Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Friday that would impose an annual $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications, dealing a potentially major blow to the US tech industry, which relies heavily on workers from India and China.
The US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said at a Friday press briefing that “all the big companies” had been briefed on the new fee.
“A hundred-thousand dollars a year for H-1B visas, and all of the big companies are on board. We’ve spoken to them,” Lutnick said at an Oval Office event with the US president.
“If you’re going to train somebody, you’re going to train one of the recent graduates from one of the great universities across our land. Train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs,” he said.
Trump’s threat to crack down on H-1B visas has become a major flashpoint with the tech industry, which contributed millions of dollars to his presidential campaign. The tech industry relies, more than any other sector of the US economy, on H-1B visa holders. Roughly two-thirds of jobs secured through the H-1B program are computer-related, government figures show, but employers also use the visa to bring in engineers, educators and healthcare workers.
In the first half of 2025, Amazon had more than 10,000 H-1B visas approved, while Microsoft and Meta Platforms had more than 5,000 approvals each. The H-1B program offers 65,000 visas annually to employers bringing in temporary foreign workers in specialized fields, with another 20,000 visas for workers with advanced degrees.
Critics of the program, including many US technology workers, argue that it allows firms to suppress wages and sideline Americans who could do the jobs. Supporters, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, say it brings in highly skilled workers essential to filling talent gaps and keeping firms competitive. Musk, himself a naturalized US citizen born in South Africa, once held an H-1B visa.
Adding new fees “creates disincentive to attract the world’s smartest talent to the US”, Deedy Das, partner at venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, wrote on X. “If the US ceases to attract the best talent, it drastically reduces its ability to innovate and grow the economy.”
The new fee could significantly push up costs for companies, particularly smaller tech firms and startups.
“Either the person is very valuable to the company and America, or they are going to depart and the company is going to hire an American,” Lutnick said at the briefing. “And that’s the point of immigration. Hire Americans and make sure the people coming in are the top, top people. Stop the nonsense.”
Immigration experts are questioning whether the executive branch has the authority to impose the exorbitant annual fee.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said on Bluesky: “the president has literally zero legal authority to impose a $100,000 fee on visas. None. Zip. Zilch. The only authority Congress has ever given the executive branch here is to charge fees to recover the cost of processing the application.”
Under the current system, H-1B applicants pay a small fee to enter a lottery and, if selected, subsequent fees that can amount to several thousand dollars, depending on the case. Nearly all the visa fees have to be paid by employers. H-1B visas are approved for a period of three to six years.
The move is the latest effort by the Trump administration to curb, or raise more money from, legal immigration. Last month, the US launched a pilot program allowing consular officers to demand bonds of up to $15,000 for tourist and business visas from countries with high overstay rates or limited vetting data. That followed Trump’s June travel ban restricting entry from 19 nations. Trump’s first-term administration issued several regulations that aimed to limit access to H-1B visas and give them to higher-paying employers, but the regulations were blocked in federal court.
Reuters contributed reporting
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