H-1B visas will now cost $100K per year, although bribes will be accepted

I wonder why Big Tech is OK with something that is extremely bad for their business models?

President Donald Trump on Friday signed a proclamation that will require a $100,000 annual visa fee for highly-skilled foreign workers and rolled out a $1 million “gold card” visa as a pathway to U.S. citizenship for wealthy individuals, moves that face near-certain legal challenges amid widespread criticism he is sidestepping Congress.

If the moves survive legal muster, they will deliver staggering price increases. The visa fee for skilled workers would jump from $215. The fee for investor visas, which are common in many European countries, would climb from $10,000-$20,000 a year.

H-1B visas, which require at least a bachelor’s degree, are meant for high-skilled jobs that tech companies find difficult to fill. Critics say the program is a pipeline for overseas workers who are often willing to work for as little as $60,000 annually, well below the $100,000-plus salaries typically paid to U.S. technology workers.

Trump on Friday insisted that the tech industry would not oppose the move. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said “all big companies” are on board.

Representatives for the biggest tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta, did not immediately respond to messages for comment on Friday. Microsoft declined to comment.

I’m going to put this in the “uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites” hopper, along with a whole lot of other stuff.

BTW this is kind of a funny story, for certain values of dark comedy:

A viral social media video this week claimed that employees at a Norwood Park Starbucks wrote “Loser” on a drink ordered in honor of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. An online furor followed, and the coffee shop even closed temporarily.

But Starbucks now says that time-stamped footage from the store at 6332 N. Northwest Highway does not show any of its workers writing that message. Instead, the note appears “to have been added after the beverage was handed off, likely by someone else,” a spokesperson told Block Club.

The controversy started with a post Tuesday from Jacqueline Garretson, who, according to her X bio, is the Illinois state director for The Conservative Caucus and previously worked as a staffer for failed Republican attorney general candidate Thomas DeVore.

Garretson wrote that a relative, whom she later identified as her mother-in-law, ordered the Mint Majesty tea with two honeys — an order known to be Kirk’s favorite drink — from the Starbucks. When the order was completed, the cup had “Loser” written on it, Garretson said.

Garretson encouraged followers to call Starbucks and report the incident. She later posted two videos of her and an unidentified man confronting workers at the Norwood Park Starbucks.

“I’m talking 5 p.m. today, I want some form of action to the employee that represents this business that wrote ‘Loser’ on my mother’s cup,” the man, who is not seen on-camera, can be heard saying in the video, which was posted Wednesday.

“We’re looking for not corporate bureaucracy. I want immediate accountability; and if not, I will have this whole intersection lined with patriots today, I’m not even joking,” the man told a Starbucks employee.

The videos received more than 40,000 likes on X. On Wednesday evening, Garretson posted that she went back to the Norwood Park Starbucks at 5 p.m. and found a sign that said the business was temporarily closed.

“Thank you to everybody that called, stopped in to order Charlie’s drink and put in complaints with corporate. Over the past 24 hours we have SHUT THEM DOWN,” Garretson wrote in text over the video.

This was actually only one of two stories yesterday about purported incidents at Starbucks outlets which triggered the grievance and resentment the most oppressed group in America feels about the oppressors’ failure to properly mourn the fallen hero whose existence 99% of them were largely unaware of ten days ago.