When President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on September 19, 2025, imposing a staggering $100,000 fee for every new H-1B visa application, the shockwaves rippled far beyond the White House. The move, designed to address what Trump called "systemic abuse of the program" and the "large-scale replacement of American workers" in critical sectors like information technology, software, science, technology, engineering, and math, has triggered a global response—and a heated debate across the U.S. political and business landscape.
For decades, the H-1B visa program has been a lifeline for U.S. companies seeking highly skilled foreign talent. Established under the Immigration Act of 1990, it allows employers to hire foreign professionals for specialized roles, with annual caps set at 65,000 visas, plus an extra 20,000 for those with advanced degrees. Tech giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Google have relied heavily on this pipeline, with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data confirming their status as the top H-1B employers in fiscal year 2025. Even some of the world’s most influential CEOs—Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, and Sundar Pichai—were once H-1B holders.
But the Trump administration’s dramatic fee increase marks a seismic shift. As Stephanie Roth, chief economist at Wolfe Research, told Roll Call, "Now this is a big change because the typical fee is currently a couple thousand dollars. So this could potentially change the program pretty significantly." Roth explained that the H-1B program was originally designed to fill labor gaps in the U.S., particularly as technology industries took off, by bringing in expertise that wasn’t available domestically.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick echoed the administration’s rationale, telling Roll Call, "The whole idea is, no more will these Big Tech companies or other big companies train foreign workers. They have to pay the government $100,000, then they have to pay the employee. So it's just not economic." Lutnick argued that the hike would incentivize companies to "train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs." The administration also proposed changes to the H-1B lottery, aiming to prioritize higher-paid foreign workers and, in theory, further protect domestic employment.
Yet, the backlash has been swift and widespread. Critics warn that the new fee could stifle innovation, slow startups, and drive away the very talent that has made the U.S. a global tech powerhouse. Jeff Joseph, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, underscored the stakes, telling Roll Call, "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. All of those businesses never would exist today if that was the situation that we found ourselves in." Hemant Taneja, CEO of General Catalyst, struck a similar note, saying, "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. 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."
The international response has been equally striking. Sensing an opportunity, countries such as Canada, Germany, and China have moved quickly to attract the skilled workers who might now think twice about coming to the U.S. Just four days after Trump’s proclamation, German Ambassador to India and Bhutan Philipp Ackermann posted a video welcoming immigrants, pointedly noting, "We do not change our rules fundamentally overnight." On September 27, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced plans to introduce new measures to lure talent who might otherwise have sought H-1B visas. Meanwhile, China launched its own "K visa" on October 1, explicitly targeting foreign experts in science and technology—a move the Indian press dubbed "China’s H-1B."
Jorge Lopez, chair of the Immigration and Global Mobility Practice Group at Littler Mendelson, told Roll Call that U.S. companies with international footprints are now more seriously considering shifting operations to countries with friendlier immigration policies. "Those discussions are happening more and more," Lopez said, adding that Canada tops the list of alternative destinations, followed by Mexico and Costa Rica, which offers a "nomad visa" for remote hiring. "It’s the benefit of that country, because then they get the benefit of tax payments and use of resources that all goes to the home country," he explained.
Legal challenges have already emerged. One lawsuit argues that Trump’s proclamation "ignores other benefits of bringing H-1B workers to the United States, where they consume goods and services and pay taxes in the United States. Cutting off employers’ ability to employ H-1B workers will likely push some employers to outsource their work to other countries." David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, added that the U.S. already faced stiff competition from countries like Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, which all offer easier immigration pathways for skilled workers. "If other countries tout their immigration systems, they would become an option for workers and companies that’s going to be taken more frequently as a result of this action by the Trump administration further restricting the U.S. system," Bier said.
On Capitol Hill, the fee hike has sparked a fierce partisan divide. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., whose parents immigrated from India, condemned the policy as "a direct attack on our economy." He warned on September 20, "Companies are warning visa holders not to leave the U.S. Those outside the country have 24 hours to return or risk being denied. This isn’t immigration policy. This is economic sabotage." On the other hand, supporters of the administration’s approach, including Senators Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Richard Durbin, D-Ill., have reintroduced legislation focused on protecting American workers from being replaced by foreign labor.
Ronil Hira, an associate professor of political science at Howard University, sided with the administration’s critics of the old system. "The problem with the H-1B program is that there aren’t sufficient worker protections," Hira said. "Employers love the program because they make extra profit by exploiting it." He pointed to incidents like Disney’s 2015 replacement of 250 IT workers with lower-paid foreign talent, arguing that the prevailing wage requirements are too low and easily manipulated. "It sounds like a market wage, but it’s not an actual market wage," Hira explained. "It’s set so low so that an employer can pay 20 to 40 percent less than what the market wage is." Hira also noted that enforcement of wage protections is virtually nonexistent: "I’ve talked to people at Wage and Hour Division, there’s never been a case where they’ve actually investigated this and tried to enforce it."
As the dust settles, one thing is clear: Trump’s $100,000 H-1B fee has upended the calculus for companies, workers, and policymakers alike. Whether it will succeed in protecting American jobs or simply push talent and opportunity elsewhere remains a deeply contentious—and consequential—question for the nation’s future.
