US President Donald Trump put a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas in an executive order signed on Monday.
According to the order for H-1B applications, the US State Department will only issue visas to employers who pay the fee. The executive order also bars recipients of the visa from entering the US unless the employer sponsoring their visa has made the payment.
The H-1B visa is used by US companies to temporarily employ non-immigrant workers for special positions. The visa is valid for three years, and can be renewed for a maximum of six years.
Employers must first make an effort to recruit American workers and pay H-1B recipients the same wages they would pay to Americans in the same roles. The program offers 65,000 visas annually, plus another 20,000 for workers holding advanced degrees.
While the program has been mainly used to recruit tech workers, physicians, fashion models, and university educators will also be affected.
Trump administration adds $100,000 fee for H1-B visa
“We need great workers, and this pretty much ensures that that’s what’s going to happen,” Trump said in his initial announcement at the White House.
Currently, employers who use the H-1B visa system pay fees ranging from $2,000 to $5,000, depending on a number of factors, such as the company's size. The White House stated that the changes will not be implemented until the next visa lottery begins early next year.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration also proposed a major overhaul of the way H-1B recipients are selected. Far more than 85,000 H-1B applications are submitted each year, and currently, the government uses a random lottery to choose which workers will receive visas.
Under the new proposal, the lottery would be weighted heavily in favor of higher-income workers, which the administration says would prevent the replacement of American workers with cheaper foreign labor.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle have called for reforms of the program, saying that it needs more federal oversight to ensure it’s not suppressing American workers’ wages.
The president has defended the visa program in the past. He told The New York Times last year that he was “a believer in H-1B.”
“I’ve always liked the visas; I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” he added.
Trump’s move to reshape the H-1B program will force IT firms with clients such as Apple, JPMorgan Chase, Walmart, Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet's Google to pause onshore rotations, accelerate offshore delivery, and ramp up hiring of US citizens and green card holders, experts said.
The White House later clarified that the order applied only to new applicants rather than holders of existing visas or those seeking renewals.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters this week that some of the specifics of the executive order are still in the works. He noted that the administration was debating "whether we’re going to charge the $300,000 up front or $100,000 a year for the three years.”
The administration is now pushing the “gold card” immigration system, wherein applicants would have to pay $1 million to immigrate to the US.
Last week, Lutnick stated that it was a measure intended to tip the scales in favor of high-earning applicants.
“We’re going to only take extraordinary people at the very top,” he added, as reported by NBC.