Trump Slaps $100,000 Fee on New H-1B Visas — Here’s What That Means

President Donald Trump has turned the spotlight back on the marquee visa for high-skilled workers, signing a proclamation that tacks a $100,000 fee onto new H-1B petitions. The move, billed by the White House as a way to curb “abuse” and protect US jobs, is already sowing confusion in boardrooms and anxiety among would-be applicants, and it’s almost certain to face legal challenges.

The H-1B is hardly a niche program. Created in 1990 to help employers plug talent gaps, it lets US companies hire foreign professionals — think software engineers, data scientists, doctors and professors — when they can’t find qualified Americans. Visas run for three years and can be extended; many H-1B holders later transition to green cards through employer sponsorship. Demand routinely exceeds supply: federal law caps the annual pool at 65,000 slots for workers with at least a bachelor’s degree, plus another 20,000 for those with US graduate degrees, with universities and research institutions exempt from those limits.

Trump’s new fee, scheduled to kick in Sept. 21, applies only to new petitions, not renewals. Even that has been muddied by mixed signals from the administration. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick initially suggested the charge would recur annually; the following day, the White House press secretary said it’s a one-time hit. Agencies have begun issuing guidance, but expect the courts to have a say, too.

Why this fight matters is simple: the program sits at the fault line between America’s appetite for talent and its politics. Immigration hard-liners argue the H-1B is a backdoor for cheaper labor that undercuts US workers. They can point to ugly episodes — like the 2015 case in which Disney tech staff were laid off and told to train H-1B replacements hired by an outsourcing firm. Supporters respond that the rules already require companies to recruit domestic candidates first and to pay H-1B hires the higher of the “prevailing wage” for the role or what similarly situated employees earn in that city. In practice, wages can still skew low: an Economic Policy Institute analysis found a majority of certified H-1B positions in 2019 were classified at levels “well below” local medians because of how federal wage tiers are set.

No sector is more exposed than tech. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and IBM regularly top the list of employers sponsoring H-1B workers. Health care and higher education also rely on the visas, particularly in underserved regions and specialized fields. The program is dominated by talent from India, which in recent years has accounted for well over two-thirds of approvals. That concentration gives Trump’s fee global ripple effects. Economists warn it could pinch remittances flowing back to India and nudge the rupee, while pushing Indian IT giants and US multinationals to accelerate “offshoring” or expand their engineering hubs in India rather than hire in the United States.

For companies, the calculus changes overnight. A $100,000 surcharge on top of existing filing costs and legal fees makes every new H-1B hire dramatically more expensive. Large firms with deep pockets may swallow the charge for critical roles; smaller startups, hospitals, and universities could struggle, potentially leaving jobs unfilled or moving work abroad. Immigration lawyers say the policy’s rollout — coming just as businesses plan next year’s hiring — creates immediate uncertainty, regardless of how pending lawsuits play out.

The human side is just as raw. H-1B families often spend years in temporary status while waiting in green-card backlogs, and the program’s tight annual cap makes each filing season a high-stakes lottery. India’s government has already flagged “humanitarian consequences,” noting how abrupt shifts strand spouses and school-age kids. Universities, meanwhile, worry that prospective international students — especially in STEM — will think twice about the US if the on-ramp to a first job looks blocked or wildly expensive.

The White House isn’t stopping at the fee. The proclamation tees up broader changes through rulemaking, including raising the government’s prevailing-wage benchmarks and reordering the H-1B lottery to favor higher-paid roles. Supporters call that a push to prioritize “the best of the best.” Critics see a squeeze that prices out nonprofits, rural hospitals, and early-stage firms that can’t match Big Tech salaries but still desperately need specialized skills.

It’s worth remembering how we got here. H-1B holders make up a tiny slice of the US labor force — roughly hundreds of thousands in a workforce of more than 160 million — but they punch well above their weight in sectors that drive innovation, productivity and, yes, tax revenues. Clamp down too hard and you don’t just change who gets a job offer; you change where the job lives. Companies will still build products and write code. If they can’t do it easily in Austin or Ann Arbor, they’ll do it in Ahmedabad or Accra.

For now, the immediate questions are practical: when exactly the new fee hits in agency systems, how consulates abroad will handle petitions already in the pipeline, whether any carve-outs emerge, and how judges view a six-figure charge created by proclamation rather than by Congress. The bigger question is strategic. The US can tighten guardrails to prevent abuse without choking off the talent flow that keeps its labs, hospitals and startups world-class. Whether this fee is a lever that fixes a program — or a sledgehammer that breaks it — will depend on what comes next.

With input from Bloomberg, USCIS, the New York Times, and BBC.