The Trump Administration’s H1B Hike Is Pushing Mid-Level Roles Nearshore And Changing Global Outsourcing

Host Brian Samson, founder of Plugg Technologies, breaks down the Trump administration’s proposed $100K H-1B visa fee and how it’s reshaping the global tech talent market. He explains why this massive policy shift could reduce opportunities for engineers in India and China—and accelerate the nearshoring movement across Latin America.

Brian dives into the geopolitical motivations, trade tensions, and economic ripple effects driving this change, from BRICS alliances to U.S. labor shortages. He also highlights how Latin America’s talent pool, time zone alignment, and cultural compatibility make it the most strategic alternative for U.S. companies scaling distributed teams.

🎧 Tune in to understand how policy, politics, and proximity are redefining global hiring—and why Latin America is winning the nearshore race.

🎧 Host | Brian Samson – Founder of 💻 Plugg Technologies | 🔗 LinkedIn
🎙️ Sponsored by Plugg Technologies – Connecting U.S. companies with top-tier software developers across Latin America.  🌐 plugg.tech

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🎧 Host | Brian Samson – Founder of 💻 Plugg Technologies
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansamson/

🎙️ Sponsored by Plugg Technologies – Connecting U.S. companies with top-tier software developers across Latin America.
🌐 https://www.plugg.tech

🌎 Follow The Nearshore Cafe Podcast
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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:08):
Welcome to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe
Podcast.
I'm your host, Brian Sampson,and I am a veteran of the
Nearshore world, and today weare going to talk about a big
topic in the world of currentevents.

(00:29):
This is what the Trumpadministration is doing to the
H1B.
Before I get into the details,let me thank our sponsor.
That's Plug Technologies,P-L-U-G-G.
Great way to connect talent fromall over Latin America with

(00:50):
growing U.S.
companies.
Well, let's get into it.
You're listening because youwant to know what's going on
with this H1B, the Trumpadministration, and we can talk
about the impact to say India,China, and Latin America.
If you haven't heard already,the Trump administration is in

(01:14):
process.
Some of this has been rolledout, some of this is in process,
some of this might may or maynot be blocked by the courts.
So there's a lot of in-flightthings that are happening.
But the intent is to increasethe sponsorship fee for a brand

(01:36):
new H1B from roughly$3,000 to$100,000.
I mean, this is a crazyincrease, right?
This isn't like a 10% increase,$3,000 to$3,300.
This is$3,000 to$100,000.

(01:58):
Now, why on earth is the Trumpadministration doing it?
From my understanding, I thinkthere's a couple key reasons.
One of which is it's a littlebit punitive.
India has had a 25% tariff, youknow, on uh goods that they

(02:19):
export to the US.
And recently the US has made areciprocal tariff.
So the U.S.
is trying to counter what Indiais doing.
But what they're also, you know,what is also in play is you have
uh you know things like um likeenergy, right?

(02:43):
So there's um it's hard for theUS to do business in India, US
companies to do business inIndia.
Um you have uh India continuingto import Russian oil.
So this is a way of the U.S.
kind of doing like a backdoorsanction on India.

(03:05):
Um India is siding more withChina recently.
So this is all like geopoliticaldriven uh countries are friends,
countries are enemies, who's incharge, who benefits, things
like that.
So this is in my eyes, you know,India being penalized for siding

(03:28):
with Russia, China, having hightariffs, being hard to do
business with for US companies.
Um on the other side, you know,India is also uh part of BRICS,
right?
Brazil, Russia, India, China,South Africa, and then more and
more countries are joining this,looking at a potential

(03:49):
alternative currency.
And the US doesn't want this.
The US has been the reservecurrency for a long time, you
know, really coming out of WorldWar I when it replaced uh
England as the hegemon to theworld.
All right, so that's that's thegeopolitical piece of it.

(04:10):
Um, but let's talk about uhwho's affected.
You've got some major, call themH1B shops, companies based out
of India that are doingthousands and thousands of new
H1B applications every year.

(04:32):
And these are Indian companies,not American companies.
Tata, Infosys, Cognizant, tensof thousands.
And you know, the the cap uhyears ago was about 65,000 new
H1B visas every year wereissued.

(04:52):
Massive percentage were going tonon-American companies.
And then you also look at thetypes of roles that were filled
by those engineers.
Now, granted, uh some of theseengineers are top talent, you
know, they went to IIT, IndianInstitute of Technology, similar

(05:14):
to like an MIT or a Stanford.
Um, and you know, all the powerto them, that's the kind of
talent that uh companies arelooking for, is like the 10x
engineers.
Now, the vast majority of thesetechnical roles were done by um
mid-level engineers.

(05:35):
Think about integration work,testing work, your
run-of-the-mill, Javadeveloper,.NET developer, uh QA,
um, some SAP, you know,technical, you know, functional
roles.
There's a lot of um a lot oflike just kind of mid-level cog

(05:56):
in the wheel type of positions.
So it's one thing for a wealthycompany like OpenAI, Google,
Meta, to pay a hundred K postingfee, that's basically what it
is, to get access to these 10xengineers, data scientists, uh,

(06:18):
researchers, RD, uh, AIengineers.
These are game-changingengineers.
And just look a few months ago,some of these pay packages were
well into the millions, eventens of millions of dollars.
So a hundred K posting fee forthat kind of talent, drop in the

(06:39):
bucket, especially when you're arich company.
But how about those averageengineering roles that you know
would have normally gone to uh acognizant or Tata engineer, you
know, uh sponsored, build out toa US company?
That's really going away.

(07:00):
Um, you're not gonna pay thatkind of money for an average
engineer.
Well, where are you gonna lookto alternatively?
Uh unfortunately, the US,everybody I talked to, that ship
is kind of sailed.
There's not a lot of those uhkind of run-of-the-mill
developers anymore.

(07:22):
Um, maybe 20, 25 years ago therewas, but those are going away.
Now you are getting these like10x, React, Angular, Python, AI
data engineers, the gamechanging engineers that are
working at these early stage,mid-stage, high hiring bar
technical startups.

(07:43):
But you know, middle marketenterprise, they just need a lot
of decent developers.
And again, they're not worth ahundred K posting fee plus their
salary, you know, plus the visaimplications and their ability
to travel.
So they're turning to LatinAmerica.

(08:04):
We've already seen this big risein Latin America eating the
market share of globaloutsourcing.
So India's kind of been flat fora long time, where Latin
America's share of the pie keepsgrowing and growing.

(08:25):
Even if IT outsourcing spend isflat, Latin America, that piece
of the pie has got to come fromsomewhere.
So Latin America is kind ofeating the pie that India used
to have.
But in the case of a rising tidelifts all boats, more of that
work is going to Latin Americathan it is India.

(08:49):
In a baseball term, you know,you think of like Shohei Otani,
you know, and his team had aposting fee.
Or more recently, Roki Suzaki.
Uh, the Dodgers had to pay aposting fee, and then they could
have access and negotiatedirectly with that talent.
Those middle-of-the-roadengineers, you know, they're not

(09:10):
Otani, they're not Roki Suzaki,they're not superstars.
So near shore is already beingvalidated, Latin America's
validated, same time zone, easytravel visas, but again, you're
near shore because you don'tnecessarily need that.
You're already comfortable withdistributed teams.

(09:31):
Pay rates are kind of rightthere.
Um, where again, if you were toload up all the visa fees, all
of a sudden that's way moreexpensive than you know just the
easy hourly, monthly fees you'reworking with with Latin America
talent.
So summing all this up, I thinkthis is gonna be very

(09:54):
detrimental to engineers,especially in India and China,
where the relationship that theUS has is it's going south.
But just like politics, youknow, there's winners and
losers, the loser is gonna beIndia and China talent.
The winner is gonna be LatinAmerica talent.

(10:17):
Um, we're gonna expect to see abigger surplus of demand for a
big surge of demand for U.S.
interest in Latin Americatalent.
Again, same time zone, less visarestrictions, easy travel, um,

(10:38):
it's already been validated.
Google, Meta, Oracle, MuleSoft,Salesforce, all big players
already in Latin America.
So the talent's there, and it'suh it's a friendly region for
America right now.
If you have any more questionsabout this trending hot topic,

(11:02):
uh please drop a link in ourcomments.
I'll be happy to answer.
And uh you can always check outPlug Technologies for more
information.
P L U G G dot tech.
That's our sponsor.
Thanks for listening.