In a surprise announcement on Friday, President Trump issued a proclamation on the H-1B visas many tech companies use to import qualified foreign workers. The headlines mentioning a $100,000 fee caused panic among many visa holders, leading the White House to issue a clarification: Only new applicants will cost their companies this exorbitant price.
When President Trump signed the “Restriction on entry of certain nonimmigrant workers” proclamation on Friday, several companies issued alerts to H-1B staff telling them not to leave the US and to return if they were overseas, while there were reports of passengers rushing to get off flights leaving the country.
In a video on Friday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said of the visas, “They’re $100,000 per year. So 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.”
That statement led to worries that the coming year would be very expensive for companies that already have a lot of H-1B employees. But the following day, the White House press secretary clarified matters, saying that existing H-1B visa holders keep their current status and that officials will process applications filed before September 21 as usual.
On Saturday, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and Customs and Border Protection issued clarifications of their own, saying that existing H-1B visa holders’ current status was unchanged and applications made before September 21 would be processed normally. They added that the government does not prevent any current H-1B holder from traveling in and out of the US.
USCIS said in its fact sheet that the $100,000 fee applies only to new H-1B petitions, and that renewals and existing H-1B holders will not be charged. Furthermore, the proclamation directs DHS to pursue rulemaking to prioritize higher-paid, higher-skilled applicants in future H-1B lotteries.
Even so, US employers aren’t going to be pleased at having to pony up in the future. The top ten users of the H-1B system, listed below, are going to face hundreds of millions in application fees under current hiring patterns.
Here’s a list of the top H-1B sponsors operating in the US in FY 2025 (approvals):
- Amazon – 10,044
- Tata Consultancy Services – 5,505
- Microsoft – 5,189
- Meta – 5,123
- Apple – 4,202
- Google – 4,181
- Cognizant – 2,493
- JPMorgan Chase – 2,440
- Wal-Mart – 2,390
- Deloitte Consulting – 2,353
The Register contacted all ten companies to see how this will change their employment practices. Microsoft declined to comment, but everyone else is staying quiet for now.
Of course, the real losers here are people who are in the process of getting an H-1B job, possibly after multiple rounds of interviews, and who may now have the career path they envisioned shut down due to cost. However, the rule change makes it more likely that they could get decent jobs without having to travel, and the end result might not be more jobs for US citizens.
“I sort of feel like companies will figure this out,” explained Simon Ellis, group VP of manufacturing and supply chain at analyst house IDC, told The Register. “They’ll say, okay, instead of, you know, hiring a bunch of people outside California, for example, we’ll just have an office in Bangalore, right? And the folks will work there.”
The devil is in the details
He pointed out that companies like Apple have outsourced all their manufacturing to Asia and that the same could now be done with design and intellectual work. The vast majority of H-1B workers make less than $200,000, he opined, and under those circumstances, it makes financial sense to simply set up an office in another country.
There is also lingering uncertainty about how these rules are going to be implemented. “The devil is in the details,” he commented. “We’ve seen that repeatedly with all the tariffs.”
Indian trade body the National Association of Software and Service Companies said that it welcomed the clarification of the new rules. It pointed out that H-1B workers were a “mere decimal point” in overall US employment and said that Indian companies have been ready for changes to the scheme.
“Over the years, Indian and India-centric companies operating in the US have significantly reduced their dependencies on H-1B visas and steadily increased their local hiring,” it said in a statement.
“H-1B issued for two leading India and India-centric companies have decreased from 14,792 in 2015 to 10,162 in 2024. H-1B workers in the top 10 Indian and India-centric companies are less than 1 percent of their entire employee base. Given this trajectory, we anticipate only marginal impact for the sector.” ®