In all things 19th Century that we are living through once again in the recreation of unbridled greed and industrial concentration, the newly announced H1B visa fees fit squarely in the mold. The administration has said that big tech is behind the move, and why shouldn’t they be? Here we have Netflix chairman and co-founder saying, “this is great.” And for big tech, it is. It creates yet another barrier to entry that smaller firms and start-ups can’t afford – classic oligopolistic reinforcement and regulatory capture that goes back at least to the 1880s and the formation and coopting of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

In addition to harming small (innovation-oriented) firms, the H1B tax will have an outsized effect on colleges and universities and other non-profits – and particularly smaller enterprises where such additional costs are prohibitive. These groups have used the H1B visa extensively as they hold an exemption from the cap of 85,000 permits/year – no doubt the administration sees cutting in to this as a perk. But a visiting assistant professor job at a small school that often pays less than 100,000 / year cannot possibly afford to have a $100,000 government extortion fee tacked on to it. Yet more expensive and future-limiting isolationism, not only for small-tech now, but for the future of learning.

Is America now so old and afraid of the world outside? We certainly will be if we shut out the innovators and educators of the future. 

The Hermit
Alan Stewart Paton (1903 –1988)

I have barred the doors
Of the place where I bide,
I am old and afraid
Of the world outside.

How the poor souls cry
In the cold and the rain,
I have blocked my ears,
They shall call me in vain.

If I peer through the cracks
Hardly daring draw breath,
They are waiting there still
Patient as death.

The maimed and the sick
The tortured of soul,
Arms outstretched as if
I could help them be whole.

No shaft of the sun
My hiding shall find,
Go tell them outside
I am deaf, I am blind.

Who will drive them away,
Who will ease me my dread,
Who will shout to the fools
‘He is dead! he is dead!’?

Sometimes they knock
At the place where I hide,
I am old, and afraid
Of the world outside.

Do they think, do they dream
I will open the door?
Let the world in
And know peace no more?

Cover image: Tony Fischer, Seen on the Road to Freedom… His commentary on the image includes the lyric’s to Van Morrison’s Tupelo Honey, worth a refresher.