MONEY > FRIENDS

Donald Trump Stabs Tech CEOs in the Back With H-1B Visa Fee Hike

Tech companies like Amazon and Meta are among the largest employers of H-1B workers in the country.

President Donald Trump announced on Friday that the government will introduce a $100,000 fee for skilled foreign workers on H-1B visas.

White House staff secretary Will Scharf introduced the executive order by describing the H-1B visa system as “one of the most abused visa systems in our current immigration system,” explaining that the fee increase will “ensure that the people they’re bringing in are actually very highly skilled, and that they’re not replaceable by American workers.”

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick emphasized that the fee would be an annual one, adding, “No more will these tech companies or other big companies train foreign workers. They have to pay the government $100,000, then they have to pay the employee, it’s just not economic.”

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“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 in to take our jobs, that’s the policy here.”

Lutnick noted that “all of the big companies” were on board, while Trump told reporters that he thought his tech CEO allies would be happy about the change. “I think they’re going to be very happy. Everyone’s going to be happy,” he said.

Several of Trump’s supporters in Silicon Valley head up companies that employ a significant number of workers on H-1B visas. Amazon, whose founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos attended the president’s inauguration, received more than 10,000 H-1B visas in 2024, more than any other employer.

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Meta, whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg was recently at the White House clamoring for Trump’s attention, came fourth, receiving over 5,000 H-1B visas in the same period.

Other tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Apple were also in the top 10 of H-1B employers in 2024. Other tech companies with ties to the Trump administration, including Larry Ellison’s Oracle and Nvidia, also employ thousands of workers on H-1B visas.

While a White House official told The New York Times that the $100,000 fee will only apply to new applicants, experts have noted that the fee will likely be challenged in court as the government is only authorized to charge fees that cover the cost of processing the application.

H-1B visas currently range in cost from $1,700 to $4,500, and the program draws significantly from U.S. allies like India and Canada, as well as China, with some 85,000 visas being awarded annually.

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Catherine BourisReporter

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