3w ago

Trump to impose $100,000 fee per year for H-1B visas, in blow to tech

www.reuters.com

reuters.com

The Trump administration said on Friday it would ask companies to pay $100,000 per year for H-1B worker visas, prompting some big tech companies to warn visa holders to stay in the U.S. or quickly return.

The change could deal a big blow to the technology sector that relies heavily on skilled workers from India and China.

Since taking office in January, Trump has kicked off a wide-ranging immigration crackdown, including moves to limit some forms of legal immigration. The step to reshape the H-1B visa program represents his administration's most high-profile effort yet to rework temporary employment visas.

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3w ago

Trump to impose $100,000 fee per year for H-1B visas, in likely blow to tech

www.reuters.com /business/media-telecom/trump-mulls-adding-new-100000-fee-h-1b-visas-bloomberg-news-reports-2025-09-19/

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3w ago

$100K fee added to H1B applications

www.reuters.com /business/media-telecom/trump-mulls-adding-new-100000-fee-h-1b-visas-bloomberg-news-reports-2025-09-19/

44 comments

It’s another extortion trick. The administration has a way to waive the fee. He’s going to use it to get tech to bend the knee.
- Maybe. Could be just needing to offset tax cuts. The present administration and Congress has has cut taxes on the wealthy. Either they find new sources of revenue to fill the hole, or they run up deficit.
  https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/04/what-we-know-about-the-us-h-1b-visa-program/
  The number of H-1B applications approved in recent years has climbed. Nearly 400,000 were approved in fiscal year 2024, most of which were applications to renew employment. Rejection rates of H-1B applications spiked during Trump’s first term but fell under former President Joe Biden.
  Computer-related jobs have been the most common occupation for H-1B workers for more than a decade. Since fiscal 2012, about 60% or more of H-1B workers approved each year have held a computer-related job. In 2023, the share was 65%, and these workers reported a median annual salary of $123,600.
  India is the top country of birth for H-1B workers. Roughly three-quarters (73%) of H-1B workers whose applications were approved in fiscal 2023 were born in India.
  This would amount to a tax, mostly on the tech industry employing skilled workers out of India, of about $40B/year.
  Pew has a list of top employers. Amazon would take the single largest share, at over $1B/year.
  On the other hand, Trump also eliminated the de minimis tariff exemption, which was a move that I would guess is probably very advantageous to Amazon (it let foreign e-retailers sell to American consumers while rarely paying tariffs, since they sold product imported in small quantities, whereas domestic e-retailers selling product tended to import in larger quantity and paid tariff).
  kagis
  https://communicationsdaily.com/article/2025/05/20/cbo-no-de-minimis-would-mean-52-b-in-revenue-first-full-year-2505200047?BC=bc_674b2b83cff7b
  If de minimis ends for all imports in July 2027, as proposed in the tax bill currently being considered in the House of Representatives, the U.S. Treasury would collect an additional $5.2 billion in the first full fiscal year after the change, mostly in tariffs, but including $231 million in customs user fees.
  So if you figure that Trump effectively levied a tax that principally hit Amazon's foreign competitors like Shein and Temu with that move, I expect that that partially offsets how hard this hits Amazon.
  That being said, a lot of other tech firms are gonna get hurt, and aren't e-retailers. I doubt that this is a good move in terms of US tech strength.
  
  Uh, they will run of the deficit, not report honestly, and fuck the American economy.
  From June 2025, so it’s probably worse projections now.
  Sure, Trump had COVID, but his years were ramping up spending significantly before. The idea that Trump is some sort of “shrewd business man” is a complete lie. They supposedly cut all these jobs & they are still going to spend more than last year. So it’s just pure projection.
  
  Yeah, I'm trying really hard to find the gotcha on this one, but it's starting to look like they might have just accidentally stumbled onto a good policy.
  It will, of course, be administered badly, and probably applied in a way that doesn't stand up in court, but the idea itself seems sound. If you're really so desperate for talent to fill that role that you have to bring in someone from overseas, the extra cost is just part of doing business. But if you're just searching overseas for cheaper labour, this kills that option outright.
  As the article notes, it could still have negative side effects, like seeing companies move jobs overseas, but I don't find that argument entirely convincing. If it was that easy wouldn't they have already have moved those jobs instead of dealing with a visa lottery?
  Unfortunately I suspect the way this plays out is that in about a week they quietly drop it and then FAANG donate a giant pile of money to Trump's "charities" or whatever grift he's up on now. There's no way he actually messes with his financial backers like this. Most likely the whole thing is just a shake-down.
  
  There’s really very little keeping tech jobs in the us. If h1-b’s are too expensive they’ll just be remote jobs to another country. Just when we were finally bringing tech jobs back, whooosh
Oh wait, it’s per year? Jesus. That’s such a naked shakedown.
- Real question, is it $100k per H-1B visa per year? Or $100k per year for all the H-1B visa employees at a company?
  
  The fact that no one seems to be able to definitively answer that question makes the policy truly awful.
Not the worst idea, maybe even a good idea, going to be executed horribly, for all the wrong reasons, and will only serve the purpose of lining the pockets of some people and forcing allegiance to the regime.
- The US will lose its programming edge over the rest of the world but yeah the HB1 visa program was designed to exploit people. This won't fix it though.
  The proper thing to do would be to fix the program to force median or above wage pay and limit visas for saturated positions.
  
  As an unemployed American programmer I am insulted. This idea that the talent doesn’t exist here has been a lie by corporations to keep IT wages lower.
  
  force median or above wage pay
  This is already a thing . Raising that wage wouldn't be bad though.
- As is typical for Trump. Even if he identifies a problem correctly he's incapable of coming up with a good solution.
- I saw somewhere that the younger generation that just graduated is having a tough time finding IT jobs.
  I just hope companies don't just keep it down-sized and continue to not hire junior IT workers
  
  i heard cs majors had a tough time for like 10+years, biotech is the same, because these companies that do research also have H1B VISA as part of "do you need it in the applications" and then theres the side where they also preferentially hire woman too, as it shows they hold the majority of bio major in the states, and are more succesful in bio-health and research than thier male counterparts. I also witness labs in my university were mostly women too, minus the fact that one of the managers was pervy and only liked women.
What's the catch so his buddies can still use it?
- He can grant them exceptions.
All these billionaire techbro CEOs thinking that giving a bully what he wants will make him stop. Pathetic.
And what's the penalty for outsourcing to an Indian contracting firm instead? Or opening an office there?
- Trump admin doesn't care about jobs for American workers, they just don't want brown people in America, so that's probably fine with them.
- There is a 50% tariff on India currently, because of their import of russian crude oil. Does it also apply to software exports of India?
  
  if you're asking genuinely - no - software does not have a bill of lading.
No one was buying his trump gold card for $1 million to get a visa so he had to up the fee on other visas to make it make sense.
- I can see the gold card being a way to give immediate citizenship to the ultra wealth and them tax them if the US was a sensible country. Instead it's a way to avoid taxes.
The child rapist meat puppet is just covering the cost of sending you to a concentration camp the minute you set foot in the fascist states.
Unless I missed it it’s 100k fee once a year for 3 years, not 100k per visa. What a devastating blow to tech. About the same impact as me paying a 1$ service fee on something.
- Per person
  
  I’m not seeing anything in the article to suggest that, just the opposite.
  all the big companies are on board" with $100,000 a year for H-1B visas
Visas tied to one company, such as these H1B visas, should not exist. That is the only reason this does not bother me.
- they abused it so much for biotech too. im not surprised most of the hires, or experts come from where tech source thier employees.
Not a Trump fan. But this actually seems like a good idea to me. The H1B program is widely abused for companies to hire foreign technical workers rather than Americans. They do this because it is often cheaper. I would love to see it become more expensive.
I think a better way to do it would be to simply say H1B workers are no longer tied to any specific company, and must be paid at least call it $85,000/year. Plus the $100k fee to create the position. That way the program is restricted to its intent, to hire the best and brightest from other nations.
That said, I'm sure this is going to be horribly fucked up somehow. And springing this with zero notice left a ton of people who were traveling in a limbo, like there was a story of a flight about to take off to India that had to go back to the gate because people were basically threatening to jump out of the plane on the runway after this was announced. As usual with Trump, the people don't seem to matter.
But with that said, I'm not entirely sure this isn't a great idea.
- it wont make them hire locals more, it might make them hire internationally instead to support the operations in the states, without having them moving here.
  
  Maybe. But look at the headline from today or yesterday, Amazon laying off American workers and replacing them with H1B workers....
if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States. whitehouse.gov
So companies need to bribe/lobby the secretary of homeland security?
Not sure this is related at all but didn't Microsoft just get busted for findings that they used workers in China as support for their GCC tier Azure stuff?

44 comments