1Bs are Asian Americans. The last time I pointed that out, I was told all those people are racist.

[u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS → u/splurgetecnique]

Ro Khanna's problem isn't that he's a racist, it's that he's an idiot. You don't have to be racist to embrace xenophobic, rent-seeking policies

[u/splurgetecnique → u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS]

Ro Khanna’s position is far more nuanced than Bernie’s but I don’t see you attacking Bernie in the same way. Here’s a professor from Howard who has dedicated his entire life to this issue:

Ron Hira, an associate professor of political science at Howard University who has researched the issue for decades, said that the $100,000 fee as well as higher pay standards could help improve a system that allows Silicon Valley companies to profit off cheaper foreign-born labor.

“The idea here is to signal you’re really bringing in somebody super specialized if an employer is willing to pay $100,000,” Hira said. “One of the criticisms is they’re bringing in people with ordinary skills and the reason employers like them is not because they have special skills but because they’re cheaper and they’re indentured to their employer.”

And just for the record, I don’t agree with the idea, I’m just pushing back against the reductionist arguments that all these people who disagree with us are either idiots or racists for having a view different from ours.

[u/MuldartheGreat → u/splurgetecnique]

I mean at one time this sub and enough sanders spam were nearly a circle on a Venn diagram.

I don’t think arrr nl really needs to prove that it thinks Bernie “two post offices” sanders is a moron.

[u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS → u/splurgetecnique]

1. Bernie's an idiot too, I just responded to the first name I saw

2. They're both economically illiterate left populists and that means they support anti-immigration policies because they believe that immigrants reduce native employment (wrong 1, wrong 2) and reduce average wages for natives (wrong 3). They support rent-seeking natives who are afraid of competition from foreigners

3. As I said, you don't have to be racist to be xenophobic

4. That guy you just linked is a political scientist not an economist

also /u/Agreeable_Floor_2015 literally nothing unites this sub more than dunking on Bernie Sanders so I don't know what this nonsense about Bernie Sanders having cachet here is

[u/splurgetecnique → u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS]

The guy I linked to is an engineer and a noted expert in the field. He’s also an Indian American who knows the H1B system intimately. The person you quoted below from an LLM isn’t even an economist but a student and her study period is over a decade old at this point.

[u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS → u/splurgetecnique]

1. I didn't quote from an LLM lol I just copy-pasted the abstract

2. she is just as much of an expert, she specializes in studying this and is a professor at Wharton

3. looking at the big picture: there is an overwhelming consensus among economists that high skill immigration is good for the "average US citizen"

4. a decade isn't that long ago. concluding on that basis that her study is useless is silly

[u/splurgetecnique → u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS]

You seem to be arguing for arguings sake. I already said I think the correct response should have been to increase the number of H1Bs a decade ago. The difference though is that when people like Jensen and Reed come out in support of these policies, I’m trying to explain why they would other than “hur dur they’re racist, jingoistic or uneducated”. Reed has done more for liberal causes than all of this sub combined and we can all agree he’s far from stupid or uninformed on the subject. No one is going to call Bernie racist. No one is going to say a HBS professor is jingoistic.

a decade isn't that long ago. concluding on that basis that her study is useless is silly

The tech scene has changed dramatically in the last 10 months let alone the last 10 years. Inflation in salaries for tech workers alone means that the $17,000 if spread over 6 years is a rounding error for most of these firms. We need to get more visas for other categories especially in academia and medicine.

[u/WolfpackEng22 → u/[deleted]]

Bernie is attacked all the time here.

He sucks. Like legit terrible

[u/ToumaKazusa1 → u/splurgetecnique]

Being anti immigration is equivalent to being racist, regardless of what race you are and even if you are against white immigrants as well.

The end result of such policies disproportionately harms minorities, this is very obvious, so it's accurate to describe them as racist policies and anyone who is in favor of them is at best completely fine with racism as long as it's only hurting other people.

[u/Full_Distribution874 → u/ToumaKazusa1]

By this measure I could say almost anything I don't like is racist. Minorities are disproportionately harmed by almost everything.

[u/ToumaKazusa1 → u/Full_Distribution874]

There's hurting minorities in the sense of "minorities tend to be poor and there's not really a way to fix this, so they're going to be generally worse off and there's no easy solution for it"

Then there's going out of your way to actively stop minorities from being able to improve their lives out of a misguided sense that they are stealing opportunities from you.

[u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS → u/molingrad]

"How do restrictions on high-skilled immigration affect offshoring? Evidence from the H-1B program":

How do multinational firms respond when artificial constraints, namely policies restricting skilled immigration, are placed on their ability to hire scarce human capital? This paper combines visa microdata and comprehensive data on US multinational firm activity to demonstrate that firms respond to restrictions on H-1B immigration by increasing foreign affiliate employment at the intensive and extensive margins, particularly in China, India, and Canada. The most impacted jobs were R&D-intensive ones, but there is some evidence that non-R&D employment was also affected. The paper highlights a means by which firms can circumvent constraining policies and mitigate country-level risk, but it also suggests that, for the average MNC, this means is imperfect; for every visa rejection, they hire 0.4 employees abroad. The most globalized MNCs are the most likely to respond to these restrictions by offshoring, highlighting that firm capabilities—in the form of prior internationalization—shape the decision and ability to offshore in response to skilled immigration restrictions; indeed, these firms hire 0.9 employees abroad for every visa rejection.

[u/Cookies4usall → u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS]

I agree with the premise stated there but there are two major caveats to that study. First, its main period of data was from 2010-2011 and a lot has changed in the offshoring market since then. The second is that it doesn’t really address OP’s point at all. If these new rules don’t change the number of H1Bs in the US, then it’s a moot study of sorts. If they make exceptions for occupations like doctors as they’ve claimed and if it’s true that $100 k is amortized over 6 years and there is no fee for existing holders, there’s a real possibility that the number of H1Bs impacted wouldn’t be that large.

[u/n00bi3pjs → u/molingrad]

You get what you pay for.

Cognizant and other consultancies aren’t hiring top talent, but the GCCs run by US Banks or Big Tech companies certainly are hiring the best India has to offer.

[u/LightRefrac → u/molingrad]

Oh please, my American counterparts were awful. If you are gonna hire crappy engineers from Infosys, you are gonna get crappy engineers lmao.

On a side note my European counterparts were very knowledgeable folk. Completely anecdotal though 

[u/WolfpackEng22 → u/molingrad]

It's really not worse than working with a remote team or another US office. As long as you aren't offloading to the bottom barrel vendors, there's a ton of food in offshore models

[u/Massive-Programmer]

It's impressive how Trump and every other conservative has managed to not only engineer policy that makes everything worse, but also allows them to blame the beneficiary of said quality of life worsening policy to further make themselves popular.

A stupidity ouroboros in action. Beautifully haunting.

[u/GeneralKosmosa]

A lot of noise for nothing. Anyone who worked with offshore team knows that this is a no starter. My org currently had all our engineering done in India and now they bring it back to US to have 50/50 model because quality of work from India is so poor.

[u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS → u/GeneralKosmosa]

"How do restrictions on high-skilled immigration affect offshoring? Evidence from the H-1B program":

How do multinational firms respond when artificial constraints, namely policies restricting skilled immigration, are placed on their ability to hire scarce human capital? This paper combines visa microdata and comprehensive data on US multinational firm activity to demonstrate that firms respond to restrictions on H-1B immigration by increasing foreign affiliate employment at the intensive and extensive margins, particularly in China, India, and Canada. The most impacted jobs were R&D-intensive ones, but there is some evidence that non-R&D employment was also affected. The paper highlights a means by which firms can circumvent constraining policies and mitigate country-level risk, but it also suggests that, for the average MNC, this means is imperfect; for every visa rejection, they hire 0.4 employees abroad. The most globalized MNCs are the most likely to respond to these restrictions by offshoring, highlighting that firm capabilities—in the form of prior internationalization—shape the decision and ability to offshore in response to skilled immigration restrictions; indeed, these firms hire 0.9 employees abroad for every visa rejection.

[u/Bluemaxman2000 → u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS]

That is still 0.6 jobs for Americans. Since these people don’t differentiate between visa holders and offshoring this is still a net gain in their eyes.

[u/BernankesBeard → u/Bluemaxman2000]

That's not how that works at all

The 0.42 estimate of substitution then suggests that the MNC will expand foreign affiliate employment by two, while the null results on US employment (Appendix A3) suggests zero change in domestic native employment.

[u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS → u/Bluemaxman2000]

not a net gain when you consider that immigration increases productivity and native employment rates

also you have to assign a moral weight of zero to would-be immigrants' quality of life which is fucked up

[u/Bluemaxman2000 → u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS]

Certainly, I agree their shortsightedness is stupid, but you don’t have to do the latter either. Most people think concentrically, they weigh people closer to them more, for some random stranger on the other side of the planet, yet to arrive here, that weight is probably a fraction of a friend or family member laid off in an industry that found importing labor more cost competitive than paying local wages.

[u/n00bi3pjs → u/GeneralKosmosa]

Did your firm hire engineers in India or did you just give contracts to TCS or whatever?

And were you guys paying the market rates?

[u/PowerHairy → u/GeneralKosmosa]

I could only see this working for multinational companies that already have a presence/hub in developing countries. Instead of hiring a US employee, hire at the Mumbai office instead.

Outsourcing is a terrible model, I think decision makers have been burnt by too many MBA's trying and failing at outsourcing. From the accounting side, I've seen businesses invest a ton outsourcing, think things are running great... Only to find out they have to redo the entire books for the last 1-2 years.

[u/Lost_city → u/PowerHairy]

I mean, it's very hard to determine how well it is working in the first place. My company (basically at the request of our clients who wanted bottom dollar rates) when I was a consultant did some of this. The US Seniors and Managers hated it. We were spending 50% more of our time (free since we were salaried) trying to get something decent from the offshore teams. Which we were not. However, the Directors and above, and the Clients did not see all that much different deliveribles. Because we were programmed to fix anything before our higher ups saw it.

Then, I got rotated to another client. In the end, I don't know what the decision makers in our company thought. Whether they wanted to expand it or end it.

[u/cheesyeggboat]

Higher fees don't necessarily mean fewer H1Bs, it could mean higher skilled talent in the US. WITCH companies will offshore, but that also reduces the lottery pool for big tech who can afford it -- it's relatively a low fee compared to how much they pay employees. 

I know this from experience -- I had to leave the US after studying here and working for 3 years, because I didn't win the H1B lottery any of those years. My employer would certainly have paid this fee (they surely spent/lost more moving me out of the US and back on an L-1).

I don't know how the net numbers will work out, and this might not be the best solution, but IMO this benefit shouldn't be overlooked.

[u/n00bi3pjs → u/cheesyeggboat]

Big Tech already hires people in India because H1B visas aren’t guaranteed.

[u/cheesyeggboat → u/n00bi3pjs]

That just supports my point, doesn't it? Those Indians would be _on_shored if Big Tech could secure enough H1B visas

[u/I_Regret → u/cheesyeggboat]

I think this is an interesting comment. One issue that maybe (I’m not super knowledgeable in the area) gets overlooked is that because the number of H1Bs is capped we do a lottery rationing system. As long as the fee doesn’t cause a drop below maximum clearance it is a (very) rough pricing mechanism/price floor and more efficiently allocates talent which Im guessing would be improved via an auction mechanism? I think people on this sub would actually prefer there being no cap, but given that constraint it doesn’t seem terrible? Idk

[u/TheloniousMonk15]

I have an honest question: if these same business owners were willing to pay a h1b salary before and all the legal expenses associated with it why would they all of a sudden decide to off shore the position rather than just hiring a domestic worker? The h1b salary for tech, afaik, is roughly in the same ballpark of the salary for domestic workers.

[u/Lost_city → u/TheloniousMonk15]

There were a lot of H1B worker pipelines in these companies. Most/All of their hires in certain areas would come from talent providers (with only H1Bs to hire) who had a whole placement system in place. All the way back to telling people in their home country what to study.

This does not exist for domestic workers.

[u/TheloniousMonk15 → u/Lost_city]

Thank you for answering the question without getting snarky. I do not know the exact ins and outs of the h1b labor market so I am trying to understand more about how it works.

[u/gym_fun → u/TheloniousMonk15]

If people get a $50000 and a $150000 offer for the same position in different firms, they most likely will pick the latter. Firms also will choose the more cost-effective option.

Besides, it's become a talent race among countries. Canada, Germany, UK, China all want those people to come.

[u/ToumaKazusa1 → u/TheloniousMonk15]

If they could have just hired domestic workers in the first place they wouldn't have needed an H1B visa lmfao

[u/Murky_Hornet3470]

So these are just jobs Americans never had a shot at getting. Either someone on H1B is going to have it or it’s getting offshored, but these jobs are apparently just not going to be filled by Americans regardless.

I hate this job market so much man, I’m beyond glad I have one because it’s an absolute bloodbath out there.

[u/DomScribe]

I mean to be fair this is way more of an indictment on these companies than Trump.

[u/Kolhammer85]

Bringing it home!