Trump Adds $100k Surcharge to H-1B Visa Cost To Protect American High Tech Workers
Also created the “Gold Card” visa system giving priority to individuals donating $1 million or $2 million per individual if paid by a company.
The replacement of American tech workers by foreigners on H-1B visas has become a growing political issue – with the criticism coming mostly from the right.
Today Trump signed a Declaration raising the fee charged to employers from $1000 to $100,000 annually – making it more costly to replace American workers. CBS News reports:
The Trump administration is adding $100,000 to the existing fee for H-1B visa applications, taking aim at a program that is used to attract highly skilled workers to the U.S.
President Trump signed an executive order late Friday adding the new visa application fee and barring H-1B workers from entering the U.S. unless they had made the $100,000 payment.
“We’re going to be able to keep people in our country that are going to be very productive people, and in many cases these companies are going to pay a lot of money for that, and they’re very happy about it,” Mr. Trump said.
The additional charge would impact employers including technology giants such as Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Google, which have relied on the program to hire foreign workers.
The Executive Order, called a Proclamation, says in part:
The abuse of the H-1B program is also a national security threat. Domestic law enforcement agencies have identified and investigated H-1B-reliant outsourcing companies for engaging in visa fraud, conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and other illicit activities to encourage foreign workers to come to the United States.
Further, abuses of the H-1B program present a national security threat by discouraging Americans from pursuing careers in science and technology, risking American leadership in these fields. A 2017 study showed that wages for American computer scientists would have been 2.6 percent to 5.1 percent higher and employment in computer science for American workers would have been 6.1 percent to 10.8 percent higher in 2001 absent the importation of foreign workers into the computer science field.
It is therefore necessary to impose higher costs on companies seeking to use the H-1B program in order to address the abuse of that program while still permitting companies to hire the best of the best temporary foreign workers.
The days of employers abusing H-1B Visas are over.
Introducing PROJECT FIREWALL—our plan to ensure high-skilled jobs go to AMERICANS FIRST 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/XPwBJSZfto
— U.S. Department of Labor (@USDOL) September 19, 2025
The Hindu newspaper in India noted the potential impact:
In a move that could adversely impact Indian professionals on visas in the U.S., President Donald Trump on Friday (September 19, 2025) signed a proclamation that will raise the fee for H1-B visas to a staggering $1,00,000 annually, the latest in the administration’s efforts to crack down on immigration….
H-1B visas are meant to bring the best and brightest foreigners for high-skilled jobs that tech companies find difficult to fill with qualified U.S. citizens and permanent residents. The programme instead has turned into a pipeline for overseas workers who are often willing to work for as little as $60,000 annually. That is far less than $100,000-plus salaries typically paid to U.S. technology workers….
Historically, these visas — 85,000 per year — have been doled out through a lottery system. This year, Amazon was by far the top recipient of H-1B visas with more than 10,000 awarded, followed by Tata Consultancy, Microsoft, Apple and Google. Geographically, California has the highest number of H-1B workers, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Critics say H-1B spots often go to entry-level jobs, rather than senior positions with unique skill requirements.
At the same time, Trump signed an Executive Order establishing a “Gold Card” visa system:
Sec. 2. The Gold Card. (a) The Secretary of Commerce, in coordination with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security, shall establish a “Gold Card” program authorizing an alien who makes an unrestricted gift to the Department of Commerce under 15 U.S.C. 1522 (or for whom a corporation or similar entity makes such a gift) to establish eligibility for an immigrant visa using an expedited process, to the extent consistent with law and public safety and national security concerns. The requisite gift amount shall be $1 million for an individual donating on his or her own behalf and $2 million for a corporation or similar entity donating on behalf of an individual.
BREAKING: Trump announces the 'Trump Gold Card' available for $1 million for individuals pic.twitter.com/eqOXJeH1VO
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) September 19, 2025
NOW – Trump signs "Gold Card" executive order, expediting H-1B visas for a fee up to $2,000,000 and imposing a $100,000 annual sponsorship fee for regular applicants. pic.twitter.com/sWvAdQs72H
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 19, 2025
UPDATE –
The fee apparently is one time, not annual. When I read the Proclamation I didn’t read it as annual, but in the video above it was described as annual, so I thought perhaps I missed something, and went with that. I should have stuck to my own reading. Now the White House has clarified it’s a one-time fee, not annual. The headline has been adjusted accordingly.
To be clear:
1.) This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition.
2.) Those who already hold H-1B visas and are currently outside of the country right now will NOT be charged $100,000 to re-enter.
H-1B visa holders can leave and re-enter the…
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) September 20, 2025
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Comments
Will tend to move software overseas, where it’s much cheaper, instead of keeping it here.
Time zone differences and cultural differences make offshoring very difficult. If it was cheap AND effective, why would they want to import anyone?
No- in some banks India resources are as much as 40%. of certain departments. They speak English, are accustomed to US customs, and work late to accommodate US schedules.
They all speak better English than I speak any other language.
Many speak English with a thick accent that makes them difficult to understand.
We used to offshore a ton of app development but the Indians screwed up so much of our business critical software we had to rebuild it all in house. My company is so capricious I guarantee they’ll forget that lesson and do it all over again.
It will be disruptive. Not unlike pandemic lockdown work from home. That hangover can still be felt in tech centers like SF that have 33% office vacancy. Companies will be forced to adapt, for good or bad. But it won’t be limited to tech sector.
I used to log in on a computer in India to support their systems, back when it was reversed. Very slow connection in those days. It made /bin/ed the only viable text editor.
Economic policy need no longer accommodate acoustic modems.
I bet Danny is beside himself.
I knew a schizophrenic who was so angry he was beside himself….
😂😂
Now apply restrictions to foreign students graduating US university walking into US jobs by trading their student visa for a ‘job training’ visa and eliminate work permissions for foreign students so that there’s far less ability to game the system.
Offshoring of IT and finance in Bangalore and Hyperabad india is already a large industry and has been for 15 years at least. This will only cause it to grow.
Those jobs and companies are already there. There won’t be any differences this, next or in 10 years time.
“H-1B visas are meant to bring the best and brightest foreigners for high-skilled jobs that tech companies find difficult to fill with qualified U.S. citizens and permanent residents.”
Absolutely false. A persistent myth throughly debunked by Norm Matloff who is (now retired) professor of computer science and statistics at UC Davis. He wrote on his webpage:
“The vast majority of H-1Bs, including those hired from U.S. universities, are ordinary people doing ordinary work, not the best and the brightest. On the contrary, the average quality of the H-1Bs is LOWER than that of the Americans.”
BTW for the truly high skilled we have the O-1 visa. H-1B visa holders are mostly Indian nationals who are after the green card. As such they lack mobility because the green card clock gets reset when they change jobs. So it’s more than just cheap labor. The H-1B holder becomes a captive worker. This is a major attraction for industry.
Microsoft loves cheap H-1B programmers and it shows in the poor quality of MS software. Like Excel, which is absolute junk, and should not be used for statistical calculations. Excel came last in NIST tests of statistical software. The only package that ran everything correctly was Mathematica. This info is more than ten years old. Perhaps MS has fixed all the problems, but I doubt it. I have run my own tests of Excel. Compute the determinant of a Hilbert Matrix (designed to be ill-conditioned) and note it breaks at a low order like about 7. Even some common software like Matlab will break at around an order of 12 or 14. Here is the problem. H-1B programmers look up theoretical formulas from a textbook and program them. But statistical computing requires special techniques to run right. It’s a whole field in itself.
MS Word did not run the Flesch-Kincaid readability score correctly. I had to reprogram it. One of the MS apps thinks 1900 was a leap year. No. A century year mist be divisible by 400 to be a leap year. So 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but not 1900. Examples of the sloppy H-1B programming.
So hooray to Trump for the $100k surcharge to protect American workers. Get set for major whining from India. I have heard them complain they will have trouble finding brides without the H-1B program.
The consultancies that employ many of them also have them lie about their experience with any particular software platform. Some of you will deny it buy I have worked with two different Indian guys that told me they lost jobs because they wouldn’t do that but someone else would.
If they were ever needed they certainly are not needed now after all the various layoffs at MS, IBM, and Oracle.
Good. There is ZERO reason to put up with this H1B abuse any more. There is zero reason to accept companies laying off thousands of Americans yet being allowed to continue to import thousands of H1Bs.
Any company that ONLY advertises a job opening in a print newspaper in 2025 is not actually trying to fill the job.
I don’t have a problem with any of this, except for the infomercial for the “Trump” gold card. It’s just unseemly.
I’m also not fond of a new avenue for rich cartelistas and enemy sleeper agents to acquire instant citizenships, especially under future proggy administrations.
The cartelistas have no reason to want to become American citizens; they will retain their cozy berths in their sanctuary home countries.
And sleeper agents are already here.
Future prog administrations will simply open the borders again.
Looks like these companies will be paying their fair share after all.
Well there goes my tech sector ETFs for the short term but at least it is for a good cause.
Finally!
The reason why companies violate federal laws to hire foreign nationals over Americans is because they save a lot of money doing so.
This includes both illegal and legal foreign nationals.
If you really want to address illegal immigration and visa abuse, punishing the employers for those violations will never address even 1% of the problem.
Instead, reverse the incentives. Make it more expensive, through fees like this and theougb tax policies, to hire foreigners and companies will then have the incentive to hire Americans instead. Wages will rise, without artificial minimum wage laws distorting the market, and drug addiction and homelessness will decline.
Enforcing taxes and fees on companies is something the federal government is really, really good at. Play to your strengths.
Companies don’t pay penalties for illegal employees that they don’t report.
Increase workplace enforcement and inspections. Go through the paperwork; I9 forms, payroll data, to find violations in hiring folks without permission to work and for tax/SSA/unemployment IN payment issues. Then temporarily seize the business assets where that occurred until the investigation and any trials are completed.
There’s another reason the administrative class (who can’t actually do the work but demand to dictate terms of performance) likes to hire illegal labor. Well an independent US citizen is more likely to explain to them in no uncertain terms that they don’t know what they’re talking about and what they are demanding will never work, toss their ID card on the ground at their feet, and turn around and walk out. The illegal will just wiggle their head side to side, and go about wasting time, money, and resources trying to implement the dictated nonsense.
Congress should codify these changes in statutory law because the minute Trump’s term is over, these fees will be reduced. Will Congress do that? No, because they’ve all been bought and paid for by Big Tech, left & right.
Which brings up whether the order is Constitutional at all.
Congress makes the laws and regulations on immigration. The Executive Branch enforces those laws and regulations.
As far as I am aware, the Executive Branch has no authority to make new laws and regulations on immigration.
To be clear, this might be a good idea for a number of reasons. The question is whether the President has the authority to bypass Congress on immigration laws.
As I understand, OPT was created completely by the executive branch. Evidently there’s a ton of wiggle room in immigration law.
INA §214(c)(12) is the authority under which the Executive branch can set whatever fees required for an H1B visa. IMO $100k (currently $2500) is excessive, but perfectly legal.
It’s not a NEW law or the imposition of a NEW fee (the fee already exists); he has a lot of leeway in the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Which is not to say it won’t see legal challenges, because of course he will. It’s where any action of Trump’s ends up in this dysfunctional era.
Is this retroactive? Will it immediately apply to visa already in place? Or when visa comes up for periodic renewal?
As of ~ 2017 about 10k physicians in the US are on H1b Visas. Many work in underserved rural areas.
and your point is…..
its unfair??
Correct. Unfair to the people who live in these areas who may lose their access to physicians, possibly having to drive much longer distances for their healthcare needs.
so then you and others ( and at least 70 million voted kamalala) pitch in the money to pay for it …I know I and other maga would also contribute especially it gets the gov out of our business
Rural taxpayers are already shelling out to support Medical Schools to produce MD. Have Physicians required to serve in these areas within the same of the State Taxpayer funded Medical School they graduated from. So if you graduate from UAB you gotta serve some period in Alabama underserved areas as a part of acceptance. Seems fair enough an exchange for tax subsidized Medical School.
companies will want to build here if there is (more) capitalism and less regs
the people will want that too as long as illegal actions by companies are punished and people go to prison, when applicable
its this mish mosh of pretending that does us in as we
pretend blmoplo is a righteous seeking organization or that the left are the crusaders of freedom or that publicly funded education is the right thing to do
no trump isnt perfect but we have been beaten down so badly that we are willing to accept his bad actions which is a shame ( buying into intel as one example of a bad action)
I am a bit mixed on this development. My own business provides IT computer consulting services to Fortune 1000 companies, and there’s no doubt that the massive infusion of H1B workers has depressed the rates that I can charge my clientele. There’s no doubt that these visas have been abused, not just by the IT companies, but also by the cottage industry that imports these H1B workers and exploits them.
However, many of those workers are looking at H1B as an opportunity to come to America and become citizens – legally. These are smart people and not just mere worker drones. We absolutely need more American workers to step up and fill in the niche, but bumping up American wages and assuring full employment alone is not going to do it. Our schools and colleges are woefully inadequate to preparing our citizens to work in the IT sector. I applaud the Trump administration‘s efforts at reform,, but I think that $100,000 per worker is too high and too soon for our companies to adapt.
As for the critic of Microsoft software – I’m no fanboy,, but Excel is a fabulous tool, even though it’s hobbled by bloatware created by consumer demand to do far more than it was originally designed to do. H1B workers aren’t the problem there.
Maybe our schools would do a better job of preparing students if the jobs they were lined up for paid better.
This year, Amazon was by far the top recipient of H-1B visas with more than 10,000 awarded, followed by Tata Consultancy, Microsoft, Apple and Google.
I’m sorry I had a giggle on Tata consultancy. Hey I know tatas LOL
This was overdue. In 1990 the H1B1 visa was rare. By 1999 the work visa was common.
“employment in computer science for American workers would have been 6.1 percent to 10.8 percent higher in 2001”
I call BS on this statement. The Y2K IT layoffs and the massive project to link America by fiber instead of copper ended around the same timeframe. The only people being hired in IT at that time were entry level positions.
One side-effect of the current regime, which I fully admit I don’t understand…
All the headhunting firms for IT contract workers are now Indian, for some reason. If you are a contract worker, the cold calls you get are always from people with rich Indian accents, working for firms with Indian names or connections. They are also unprofessionally lax as to who they groom for jobs that have requirements for which the candidate can’t qualify, e.g., the job requires a clearance but the candidate has been turned down previously.