All the fawning by tech CEOs wasn’t enough to convince Donald Trump to back off his crusade against immigrants. Yesterday the president announced that the government would be adding a $100,000-a-year fee on all H-1B visas in an effort to discourage their use.
While many industries make significant use of the H-1B program to attract highly skilled foreign workers, the tech industry is particularly reliant. Amazon has roughly 14,000 H-1B workers across its multiple entities, far more than any other company according to data from the federal government. But Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, and Tata Consultancy (a major IT services firm) each have more than 4,000 employees working on H-1B visas.
The fee will only apply to new applicants and it’s likely to face legal challenges, but even just the specter of this change appears to have some companies scrambling. There are reports that Microsoft and Amazon issued internal memos advising any workers currently abroad that operate on a visa to return to the US before the new fees kick in at midnight tonight. When asked, Microsoft declined to comment on the leaked memo or the changes to the H-1B program. Unsurprisingly, tech companies have already been warning those working on visas not to leave the US for fear that they might not be able to return.
Broadly when the White House talks about attracting the “top, top people” to the US, it seems they’re talking about wealth not skill. It also unveiled a so-called “gold card” program that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick will replace the existing EB-1 and EB-2 visa programs. Those programs are for people of “extraordinary ability” (often artists, athletes, educators, and executives) or those with advanced degrees in competitive fields. The replacement program demands that applicants “prove [their] exceptional value to the United States of America by contributing a million dollars.”
Under the gold card potential immigrants would pay $1,000,000 as part of a fast-tracked application process, and that fee could climb to $2,000,000 if the person was sponsored by a company for employment. Clearly this new program would favor wealth over actual skills, though the Trump administration claims (without any data to back it up) that it will raise over $100 billion that it will use to pay down the debt and lower taxes.
Of course, with the national debt currently exceeding $37 trillion, and the federal government expected to add more than $2 trillion in 2025, any revenue raised by the gold card program or fees on H-1B visas would be insignificant.
Updated September 20th: Added response from Microsoft.
