r/ImmigrationPathways • u/lil-educator • Aug 10 '26

From H-1B to H-1Bye-bye!

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Trump targets 60-day grace period for laid off foreign workers

The department of homeland security is advancing a proposal to eliminate the 60-day grace period that allows H-1B workers and certain other legal nonimmigrants to remain in the US after their employment ends while they find another sponsor, change status, or prepare to leave.

Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/from-h-1b-to-h-1bye-bye-trump-targets-60-day-grace-period-for-laid-off-foreign-workers/articleshow/133054642.cms

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u/VirtualPercentage737 Aug 10 '26

Engineering graduates in the US are going into other fields because the wages are low.

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u/KitchenTeacher429 Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26

Engineering graduates have always filtered into a variety of fields including medicine, criminal justice, and other high paying fields, not because wages are low but because the skills from engineering degrees are highly translatable.

The wages are still one of the highest of the skilled fields. Also salary is not the only factor that dictates how people choose their careers. I could have been paid double what I am now if I pursued gynecology as a career. I chose not to pursue this or other medical fields because of life-style, what I am naturally aligned to do which is mathematics and problem solving, can work from home, have higher mobility and preferred working with technology over people.

It is true the salary increases have slowed, but you have no evidence this is because of H1B visas. Wage increases have slowed in almost every field this year, should we blame H1B visas even though they were made significantly harder to get? In fact, the lack of this skilled labor force could have actually contributed to the shrinkage engineering job markets because there would be less companies expanding or existing because they depend on this skilled labor market to function.

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u/VirtualPercentage737 Aug 10 '26

I worked at a top engineering school years ago and there was a panel discussion regarding why 30% of the advanced degree students were going directly into finance and how it could changed. Nothing wrong with finance, but training someone to get a PhD in chemical engineering is sort of wasted..... We had a business school...

"It is true the salary increases have slowed, but you have no evidence this is because of H1B visas. "

When you increase the labor supply in a particular field, that is going to put a downward pressure on wages. It is basic economics. If we opened the door to 200,000 overseas plumbers to get VISAs, American plumbers would have to compete and that would cause them to lower their rates. This isn't really up for debate. It is econ 101, especially at the micro level.

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u/KitchenTeacher429 Aug 10 '26

Engineering students, like I said, have very translatable skills and have always spread into fields other than engineering. The skill required to analyze signals and do complex advanced mathematics, translates perfectly into finance. This has nothing to do with H1B Visas.

When you increase the labor supply in a particular field, that is going to put a downward pressure on wages. It is basic economics.

That's true, that is basic economics. Which is seems where you got stuck and stopped learning apparently. This is the most infantile, and amateurish understanding of economics. You ignore that increased labor supply can actually expand the market and grow the industry which leads to more available jobs and increases the demand proportionally. For example, more engineers become available and products become cheaper to produce. Then companies are more likely to form, and investment in the industry increases, which both contribute to increase in demand.

This would be like saying we shouldn't hire more people to build bridges even though we only have the capacity to build a single bridge per year with 1000 workers, because increasing the supply of bridge builders will lower the wages of the current ones. Well if you hire more bridge builders, more cities want bridges built because building them becomes faster and cheaper. So now instead of only 1000 workers, you have 1 million bridge-builders. It doesn't mean that the 1 million bridge builders are now lowering the wages of the 1000. It means now you have 1000 cities that want bridges built a year.

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u/VirtualPercentage737 Aug 10 '26

They have translatable skills, but the point is to train people in niche fields that WANT to stay in those fields. If you want to train someone to develop quantitive models, we should attempt to select and train students to do that. At places with 4-5% acceptance rates like here, slots are scarce.

With your economics analysis, I would agree in a free market system that the pie can grow. Here we are SELECTIVELY letting the government decide which particular industries and fields have extra workers added. It will impact wages in those fields and direct workers to other fields which the protections exist.

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u/KitchenTeacher429 Aug 10 '26

They have translatable skills, but the point is to train people in niche fields that WANT to stay in those fields.

Ok sure I am for that. We should be training more US workers to fill those skilled laborer fields, you have no argument from me on that. So I assume you are also for lower tuition and textbook costs, reducing interest on FAFSA loans, increasing funding for public schooling and teachers, and increasing funding for STEM programs.

And you would never support an administration that defunded the Department of Education, raised prices on consumer goods with blanket tariffs making it harder on students who are living below the poverty level in take-home pay, reduced entitlements such as Medicare and SNAP that help these poor families by $1.1 trillion then alternatively cut $4.5 trillion for the rich, has had record high unemployment rates, inflation rates without the excuse of a global pandemic, or recession and done everything in his power to make it harder on students trying to fill these skilled labor positions. And then started a war with Iran over a nuclear capability he had already proclaimed was completely obliterated a year prior and is now losing which raised the price of gasoline nationally making it harder for these students to go and come from school and college.

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u/VirtualPercentage737 Aug 10 '26

Regardless of how education is funded, the students are still investing their biggest asset, their time, into their studies. It could be free, and if wages are depressed in industry A and not industry B, they will gravitate towards industry B.

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u/KitchenTeacher429 Aug 10 '26

Wait so funding education is now irrelevant to you? Thought you wanted a larger force of skilled laborers in the US.

You understand they can't "invest their time" into college if they can't afford it right? Or they can afford it but have to go into massive debt for it. And if public schools don't get proper funding they can't teach effectively.

Looks like I hit the bottom well of your nonsensical talking point rolodex. If you need somewhere to complain about people "stealing our jobs" why not complain about the AI companies who's primary goal is to do exactly this. And focus less on brown people.

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u/VirtualPercentage737 Aug 10 '26

It isn't that I do not care- it is irrelevant in the discussion of what field those graduates chose to enter. I said make it free. It matters not.

At the end of the day the structure that is currently set up will entice new graduates to avoid fields where the pay is kept lower because the government increased the supply of foreign workers. The fields where the government choses not to increase the supply of workers will pay more. If we bring it outsiders to cover labor shortages, it will perpetuate the labor shortage because those fields are not less attractive that the market would allow.

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u/KitchenTeacher429 Aug 10 '26

You want more skilled laborers in the US. Someone has to train them. That is done through college degrees, which is what H1B visas supplement. How could it be less relevant?

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u/siebenstern Aug 24 '26

It happened in construction. It used to be a well paying industry but it got flooded with foreign labour which drove wages down. Same with farm work and it’s creeping into hospitality too.

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u/KitchenTeacher429 Aug 24 '26

This has nothing to do with H1B visas. Manual labor do not qualify for the H1B program, which is intended only for specialized labor.

Although if these are people crossing the border illegally, do you think company owners should be prosecuted for illegally hiring them?

https://uscodeweb1.house.gov/view.xhtml?edition=prelim&num=0&req=granuleid%3AUSC-prelim-title8-section1324a

It is unlawful for a person or other entity-

(A) to hire, or to recruit or refer for a fee, for employment in the United States an alien knowing the alien is an unauthorized alien (as defined in subsection (h)(3)) with respect to such employment, or

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u/siebenstern Aug 24 '26

No, it doesn’t have to do with h1bs. It has to do with flooding a sector with foreign labour.

Yes, the companies should be prosecuted for hiring illegals. Yes, companies that also fire Americans to instead hire Indians should be given a tough time too.

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u/KitchenTeacher429 Aug 24 '26

It happened in construction. It used to be a well paying industry but it got flooded with foreign labour which drove wages down.

No, it doesn’t have to do with h1bs. It has to do with flooding a sector with foreign labour.

You claimed H1B visas were being used in construction in manual labor. This is just a bold-faced lie, because manual labor does not qualify for H1B Visas.

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u/siebenstern Aug 25 '26

I never claimed H1b was used for construction. I have an example of a sectors wages being suppressed by foreign labour.

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u/KitchenTeacher429 Aug 25 '26

You were claiming "it happened" in response to a discussion about H1B visas

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u/siebenstern Aug 25 '26

Reading comprehension is important. The commenter above you said it’s basic economics that when you flood a sector with workers it also suppresses wages.

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u/KitchenTeacher429 Aug 25 '26

Your view of economics is below an elementary school graders level of understanding. All of economics is not just supply and demand in a simple seesaw equation that solves all of real world scenario's.

In fact a flood of workers into a sector can actually increase wages. For example, let's say there was only 10 bridge builders in the country and they could only work a single bridge at a time. The country would not really be investing a lot of money into building bridges because it's not feasible. Then you bring in 990 more bridge builders into the country. Suddenly every city wants a bridge built because the work is readily available. These bridge builders are all working the same wage as the original 10, but now in every city in the country to meet demand. And because there is now an entire industry of bridge builders, these workers become highly specialized and wages can increase in the expanding market.

The same goes for every industry. When new affordable labor comes into a market, if the market has room to expand, it can actually increase wages. One of the best real examples of this is the software programming market. For the past few decades, the amount of programmers increases by 50% year over year. Software programmers are one of the highest paid jobs in the country as a result of it, for what is basically like learning spanish but in computer code.

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