President To Impose $100,000 Fee For H-1B Worker Visas, White House Says (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0179377198
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/19/2020241/president-to-impose-100000-fee-for-h-1b-worker-visas-white-house-says
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/trump-mulls-adding-new-100000-fee-h-1b-visas-bloomberg-news-reports-2025-09-19/
> As part of his broader immigration crackdown, the Republican president was expected to sign a proclamation as early as Friday restricting entry under the H-1B visa program unless the application fee is paid, the official said.
>
> The H-1B program has become critical for technology and staffing companies who rely on foreign workers to fill a variety of technical roles. Amazon had over 10,000 H-1B visas approved in the first half of 2025, while Microsoft and Meta had over 5,000 H-1B visa approvals each, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Roughly two-thirds of jobs secured through the visa program are computer-related, according to U.S. government figures, but employers also use the visa to bring in engineers, educators and healthcare workers.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/trump-mulls-adding-new-100000-fee-h-1b-visas-bloomberg-news-reports-2025-09-19/
A rare good move from Trump (Score:2)
Even a broken brain is right once a day... or once a decade...
Corporations have long abused these visa to suppress wages in the sector and drive jobs away from skilled US workers.
Re: A rare good move from Trump (Score:2)
It's a shame this is now of a grift to raise money for Trump than actually addressing the underlying issue.. eg mandate companies that want toimport labour have a training program in place to train new starters/graduates to fill these roles, and also have a neutral industry commission that keeps track of actual skilled labour shortages and can say no to h1b visas if the company is just trying to get cheaper non-local labour when there are local skilled people available
WFH (Score:4, Interesting)
Tech CEOs are gonna fall back in love with remote work.
Re: (Score:2)
What are the reasons for the RTO push? IMHO, it's to prop up property values and give them a good reason to write off a bunch of taxes on office space more than wanting to micro manage employees. I believe companies are just going to look at this as a reason to offshore the work completely.
Re: (Score:2)
> Tech CEOs are gonna fall back in love with remote work.
I think more likely they'll nip this in the bud with extreme prejudice.
(and of course they're already in love with "remote work" when the "remote" is some significantly lower cost area, like India, Eastern Europe, or Texas... and they set up an office there or outsource to there. And yes i understand the argument is that you're co-locating teams and the sharding is at a higher level, but in practice it often ends up with even teams being spread over multiple timezones, let alone that a lot of communicati
Just send your $100K to DJT (Score:2)
Make a $100K purchase at World Liberty Financial today, to obtain your complimentary visa and the right to not be tagged and shot for being a narco terrorist.
Will Push More Off-Shoring (Score:2, Insightful)
I suspect the fee will push more firms to off-shore more. Probably to Canada, India, Ireland, or anywhere else that isn't considered an enemy of the state.
Re: (Score:2)
In theory it could, but Trump is bound to create tariffs for this as well.
If your company or management are in the US, then you are importing labor or services from overseas. Trump can set a tarriff on the fair market value of that work being performed overseas by non-US workers multiplied by the number of hours.
If you move your company overseas to avoid that tariff, then your customers in the US will pay a tariffs on your products or services instead, whatever you are selling.
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or push harder on the AI train.
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Well if we start taxing offshoring that might not be the best route.
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If that were the case why wouldn't they already have done this? It's less expensive to hire an Indian working and living in India than it is to hire an Indian H-1B worker in the U.S.
smart! (Score:4, Insightful)
Canada should do this with their temporary foreign worker program. I predict employers would magically start hiring from the domestic pool of available workers and at competitive wages. (Since that's what happens when you don't have unlimited access to imported indentured slave labor)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes because there are all those students who want to gut fish to put themselves through school.
I really, really hate to agree with him (Score:2)
...but I kinda like the idea...in theory
H1-B visas have been used to import cheap workers, not workers with special talents who aren't available locally
There are plenty of qualified workers available, but they aren't cheap
Unfortunately, in practice, this probably won't solve the problem and will simply create other problems
R.I.P. tech industry (Score:4, Insightful)
Great news for Canada, Australia, UK, and EU. They have a vibrant tech culture and it will suddenly get a new influx of labor that can bring about a lot of profit for many businesses.
Trump is playing a loser's strategy at globalization. Ultimately the stakes for him personally are low. But your average working class American is going to be hit hard when the money dries up for the fastest grown and fourth largest industry by revenue in the US, the information technology industry.
Re: (Score:1)
> Trump is playing a loser's strategy at globalization.
So what? Globalization gutted US middle class and made 95% poorer.
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But wait until you hear about the stock market. You know thats our 401ks right? (jerk off motion, eye roll)
Re: (Score:2)
Look supposedly we're supposed to all lose our jobs to AI or something and we've been hearing all sorts of reasons we have to put up with shit.
I don't support Trump in any way but I'm to the point with the tech industry I'll go fucking tint windows or fix rooftops or even maybe even turn crime.
Go ahead and take my job fuckers I'm tired of hearing about it for the past 20 years. Here I am! Kill me now!
Interesting to see this play out.... (Score:2)
From a fundamental standpoint, I 100% agree with this level of fee on H1B visas. It was intended for bringing in people who had specializations that didn't exist locally, not for bringing in people who would simply do the work cheaper then the local labor pool. This has led to all kinds of stagnation in compensation especially when there was high demand for the jobs as well as rising cost of living.
That being said, remote work has shown that some of this can be done without being at the office anymore. I t
Great idea (Score:1)
H1B should be truly for labor that is not available in the US only and making that cost more is a great idea.
It's a lie (Score:2)
The guy almost never tells the truth. This is just to sound good. He streamlined H1B last time but couldn't / didn't change the cap on workers. It became easier while he sounded like he was against it last time. He can't legally set this fee but the law doesn't matter anymore. This will have EXEMPTIONS for his "friends" besides it sounding like it is still a bargain that won't really deter large companies. They may even write it off on their taxes! Except big loopholes and exceptions for the "right" peop
better would be on $100k on trophy wifes (Score:2)
trump hates American women or maybe, because he is a pedophile. melana or whatever her name is obviously hates him. How about release the Epstein Files that we know show you raping childen trump?.
Application fee (Score:2)
If it is an application fee that could at least restrict firms, such as largeIT consultancies, from filing a lot of applications, because it is cheap, and increasing their chances of getting a visa in the lottery.
This should stop the abuse of H1-B (Score:2)
I think $100K (hopefully pegged to inflation or in a few decades we will be back where we started) advantage for local labor force is about right to guarantee that there is no comparable expertise available locally at a market price salary.
Re: (Score:3)
You jest. On the other hand, it'll stop those insane return-to-office mandates though, as all new development will be remote.
Re: This should stop the abuse of H1-B (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a move in the right direction, but over several years it's still probably a "savings".
And because we live in a capitalist dystopia, the imported workers will probably just wind up taking the equivalent pay cut instead of fewer visas.
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There are much better ways to deal with the abuses. What this will do, is that newly graduated STEM masters and PhD will go back to their home country and we lose out on top talents. These guys eventually become employers in our economy and pay a lot of tax. We all know that our K-12 is in shambles, but instead of trying to be patriotic and fix the problem, these guys look to score quick political points. Our kids are REALLY uncompetitive at the global stage.
Re: This should stop the abuse of H1-B (Score:2)
I have been saying for decades now that the F-1 (student) visa should be able to convert to a resident visa upon graduation.
The whole idea of it not being a resident visa was a cold war notion that after graduating, the international student would return to their country and spread the gospel of how wonderful the United States was, and how their local country needed to oppose the Soviets. I doubt that ever really happened.
Today, weâ(TM)re just training people and then at best turning them into indentu
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F1 Students do OPT initially (at least STEM students do.)
The cool kids doing serious research do the Education excluded H1B (which has no cap.)
And of course if you are actually good, you can do O-1A.
I've always been a fan of the whole "just allow everyone with a degree" visa. That's what we do here (+ job sponsorship, but everyone needs a job, so ...)
Re: (Score:2)
>> These guys eventually become employers in our economy and pay a lot of tax.
> Employers that only hire other people from their home country. Or have you never seen what happens when an Indian in IT at an American company makes it to management?
The vast majority DON'T become employers in terms of founding companies obviously, and that issue you point at with managers definitely happens. (but once it reaches a tipping point of density ... you wouldn't want to work in that group / department / company anyway) so it's not that what you mention doesn't happen, but also:
"Most Billion-Dollar Startups In The U.S. Founded By Immigrants"
> “Immigrants have started more than half (319 of 582, or 55%) of America’s startup companies valued at $1 billion or more,” the analysis. “Moreover, nearly two-thirds (64%) of U.S. billion-dollar companies (unicorns) were founded or cofounded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Almost 80% of America’s unicorn companies (privately-held, billion-dollar companies) have an immigrant founder or an immigrant in a key leadership role, such as CEO or vice president of engineering.”
(2022 article
[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/s... [forbes.com] )
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/07/26/most-us-billion-dollar-startups-have-an-immigrant-founder/
Re: (Score:1)
" What this will do, is that newly graduated STEM masters and PhD will go back to their home country and we lose out on top talents. "
It has always been that way, your just starting to catch on.
CS degree's have always been a shame outside of a couple of colleges they teach nothing needed in a real job environment.
The reality of the situation is big tech didn't screw you over the elite liberal education system did that by themselves.
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Computer Science is a flawed degree but you are way off! It was a math degree initially and it was theory bound. It became corrupted into software engineering. It sounds better so the name sticks but it is more of a software engineering degree today. It really should be a math degree that has nothing from industry in it. Let them research new algorithms and have very few job prospects. If you want software engineers, then make a proper engineering degree! Stop this widespread false advertising!
Even so, in
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These guys eventually become employers in our economy and pay a lot of tax.
A H-1B is not the path to that as far as I know. The H-1B lasts for 3 years and can be extended 3 more. After that 6 years the H-1B cannot be renewed, and they're forced back to their own country for a minimum of 1 year anyway.
The only way to stay in the US and become an employer is to get a greencard instead of a H-1B in the first place; or to apply for a permanent residency to change from a H1B to a resident based on major eli
Re: (Score:2)
> or to apply for a permanent residency to change from a H1B to a resident based on major eligibility criteria
this is the path attempted by all who i've known.
chatGPT sez:
> Based on DOL data and employer disclosure, roughly half to twothirds of H1B workers in major tech firms eventually start the green card process at some point in their stay.
(and seems reasonable after some poking at it)
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oh and another estimated 10%-20% get married to us citizens and go that route.
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America's uncanny ability turn anyone, from any culture, into Americans within a decade.
Re:This should stop the abuse of H1-B (Score:4, Informative)
> There are much better ways to deal with the abuses. What this will do, is that newly graduated STEM masters and PhD will go back to their home country and we lose out on top talents. These guys eventually become employers in our economy and pay a lot of tax.
There really isn't a better way to deal with the abuses. Here's some personal experience.
Fortune 500 company - bottom half of that group is all I will say about them - laid me and some others off in a big layoff a few years ago. Yeah, they got rid of a few H1-Bs in the layoffs, but the vast overwhelming majority of layoffs were white American males over 40 years old, who just happened to be making good money. In my department, only Americans got laid off and not a single H1-B was impacted by the layoffs. I've been told that this is supposedly "illegal", but it's exactly what happened. They kept the H1-Bs because they make less money and they can't leave unless they want to return to India.
Same company, but a few months before I was laid off, a college student I barely know (friend of a friend kind of thing) was offered an internship by the company. I told the student that I knew his manager and I thought highly of her so I figured working there would be OK. Probably didn't hurt that this manager was Indian as was the student. He told me his dream was to work on stuff that gets patented. I told him that in our state we did not work on that kind of thing, but we had an R&D office in another state that did. I told him that he'd never get to work on stuff that gets patented here but if he got his foot in the door with the internship, maybe he could eventually get there because the company liked to hire its interns. He did indeed get a job offer after the internship, which he accepted, making him an H1-B. I have some limited contact with him and he's still there. And he has no plans to ever transfer out of state to the R&D org and work on patented stuff. All it took to make him completely give up on his dreams was an H1-B paycheck.
Final story about the same company. You might remember in Trump's first term he put limitations on H1-Bs in IT because of abuses. My company wrote a job description up for a job they wanted to fill during those restrictions. I saw it early one morning when I was getting coffee as it was on a bulletin board. The job was in another state and the requirements were super specific and honestly a whole lot of bs like the job required a master's degree and experience doing chip design. My guess is that if an American with the very specific skills somehow applied for the job, they'd just offer the H1-B salary and expect the American to say no. So the job stays open for I guess maybe half a year or more and finally they get permission to hire a specific guy for the job from India. Know what he does? He writes code in Java for them. That chip design and master's degree "requirement' stuff was bs to try to make sure only he could match those "requirements". He was the only employee our org in the company hired for an entire year. I mean, if you can't hire H1-Bs, they simply weren't interested in hiring anybody.
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100% there were abuses in the past. But this has been cracked down and the bodyshops account for a pretty small % of the H1-B hires. We're in an AI war with China and we need all the PhDs from top schools we can get.
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> What this will do, is that newly graduated STEM masters and PhD will go back to their home country and we lose out on top talents.
If by "will go back" you mean "will be deported". If they're even allowed to stay long enough to graduate...
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I've seen deported students. didn't finish their degree. I've seen self deportation too.
Why you would stay in the USA as soon as you had a chance to leave..after the degree? You are not treated well and somebody you upset can accuse you of anything and you are deported. But we'll fix that as our already declining education system gets further harmed by Trump over the next 3+ years. It is already so poor that many students don't see hardly any difference between online learning and in person learning.
Re: This should stop the abuse of H1-B (Score:2)
If you can fill a 100k job with an h1-b worker and only pay them 50k, it's still back to profit after 2 years
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Your theory checks out with my experiences. When I worked at Charter Communications, everybody on the security team that wasn't there on a H1B visa had a general shelf life of one to two years before they shoved off for greener pastures. There was a H1B worker on my team that had been there for 3 years when I started, and he was still there when I left.
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fill a 100k job with an h1-b worker and only pay them 50k, it's still back to profit after 2 years
That one is actually illegal. The minimum on a H-1B salary is $60,000. But there is an additional requirement that the
salary has to be at or higher than the prevailing wage for the job in question.
But even if they manage to illegally pay only 60k a year... The 100k fee divided by the 3 year term still amounts
to 33k a year. And 33k plus 60k is $93,000.
And that's before thinking of all the other extr
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I support pushing back against H1-B abuse as a way to get cheap labor (as opposed to it's supposed purpose to fill jobs where there is no-one qualified available), but I'm not sure this is the way to do it. Better than nothing I suppose.
$100K is only 1 year of a $100K annual salary, which is pretty low especially considering these are meant to be impossible to fill highly specialized skill sets. So, you pay a $100K fine to get your cheap H1-B, pay them $50K or even $100K/yr, and are still ahead after 2-3 ye
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Ugh. right sentiment, but all these raised fees by the government is crap. it's just more taxation.
Just enforce the f'in rules already on the books about market wages and actually investigate kickback schemes and it would be FINE. (but wouldn't get the headline).
I've known many intelligent and capable H1-B people contributing as W-2s in engineering and product roles at market prices at mainstream tech companies and they were an asset to the industry and the country. Of course due to the reality of s