President Donald Trump announced plans in September to impose a $100,000 payment for new H-1B visa purposes, a transfer that would pose a problem to firms, significantly within the expertise sector, that rely closely on extremely expert overseas staff.
“Now this is a big change because the typical fee is currently a couple thousand dollars,” mentioned Stephanie Roth, chief economist at Wolfe Research. “So this could potentially change the program pretty significantly.”
“The whole idea is, no more will these Big Tech companies or other big companies train foreign workers,” mentioned U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. “They have to pay the government $100,000, then they have to pay the employee. So it’s just not economic.”
The H-1B visa program, created by Congress underneath the Immigration Act of 1990, permits U.S. employers to rent overseas professionals on a brief foundation for positions that require extremely specialised experience. H-1B visa approvals, that are legitimate for three years and will be prolonged for as much as six years, are capped at 65,000 per 12 months, with a further carve-out of 20,000 for people with superior levels.
“The program was designed to bring in people, especially since technology was starting to ramp up in particular, bring in people that the U.S. did not have in terms of actual labor supply,” mentioned Roth.
Big Tech, particularly, has been one of many greatest beneficiaries of the H-1B visa program. According to the newest data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, tech giants together with Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google had been among the many high 10 employers of H-1B holders in fiscal 2025. Notable past recipients of the H-1B visa embrace Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
The Trump administration, which individually proposed adjustments to the H-1B lottery choice system final month to prioritize higher-paid overseas staff, has defended the reforms as a strategy to push American firms to rent extra home expertise.
“If you’re going to train somebody, you’re going to train one of the recent graduates from one of the great universities across our land. Train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs,” mentioned Lutnick.
Meanwhile, critics of the payment hikes say the transfer may stifle innovation by limiting the stream of abroad expertise to the United States.
“If you think about people like Elon Musk, for example, when they were startups, they were on a very slim budget and working out of their garage,” mentioned Jeff Joseph, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “All of those business never would exist today if that was the situation that we found ourselves in.”
“On one side, you don’t want it to be that cheap labor comes and replaces America opportunity. I think there’s some truth to that,” mentioned Hemant Taneja, CEO of General Catalyst. “On the other side, you don’t want to have labor not be there and actually meet the needs of these startups and then slow down progress for our businesses. Nobody wants that. “
Watch the video above to seek out out the influence of President Trump’s H-1B visa reforms on Big Tech — and the way the brand new $100,000 payment may reshape hiring methods for American firms going ahead.