H1B

The lawsuit claims Trump does not have the authority to override the law that created the H-1B visa programme.

A coalition of unions, employers and religious groups has filed a lawsuit seeking to block United States President Donald Trump’s bid to impose a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for high-skilled foreign workers.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco on Friday is the first to challenge Trump’s proclamation issued last month announcing the fee.

The United Auto Workers union, American Association of University Professors and other plaintiffs say Trump’s power to restrict the entry of certain foreign nationals does not allow him to override the law that created the H-1B visa programme.

The programme allows US employers to hire foreign workers in speciality fields, and technology companies in particular rely heavily on workers who receive H-1B visas.

Critics of H-1Bs and other work visa programmes say they are often used to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labour. But business groups and major companies have said H-1Bs are a critical means to address a shortage of qualified American workers.

Employers who sponsor H-1B workers currently typically pay between $2,000 and $5,000 in fees, depending on the size of the company and other factors.

Trump’s order bars new H-1B recipients from entering the US unless the employer sponsoring their visa has made an additional $100,000 payment. The administration has said the order does not apply to people who already hold H-1B visas or those who submitted applications before September 21.

Trump in his unprecedented order invoked his power under federal immigration law to restrict the entry of certain foreign nationals that would be detrimental to the interests of the US.

He said that high numbers of lower-wage workers in the H-1B programme have undercut its integrity and that the programme threatens national security, including by discouraging Americans from pursuing careers in science and technology. He said the “large-scale replacement of American workers” through the H-1B programme threatens the country’s economic and national security.

‘Pay to play’

The plaintiffs argue that Trump has no authority to alter a comprehensive statutory scheme governing the visa programme and cannot, under the US Constitution, unilaterally impose fees, taxes or other mechanisms to generate revenue for the US, saying that power is reserved for Congress.

“The Proclamation transforms the H-1B program into one where employers must either ‘pay to play’ or seek a ‘national interest’ exemption, which will be doled out at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security, a system that opens the door to selective enforcement and corruption,” the lawsuit said.

The groups argue that agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services and US Department of State, likewise adopted new policies to implement Trump’s proclamation without following necessary rulemaking processes, and without considering how “extorting exorbitant fees will stifle innovation”.

The H-1B programme offers 65,000 visas annually to employers bringing in temporary foreign workers in specialised fields, with another 20,000 visas for workers with advanced degrees. The visas are approved for a period of three to six years.

India was by far the largest beneficiary of H-1B visas last year, accounting for 71 percent of approved visas, while China was a distant second at 11.7 percent, according to government data.

President Trump signed a proclamation that imposes a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications, the immigration allocation set aside for highly skilled workers the U.S. economy needs. The new rules threaten the availability and deployment of human capital in the United States. This is misguided and will hurt U.S. growth and innovation, at a time when the global arms race for AI creates a vital need for the sharpest human talent and innovators.

We are professors who study and teach innovation-related topics at U.S. research universities. As immigrants to the United States from India and Panama respectively, we understand firsthand the sometimes painful discussions around H-1B immigration. Tensions around immigration routinely affect our academic institutions, our current students and former students now in industry. But there should be a lot of common ground on this polarizing topic.

STEM immigrants are creating substantial value in the United States. Immigrants play a significant role in entrepreneurial ventures in the United States and particularly startup innovation. Further, such immigrants are responsible for 23% of innovation output in the United States. This effect is in part based on policies that allow for foreign students to study and stay in the United States to work in startups.

H-1B immigration is like a natural selection process that benefits the U.S. immensely. Highly skilled immigrants in areas such as technology and medicine come hungry for hard work and full of ideas to better the world — to create new products, services and even markets as well as to cater to existing needs through more incremental improvement and optimization. Many of our best students are immigrants who are looking to stay in the United States and create work opportunities that would not be possible anywhere else in the world. In the United States, we recognize entrepreneurial success perhaps more than any other country. It is one of our greatest attributes as a society.

Nevertheless, we do have an immigration problem in the United States. The problem is that the distribution of benefits across the United States is highly skewed. Much of the wealth generated in terms of company creation and jobs has redounded to innovative clusters. But the idea to reduce the total number of H-1B immigrants by increasing the cost is exactly the wrong way to “solve” this problem — by dragging down the thriving parts of the economy rather than lifting up the rest.

To grow economic prosperity throughout the country, we need to offer more opportunities for more H-1B visa applicants. There are simply not enough trained U.S. nationals to take on the sort of labor required for the next wave of a tech-enabled industrial revolution.

Distributing the fruits of H-1B visa holders’ work more broadly requires a different approach than the U.S. has taken before. We should increase the total number of new H-1B visa recipients each year to 350,000 from around 85,000, with the additional visas apportioned across states so that locations like college towns — places like Lawrence, Kan., Gainesville, Fla., and Clemson, S.C., as well as cities such as Birmingham, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City and Boise receive sufficient numbers of H-1B workers. Visas could be allocated through a process akin to the resident-matching system for medical doctors, thereby sending workers to states where they would create greater value by filling economic and technological gaps. This infusion of labor would improve technological innovation in local economies and create local spillover effects in job creation and additional innovation.

Such immigration is necessary particularly now given a global push toward increased industrial policy, as China and others invest in AI and broader digital transformation. At a time when our national security is linked to technological innovation, it is shortsighted not to open ourselves to more immigration. If we do not, we will lose some of the best and brightest minds to Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Singapore and other countries.

Immigration is currently a volatile political issue in the U.S., as it has been at some other moments in the nation’s history. Although this is a country of immigrants, for people who feel insecure about pocketbook and cultural issues, continued immigration can feel threatening. As a percentage of people living in the United States, it has been more than 100 years since there were as many immigrants here as there are now. But as with past waves of immigration, productivity and transformation have followed.

This is particularly clear for H-1B visa holders, who create opportunities for people born in the U.S. and ensure the vitality of American innovation, security and democratic values. Increasing the costs of such visas would chill their use and reduce U.S. prosperity and innovation exactly at a time of great need.

Hemant Bhargava is a professor of business at UC Davis Graduate School of Management and director of the Center for Analytics and Technology in Society. D. Daniel Sokol is a professor of law and business at USC.

China is rolling out a new visa aimed at attracting foreign talent in the fields of science and technology.

The K visa comes into effect from Wednesday, following a proclamation last month by the State Council, China’s cabinet.

The visa has attracted particular attention in light of United States President Donald Trump’s tightening of the eligibility rules for the H-1B, which Silicon Valley heavily relies on to recruit skilled labour from overseas.

What is the goal of the K visa, and how does it work?

The Chinese government has cast the visa as part of its efforts to attract foreign talent to boost the country’s competitiveness in science and technology.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun on Tuesday said the visa’s purpose was to “promote exchanges and cooperation” between science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) talent from China and other countries.

The visa is the latest in a series of recent reforms intended to make China more attractive to foreigners, including streamlined visa processing and the introduction of a redesigned permanent residency card.

“From the 1980s to the 2010s, China used to lose talent to developed countries such as the United States,” Zhigang Tao, a professor of strategy and economics at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing, told Al Jazeera.

“Now the task is to keep local talent and also attract some global talent.”

Chinese officials have said the K visa, which will be open to graduates of recognised universities and young professionals engaged in STEM-related fields, will offer more flexible conditions than existing options.

The main advantage of the visa is that, unlike previous skilled migrant programmes, it does not require sponsorship by an employer.

However, many key details of the visa remain unclear, including duration of stay and unspecified requirements related to age, educational background and work experience.

Is the K visa likely to attract foreign talent?

Edward Hu, immigration director at consultancy Newland Chase in Shanghai, said there has been strong interest in the visa, with inquiries up more than 30 percent since August.

Hu said there has been particularly strong interest from prospective applicants in India, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the US.

“The K visa fills a gap in China’s talent system by lowering entry barriers for younger STEM talents – complementing the existing R visa, which targets top-tier experts,” Hu told Al Jazeera, referring to the visa as a “strategic move” to position China as a top destination for early-career STEM talent.

The R visa, introduced in 2013, is aimed at “high-level and professional” foreigners who are “urgently needed” by the state, and requires sponsorship by an “inviting organisation”.

Still, China’s drive to expand its talent pool with the K visa faces challenges.

While China has made moves to open to foreigners, the country is still far less internationalised than the US.

Unlike the US, China rarely grants citizenship to foreigners.

While Chinese permanent residency is more feasible to obtain, it is still only granted to a tiny fraction compared with the roughly one million non-US citizens who receive green cards each year.

Chinese work environments also present a language barrier for English-speaking applicants when compared with their Silicon Valley counterparts.

Michael Feller, chief strategist at Sydney-based business consultancy Geopolitical Strategy, said Chinese companies would need to offer English-language roles and “international-style” work schedules to compete with US firms.

“I can’t imagine many foreign graduates interested in the ‘9-9-6’ work-life balance that many Chinese firms are known for,” Feller told Al Jazeera, referring to the 72-hour workweek famously endorsed by Alibaba founder Jack Ma.

What does the K visa have to do with the H-1B?

While China’s drive to recruit talent has cast Trump’s crackdown on immigration in sharp relief, there is no direct link between the introduction of the K visa and his moves to rein in access to the H-1B.

Beijing officially unveiled its visa on August 7, weeks before Trump announced the introduction of a $100,000 fee on H-1B applications, sending shockwaves through the tech sector, especially in India, the source of about 70 percent of visa recipients.

However, many observers have suggested that the US’s inward turn could be to the benefit of other countries seeking to attract talent, including China.

“The K visa is incredible timing from China’s perspective,” Feller said.

“It’s unlikely that Beijing knew that Washington was about to hike the fees for its own H-1B visa category, but it certainly gives the K visa added impetus in the global war for talent.”

Hu of Newland Chase said he expected the shift in policy around the H-1B to “significantly boost” the appeal of the K visa, “positioning it as a timely alternative for affected talent”.

“The K visa offers a low-cost, sponsor-free pathway – aligning with the global surge in STEM talent demand and making China a more accessible option,” he said.

New Delhi, India — Meghna Gupta* had planned it all – a master’s degree by 23, a few years of working in India, and then a move to the United States before she turned 30 to eventually settle there.

So, she clocked countless hours at the Hyderabad office of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT firm and a driver of the country’s emergence as the global outsourcing powerhouse in the sector. She waited to get to the promotion that would mean a stint on California’s West Coast.

Now, Gupta is 29, and her dreams lie in tatters after US President Donald Trump’s administration upended the H-1B visa programme that tech firms have used for more than three decades to bring skilled workers to the US.

Trump’s decision to increase the fee for the visas from about $2,000, in many cases, to $100,000 has imposed dramatic new costs on companies that sponsor these applications. The base salary an H-1B visa employee is supposed to be paid is $60,000. But the employer’s cost now rises to $160,000 at the minimum, and in many cases, companies will likely find American workers with similar skills for lower pay.

This is the Trump administration’s rationale as it presses US companies to hire local talent amid its larger anti-immigration policies. But for thousands of young people around the world still captivated by the American dream, this is a blow. And nowhere is that more so than in India, the world’s most populous nation, that, despite an economy that is growing faster than most other major nations, has still been bleeding skilled young people to developed nations.

For years, Indian IT companies themselves sponsored the most H-1B visas of all firms, using them to bring Indian employees to the US and then contractually outsourcing their expertise to other businesses, too. This changed: In 2014, seven out of the 10 companies that received the most H-1B visas were Indian or started in India; In 2024, that number dropped to four.

And in the first six months of 2025, Gupta’s TCS was the only Indian company in the top-10 H-1B visa recipients, in a list otherwise dominated by Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Apple.

But what had not changed until now was the demographic of the workers that even the above US companies hired on H-1B visas. More than 70 percent of all H-1B visas were granted to Indian nationals in 2024, ranging from the tech sector to medicine. Chinese nationals were a distant second, with less than 12 percent.

Now, thousands across India fear that this pathway to the US is being slammed shut.

“It has left me heartbroken,” Gupta told Al Jazeera of Trump’s fee hike.

“All my life, I planned for this; everything circled around this goal for me to move to the US,” said Gupta, who was born and raised in Bageshwar, a town of 10,000 people in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.

“The so-called ‘American Dream’ looks like a cruel joke now.”

‘In the hole’

Gupta’s crisis reflects a broader contradiction that defines India today. On the one hand, the country — as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government frequently mention — is the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

India today boasts the world’s fourth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), behind just the US, China and Germany, after it passed Japan earlier this year. But the country’s creation of new jobs lags far behind the number of young people who enter its workforce every year, widening its employment gap. India’s biggest cities are creaking under inadequate public infrastructure, potholed roads, traffic snarls and growing income inequality.

The result: Millions like Gupta aspire to a life in the West, picking their career choices, usually in sectors like engineering or medicine, and working to get into hard-fought seats in top colleges – and then migrating. In the last five years, India has witnessed a drastic rise in the outflow of skilled professionals, particularly in STEM fields, who migrate to countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the US.

As per the Indian government’s data, those numbers rose from 94,145 Indians in 2020 to 348,629 by 2024 — a 270 percent rise.

Trump’s new visa regime could now effectively close the pipeline of those skilled workers into the US. The fee hike comes on the back of a series of tension points in a souring US-India relationship in recent months. New Delhi is also currently facing a steep 50 percent tariff on its exports to the US — half of that for buying Russian crude, which the US says is funding the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.

Ajay Srivastava, a former Indian trade officer and founder of the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a Delhi-based think tank, told Al Jazeera that the hardest-hit sectors after the new visa policy will be “the ones that Indian professionals dominate: mid-level IT services jobs, software developers, project managers, and back-end support in finance and healthcare”.

For many of these positions, the new $100,000 fee exceeds an entry-level employee’s annual salary, making sponsorship uneconomical, especially for smaller firms and startups, said Srivastava. “The cost of hiring a foreign worker now exceeds local hiring by a wide margin,” he said, adding that this would shift the hiring calculus of US firms.

“American firms will scout more domestic talent, reserve H-1Bs for only the hardest-to-fill specialist roles, and push routine work offshore to India or other hubs,” said Srivastava.

“The market has already priced in this pivot,” he said, citing the fall of Indian stock markets since Trump’s announcement, “as investors brace for shrinking US hiring”.

Indian STEM graduates and students, he said, “have to rethink US career plans altogether”.

To Sudhanshu Kaushik, founder of the North American Association of Indian Students, a body with members across 120 universities, the Trump administration’s “motive is to create panic and distress among H-1B visa holders and other immigrant visa holders”.

“To remind them that they don’t belong,” Kaushik told Al Jazeera. “And at any time, at any whim, the possibility of remaining in the United States can become incredibly difficult and excruciatingly impossible.”

The announcement came soon after the start of the new academic session, when many international students – including from India, which sends the largest cohort of foreign students to the US – have begun classes.

Typically, a large chunk of such students stay back in the US for work after graduating. An analysis of the National Survey of College Graduates suggests that 41 percent of international students who graduated between 2012 and 2020 were still in the US in 2021. For PhD holders, that figure jumps to 75 percent.

But Kaushik said he has received more than 80 queries on their hotline for students now worried about what the future holds.

“They know that they’re already in the hole,” he said, referring to the tuition and other fees running into tens of thousands of dollars that they have invested in a US education, with increasingly unclear job prospects.

The landscape in the US today, Srivastava of GTRI said, represents “fewer opportunities, tougher competition, and shrinking returns on US education”.

Nasscom, India’s apex IT trade body, has said the policy’s abrupt rollout could “potentially disrupt families” and the continuity of ongoing onshore projects for the country’s technology services firms.

The new policy, it added, could have “ripple effects” on the US innovation ecosystem and global job markets, pointing out that for companies, “additional cost will require adjustments”.

‘They do not care for people at all’

Ansh*, a senior software engineer at Meta, graduated from an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), one in a chain of India’s most prestigious engineering school, and landed a job with Facebook soon after that.

He now lives with his wife in Menlo Park, in the heart of the US’s Silicon Valley, and drives a BMW sedan to work. Both Ansh and his wife are in the US on H-1B visas.

Last Saturday’s news from the White House left him rattled.

He spent that evening figuring out flights for his friends — Indians on H-1B visas who were out of the country, one in London, another in Bengaluru, India — to see if they could rush back to the US before the new rules kicked in on Sunday, as major US tech firms had recommended to their employees.

Since then, the Trump administration has clarified that the new fees will not apply to existing H-1B visas or renewals. For now, Ansh’s job and status in the US are secure.

But this is little reassurance, he said.

“In the last 11 years, I have never felt like going back to India,” Ansh told Al Jazeera. “But this sort of instability triggers people to make those life changes. And now we are here, wondering if one should return to India?”

Because he and his wife do not have children, Ansh said that a move back to India — while a dramatic rupture in their lives and plans — was at least something they could consider. But what of his colleagues and friends on H-1B visas, who have children, he asked?

“The way this has been done by the US government shows that they do not care for people at all,” he said. “These types of decisions are like … brain wave strikes, and then it is just executed.”

Ansh believes that the US also stands to lose from the new visa policy. “The immigrant contribution is deeply sprinkled into the DNA of the US’s success,” he said.

“Once talent goes away, innovation won’t happen,” he said. “It is going to have long-term consequences for visa holders and their families. Its impact would reach everyone, one way or the other.”

India’s struggle

After the announcement from the White House on Saturday, Prime Minister Modi’s principal secretary, PK Mishra, said that the government was encouraging Indians working abroad to return to the country.

Mishra’s comments were in tune with some experts who have suggested that the disruption in the H-1B visa policy could serve as an opportunity for India — as it could, in theory, stanch the brain drain that the country has long suffered from.

GTRI’s Srivastava said that US companies that have until now relied on immigrant visas like the H-1B might now explore more local hiring or offshore some jobs. “The $100,000 H-1B fee makes onsite deployment prohibitively expensive, so Indian IT firms will double down on offshore and remote delivery,” he said.

“US postings will be reserved only for mission-critical roles, while the bulk of hiring and project execution shifts to India and other offshore hubs,” he told Al Jazeera. “For US clients, this means higher dependence on offshore teams — raising familiar concerns about data security, compliance, and time-zone coordination — even as costs climb.”

Srivastava noted that India’s tech sector can absorb some returning H-1B workers, if they choose to return.

But that won’t be easy. He said that even though hiring in India’s IT and services sector has been growing year-on-year, the gaps are real, ranging from dipping job postings to new openings clustered in AI, cloud, and data science. And US-trained returnees would expect salaries well above Indian benchmarks.

And in reality, Kaushik said, many H-1B aspirants are looking at different countries as alternatives to the US — not India.

Ansh, the senior engineer at Meta, agreed. “In the US, we operate at the cutting edge of technology,” whereas the Indian tech ecosystem was still geared towards delivering immediate services.

“The Indian ecosystem is not at the pace where you innovate the next big thing in the world,” he said. “It is, in fact, far from there.”

The new plan follows a proclamation on Friday requiring a $100,000 fee for new H-1B applications.

The White House has released a proposal that would rework the H-1B visa selection process to favour higher-skilled and better-paid workers, according to a Federal Register notice.

The new proposal released on Tuesday followed a White House proclamation on Friday introducing a $100,000 fee for the visas.

The new process, if finalised, would give heavier weight to applications by employers who pay high wages if annual requests for the visas exceed the statutory limit of 85,000, the notice said. The move aims to better protect US workers from unfair wage competition from foreign workers, it said.

United States President Donald Trump launched a wide-ranging immigration crackdown after taking office in January, including a push for mass deportations and trying to block citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants born in the US. In recent days, his administration has intensified its focus on the H-1B programme, popular with technology and outsourcing companies for hiring skilled foreign workers.

The administration said on Friday that it would ask companies to pay $100,000 per year for each H-1B visa. Some big tech companies warned visa holders to stay in the US or quickly return, sparking a chaotic scramble to get back to the US. The White House later clarified the fee would apply only to new visas.

On Wall Street, tech company stocks have not responded well to the looming changes. Shares in Amazon, which sponsors the most H-1B visas of any company, have tumbled by almost 5 percent over the past five days.

The planned regulation posted on Tuesday would change an existing lottery process to obtain the visas if demand surpasses supply in a given year, creating wage tiers through which higher-paying jobs would have a better chance of being selected.

The process to finalise a regulation can take months or even years. The notice suggested that the new rules could be in place for the 2026 lottery, meaning before a March registration period.

The total wages paid to H-1B workers were expected to increase to $502m in fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1, the notice said, citing US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates.

Those wages would increase by $1bn in fiscal 2027, $1.5bn in fiscal 2028 and $2bn in fiscal 2029-2035, it said.

An estimated 5,200 small businesses that currently receive H-1B visas would suffer a significant economic impact due to loss of labour, DHS said.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which issued the proposal, will give the public 30 days to comment starting on Wednesday, the notice said.

Slowing job market

The heightened requirements were proposed as a new AP-NORC poll was released that suggested about six in 10 US adults think companies see a major benefit from immigrants entering the US workforce, up from four in 10 in March 2024.

According to the poll, 51 percent of US adults said a “major” benefit of legal immigration is that US companies get the expertise of skilled workers in fields like science and technology.

The new proposal comes as job growth stalls in the US.

In August, the economy added only 22,000 jobs, according to the most recent jobs report released by the Department of Labor.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell cited Trump’s hardline immigration policy as a reason for a slowdown in the jobs market and part of the central bank’s rationale for cutting interest rates by 25 basis points last week, the first cut since December.

President Trump’s new sky-high visa fees have shaken Silicon Valley’s tech giants as they contemplate a surge in the cost of hiring global talent and a new tactic the White House can use to keep Silicon Valley in line.

The tech industry was already navigating an economy with higher and unpredictable tariffs, when last week the Trump administration threw another curveball aimed directly at its bottom line: a $100,000 fee for the visas used to hire certain skilled foreign workers. The industry relies heavily on the H-1B visa program to bring in a wide range of engineers, coders, and other top talent to the United States.

The rollout has sparked confusion among businesses, immigration lawyers and current H-1B visa holders.

Over the weekend, the Trump administration clarified that the new fee will apply to new visas, isn’t annual and doesn’t prevent current H-1B visa holders from traveling in and outside of the country. Companies would have to pay the fee with any new H-1B visa petitions submitted after a specific time on Sept. 21, the White House said.

On Monday, the Trump administration also clarified that certain professions, such as doctors, may be exempt from the fee. Some observers are concerned that a selective application of the fee could be a way the White House can reward its friends and punish its detractors.

Meta, Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft have been strengthening their ties with the Trump administration by committing to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States.

Still, immigration has long been a contentious issue between the Trump administration and tech executives, some of whom were on a H-1B visa before they co-founded or led some of the world’s largest tech companies.

One of the most vocal supporters of the H-1B visas: Elon Musk, who backed Trump but has publicly sparred with him after he led the federal government’s efforts to slash spending. Musk, who runs multiple companies, including Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in South Africa and has held an H-1B visa.

Tech executives have said the H-1B visa program has been crucial for hiring skilled workers. Competition to attract the world’s best talent has been intensifying since the popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT sparked a fierce race to rapidly advance artificial intelligence.

The new fee could slow California’s development and the United States’ position in the AI race by making it tougher for companies — especially startups with less money — to bring in international employees, experts said.

So far this fiscal year, more than 7,500 companies in Californiahave applied forH-1B visas and 61,841 have been approved, data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services shows.

Tech companies use the visa program to hire computer scientists and engineers because the U.S. isn’t producing enough workers with the skills needed, said Darrell West, a senior fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution.

Trump “likes to talk tough on immigration, but he fails to recognize how important immigrants are to our economy,” he said. “Companies in technology, agriculture, hotels, restaurants and construction rely heavily on immigrants, and slowing that flow is going to be devastating for companies in those areas.”

In his executive order, the Trump administration noted that some companies, such as information technology firms, have allegedly misused the program, citing mass layoffs in the tech industry and the difficulty young college graduates face in landing jobs.

“President Trump promised to put American workers first, and this commonsense action does just that by discouraging companies from spamming the system and driving down American wages,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement.

Economists and tech executives, though, have pointed to other factors affecting hiring, including economic uncertainty from tariffs, a shift in investments and the rise of AI tools that could complete tasks typically filled by entry-level workers.

California’s unemployment rate of 5.5% in August was higher than the U.S. unemployment rate of 4.3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The rollout of the new changes has been “extremely chaotic,” and while the White House has tried to clear up some of the confusion, tech companies still have a lot of questions about how the fee would work, said Adam Kovacevich, chief executive of the Chamber of Progress, a center-left tech industry policy coalition.

“You never know what you’re gonna end up with the final policy in Trump world,” he said. “Somebody within the administration drives an announcement, there’s blowback, and then they end up modifying their plans.”

Tech companies have been trying to navigate a fine line in their relationship with Trump.

During Trump’s first term, high-profile tech executives, including those from Meta, Amazon, Google and Apple, spoke out about his administration’s order to restrict travel from several majority-Muslim countries. But in his second term, those same executives have cozied up to the Trump administration as they seek to influence AI policy and strike lucrative partnerships with the government.

They’ve contributed to his inauguration fund, appeared at high-profile press events, and attended a White House dinner, where Trump asked them how much they’re investing in the United States.

Microsoft declined to comment. Meta, Google and Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Changes to the H-1B program could also worsen relations with other countries, such as India, that send skilled tech workers to the U.S., experts said.

Indian nationals are the largest beneficiaries of the H-1B visa program, accounting for 71% of approved petitions, followed by those from China, at approximately 12%.

Some Indian venture capitalists and research institutes see a silver lining in this murky future. On social media, some have posted that the uncertainty surrounding H-1B visa rules could encourage talented engineers to return home to build startups, thereby fueling India’s tech sector. That would mean more competition for U.S. tech companies.

Kunal Bahl, an Indian tech investor and entrepreneur, posted “Come, build in India!” on social media. His firm, Titan Capital, launched a seed funding and mentorship program aimed at attracting students and professionals rethinking their future in the U.S. after the visa troubles.

Global tech companies might also consider opening more centers abroad where workers can work remotely and not have to move to the U.S., said Phil Fersht, the founder and chief executive of HFS Research.

“The more the U.S. makes itself a less attractive place to bring in talent,” he said, “the more it is going to harm its economy.”

As Trump’s order stirs anxiety, White House clarifies that the fee only applies to new applicants and will be levied per petition.

The United States has issued a clarification to its new H-1B visa policy, saying that the new $100,000 fee for skilled workers will be levied per petition and will not apply to current visa holders.

The announcement on Saturday came a day after US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said it would be paid annually, and would apply to people seeking a new visa as well as renewals.

Lutnick’s comment prompted major tech firms, including Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company, to warn employees with H1-B visas to stay in the country or return quickly.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, however, clarified that the fee will only apply to new visas and that the rule “does not impact the ability of any current visa holder to travel to/from the US”.

“This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition,” she wrote.

“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… This applies only to new visas, not renewals, and not current visa holders,” she added.

The executive order imposing the new fee was signed by President Donald Trump on Friday night and is scheduled to take effect at 12:01am on (04:01 GMT) Sunday.

It is scheduled to expire after a year. But it could be extended if the Trump administration determines that is in the interest of the US to keep it.

H-1B visas allow companies to sponsor foreign workers with specialised skills – such as scientists, engineers and computer programmers – to work in the US, initially for three years, but extendable to six.

The visas are widely used by the tech industry and are doled out through a lottery system. Indian nationals account for nearly three-quarters of the permits.

Critics say the programme undercuts American workers, luring people from overseas who are often willing to work for as little as $60,000 annually. That is well below the $100,000-plus salaries typically paid to US technology workers.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs said on Saturday that Trump’s latest plan “was being studied by all concerned, including by Indian industry″. The ministry warned that “this measure is likely to have humanitarian consequences by way of the disruption caused for families. Government hopes that these disruptions can be addressed suitably by the US authorities”.

The US Chamber of Commerce also expressed worry.

“We’re concerned about the impact on employees, their families and American employers,” it said in a statement. “We’re working with the Administration and our members to understand the full implications and the best path forward.”

On the popular Chinese social media app Rednote, meanwhile, many H-1B holders shared stories of rushing back to the US — some just hours after landing abroad – fearing they would be subject to the new fee.

Some people who were already on planes preparing to leave the country on Friday de-boarded over fears they may not be allowed to re-enter the US, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Allen Orr, an immigration lawyer and immigration chair of the National Bar Association, told Al Jazeera that the latest order has caused “mass confusion”.

Workers who held new or renewed H-1B visas and who were outside the US were told not to come, delaying start dates and costing money due to the “cancellation of flights and housing”, Orr said.

The lawyer added that Trump’s order was sending the wrong message to talented workers living abroad.

“If it applies to next year, $100,000 for an H-1B worker just basically puts it out of the market, and many of these jobs will then just remain overseas,” he said.

“The American secret is that we’ve basically taken talent from around the world and colonised it and made of the United States a sort of stamp. When we stop letting that talent into the United States, we’re hurting our brand,” he added.

WASHINGTON — The Indian government expressed concern Saturday about President Trump’s latest push to overhaul American immigration policy, dramatically raising the fee for visas that bring tech workers from India and other countries to the United States.

The president on Friday signed a proclamation that will require a $100,000 annual fee for H-1B visas — meant for high-skilled jobs that tech companies find hard to fill. He also rolled out a $1-million “gold card” visa for wealthy individuals, moves that face near-certain legal challenges amid widespread criticism that he is sidestepping Congress.

If the moves survive legal muster, they will deliver staggering price increases. The visa fee for skilled workers is currently $215.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs said Saturday that Trump’s plan “was being studied by all concerned, including by Indian industry.” The ministry warned that “this measure is likely to have humanitarian consequences by way of the disruption caused for families. Government hopes that these disruptions can be addressed suitably by the U.S. authorities.”

More than 70% of H-1B visa holders are from India.

H-1B visas, which require at least a bachelor’s degree, are meant for high-skilled jobs that tech companies find difficult to fill. Critics say the program undercuts American workers, luring people from overseas who are often willing to work for as little as $60,000 annually. That is well below the $100,000-plus salaries typically paid to U.S. technology workers.

Trump said Friday that the tech industry would not oppose the move. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed that “all big companies” are on board.

Representatives for the biggest tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta, did not immediately respond to messages for comment. Microsoft declined to comment.

“We’re concerned about the impact on employees, their families and American employers,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a statement. “We’re working with the Administration and our members to understand the full implications and the best path forward.”

Lutnick said the change would probably result in far fewer H-1B visas than the 85,000 annual cap allows because “it’s just not economic anymore.”

“If you’re going to train people, you’re going to train Americans,” Lutnick said on a conference call with reporters. “If you have a very sophisticated engineer and you want to bring them in … then you can pay $100,000 a year for your H-1B visa.”

Trump also announced that he will start selling a “gold card” visa with a path to U.S. citizenship for $1 million after vetting. For companies, it would cost $2 million to sponsor an employee.

Trump also announced a “platinum card,” which could be obtained for $5 million and would allow foreigners to spend up to 270 days in the U.S. without being subject to U.S. taxes on non-U.S. income. Trump announced a $5-million gold card in February to replace an existing investor visa — this is now the platinum card.

Lutnick said the gold and platinum cards would replace employment-based visas that offer paths to citizenship, including for professors, scientists, artists and athletes.

Critics of H-1Bs visas who say they are used to replace U.S. citizens in certain jobs applauded the move. U.S. Tech Workers, an advocacy group, called it “the next best thing” to abolishing the visas.

Doug Rand, a senior official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Biden administration, said the proposed fee increase was “ludicrously lawless.”

“This isn’t real policy — it’s fan service for immigration restrictionists,” Rand said. “Trump gets his headlines, and inflicts a jolt of panic, and doesn’t care whether this survives first contact with the courts.”

“The president has no legal authority to tax American visas,” said Michael Clemens, a George Mason University economist who studies immigration. “He has the authority to charge reasonable fees for cost recovery, not set fees at $100,000 or $100 million or whatever suits his personal … arbitrary capricious whims.

“If the president feels that H-1B visas are harmful, he can work with the people’s representatives in Congress to reform the laws that regulate those visas. His choice to legislate by proclamation subverts our entire immigration governance system,’’ said Clemens, who is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Beyond that, it is poisonous [and] irresponsible to do so with no warning, no public debate, leaving hundreds of thousands of workers and millions of their colleagues and family members in chaos and fear.’’

Lutnick said the H-1B fees and gold card could be introduced by the president but the platinum card needs congressional approval.

Historically, H-1B visas have been doled out through lottery. This year, Amazon was by far the top recipient of H-1B visas, with more than 10,000 awarded, followed by the Indian firm Tata Consultancy, then Microsoft, Apple and Google. Geographically, California has the highest number of H-1B workers.

Critics say H-1B spots often go to entry-level jobs, rather than senior positions with unique skill requirements. And while the program isn’t supposed to undercut U.S. wages or displace U.S. workers, critics say companies can pay less by classifying jobs at the lowest skill levels, even if the specific workers hired have more experience.

As a result, many U.S. companies find it cheaper to contract out help desks, programming and other basic tasks to consulting companies such as Wipro, Infosys, HCL Technologies and Tata — all in India — and IBM and Cognizant in the U.S. These consulting companies hire foreign workers, often from India, and contract them out to U.S. employers looking to save money.

Ron Hira, a professor in the political science department at Howard University and a longtime critic of H-1B visas, said the plan was a move in the right direction.

“It’s a recognition that the program is abused,’’ he said.

Raising the visa fee, he said, was an unusual way to address the H-1B program’s shortcomings. Normally, he said, reformers seek ways to raise the pay of the foreign workers, eliminating the incentive to use them to replace higher-paid Americans. He noted approvingly that Trump’s proclamation calls for the U.S. Labor Department to “initiate a rule-making [process] to revise the prevailing wage levels’’ under the visa program.

Critics of H-1B visas have also called on the lottery to be replaced by an auction in which companies vie for the right to bring in foreign workers.

First Lady Melania Trump, the Slovenian-born former Melania Knauss, was granted an H-1B work visa in October 1996 to work as a model.

In 2024, lottery bids for the visas plunged nearly 40%, which authorities said was due to success against people who were “gaming the system” by submitting multiple, sometimes dubious, applications to unfairly increase chances of being selected.

Major technology companies that use H-1B visas sought changes after massive increases in bids left their employees and prospective hires with slimmer chances of winning the random lottery. Facing what it acknowledged was likely fraud and abuse, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services this year said each employee had only one shot at the lottery, whether the person had one job offer or 50.

Critics welcomed the change but said more needs to be done. The AFL-CIO wrote last year that while changes to the lottery “included some steps in the right direction,” it fell short of needed reforms. The labor group wants visas awarded to companies that pay the highest wages instead of by random lottery, a change that Trump sought during his first term in the White House.

Associated Press writers Ortutay and Kim reported from Oakland and Washington, respectively. AP writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.

President Trump took his most extensive step yet toward overhauling the U.S. legal migration system, with a pair of proclamations that explicitly favor the wealthiest of the world’s prospective expat workers.

Trump on Friday imposed a $100,000 application fee on the widely used H-1B visa program, a move that would drastically increase the cost of visas heavily coveted by some of America’s largest companies — including in the Silicon Valley — seeking to bring in skilled workers from abroad.

The president also unveiled a “Trump Gold Card” visa program — under which, for the price of $1 million, immigrants could get U.S. residency. Businesses could buy residency permits for $2 million per employee, while a new “platinum”-level card set to be issued soon would cost $5 million and allow the holder to come to the U.S. for up to 270 days a year without being subject to U.S. taxes on non-U.S. income.

The restrictions and fees go into effect on Sunday.

It all amounts to a plan for a new gilded age of immigration to America, where those with the resources to invest are welcomed along with their wallets — while at the same time new barriers to entry are erected for those with lesser means and others seen as taking away jobs that could be occupied by U.S. citizens.

The pomp with which Trump announced the programs echoed the theme — over his right shoulder as he spoke to reporters in the Oval Office was an image of a gold card with his face on it along with traditional American images including a bald eagle, all in gold.

It’s a stark shift from America’s stance toward immigration historically, which welcomed those of various economic backgrounds coming to the country legally in search of a better life and more freedom.

‘Significant disadvantage’

Yet even while Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick mused about the prospects of a windfall for the U.S. Treasury that could total $100 billion or more, immigration attorneys cautioned that a move of this magnitude would cause major disruptions — several of them potentially very expensive to the U.S. economy.

Cleveland-based lawyer David Leopold warned that Trump’s H-1B changes, including the $100,000 fee, would “effectively kill the program.”

“Who’s going to pay $100,000 for a petition? Unless you want to make this an exclusive program for extremely rich people,” said Leopold, a partner at UB Greensfelder, whose clients include physicians on H-1Bs.

Accenture, Cognizant Technology and other IT consulting stocks hit session lows on Friday on the news of the visa fee.

“This is a senseless, terrible policy for financial services firms that makes American firms less competitive in the global market for talent,” said Alexis DuFresne, founder of recruiting firm Archer Search Partners.

DuFresne warned that while some mega funds won’t be daunted by the prospect of a new six-figure fee to import top talent, “it will have a substantial impact at the margins — with mid-sized firms, smaller firms, and up-and-coming, younger talent at a significant disadvantage.”

“We have had clients who have said in the past, prior to this announcement, that they do not want to have to sponsor a visa. We anticipate that that will become a more prevalent part of our conversations with clients and their goalposts going forward.”

A feature, not a bug

Some of that sentiment, if it comes to pass, may be seen by this administration as an asset rather than a problem.

Senior members of Trump’s administration have repeatedly complained — in blunt terms — that too many immigrants are taking American jobs.

In a fact sheet, the White House said American workers are being replaced with lower-paid foreign labor and called it a national security threat. The dynamic is suppressing wages and disincentivizing Americans from choosing careers in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), the White House said.

Trump’s proclamation does anticipate a scenario whereby it can work around the new costs if they became a major burden, allowing for case-by-case exemptions if deemed to be in the national interest. That provision opens a potential window for certain companies or industries to seek an exception to the new fee.

Nonetheless, the intention to skew the H-1B program toward higher-paying jobs is clear.

Trump also plans to order the Labor secretary to undertake a rule-making process to revise prevailing-wage levels for the program, a move intended to limit the use of visas to undercut wages that would otherwise be paid to workers who are U.S. citizens.

Legal risks

Courts may also scrutinize the expansive new fees.

The H-1B $100,000 application fee in particular is at risk of being struck down as “excessive,” said Becky Fu von Trapp, an immigration lawyer in Stowe, Vt. That’s because federal law allows agencies to charge enough to recoup reasonable costs, and most work visa applications currently cost about $5,000. Even the most complex ones, for certain investment visas, usually run less than $10,000 in total.

The move could also incentivize technology firms and other companies reliant on foreign workers to set up offices outside the U.S. to avoid the application fee and associated hassles.

“Companies will reassess the need of who they really need to bring to U.S. and who can be based in Canada or Singapore, where they still have good technology infrastructure and can work remotely,” she said.

The move may also have a chilling effect on international students seeking admission to U.S. universities, since many of them hope to find jobs through the H-1B process upon graduation, she said.

Congress will also weigh in, Lutnick said, noting that lawmakers must also approve the planned platinum card program. He predicted that could happen later this year.

That’s easier said than done.

Republicans only narrowly control the House and the Senate. Immigration has been a particularly challenging issue to legislate for the GOP in years past, sparking clashes between the pro-business wing of the party that wants more high-skilled immigrants to come in, and another group far more skeptical of immigration as a whole who’ve sought to limit new arrivals no matter where they come from.

What’s more, Democrats are broadly furious about the president’s stepped-up immigration enforcement including aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in major U.S. cities including Los Angeles. As such, they have little incentive to cooperate without demanding wholesale reversals of Trump’s existing immigration policies, which he almost surely wouldn’t accept.

Wingrove and Soper write for Bloomberg. Bloomberg reporters Katia Porzecanski and Hema Parmar contributed to this report.

Sept. 20 (UPI) — President Donald Trump is instituting two major changes to the H-1B visa process, including the introduction of a so-called “gold card,” the U.S. Department of Labor confirmed in a media release.

Trump signed a pair of executive orders, one of which will institute a $1 million fee for high-skilled workers who pay the amount themselves, with the amount doubling to $2 million if the rate is paid by the person’s employer.

The second order will see the creation of a $100,000 fee for successful H-1B visa applicants.

Both changes were dubbed Project Firewall by the administration, which says the moves are meant to “safeguard the rights, wages, and job opportunities of highly skilled American workers.”

“This program will raise more than $100 billion, which we’ll use for cutting taxes and paying down debt,” Trump said in the Oval Office after signing the executive orders.

“They’re going to spend a lot of money to come in. We need great workers. And this pretty much ensures that this is what’s going to happen.”

Typically, there are 85,000 of the H-1B visas issued each year with a large number going to people working for tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft, government data shows.

Employers must certify that workers looking to secure one of the visas will be paid a salary similar to what a U.S. citizen would be and that the company is unable to find an American to fill the role.

Prior to the executive order, an employer could pay a $215 registration fee to enter a lottery to claim one of the 85,000 annually issued visas.

“The Trump Administration is standing by our commitment to end practices that leave Americans in the dust. As we reestablish economic dominance, we must protect our most valuable resource: the American worker. Launching Project Firewall will help us ensure no employers are abusing H-1B visas at the expense of our workforce,” U.S. Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement on the department’s website.

“By rooting out fraud and abuse, the Department of Labor and our federal partners will ensure that highly skilled jobs go to Americans first.”

Nasscom says the one-day deadline could have ‘ripple effects’ on the US innovation ecosystem, and global job markets.

India’s leading trade body says the one-day timeline for implementing a new $100,000 annual fee on H-1B worker visas in the United States was a matter of “concern”.

Nasscom, representing India’s $283bn IT and business process outsourcing industry, on Saturday said the policy’s abrupt rollout would affect Indian nationals and disrupt continuity of ongoing onshore projects for the country’s technology services firms.

“A one-day deadline creates considerable uncertainty for businesses, professionals, and students across the world,” Nasscom said in a statement, a day after US President Donald Trump announced the fee, which comes into force from Sunday.

H-1B visas allow companies to sponsor foreign workers with specialised skills – such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers – to work in the US, initially for three years, but extendable to six years.

India was the largest beneficiary of H-1B visas last year, accounting for 71 percent of approved beneficiaries.

.@RNamb @sangeetagupta29 @doshikavita @shivendra_1969 @nasscomgtd pic.twitter.com/bSfCjDutjs

— nasscom (@nasscom) September 20, 2025

The new H-1B measure, which will likely face legal challenges, was announced alongside the introduction of a $1m “gold card” US residency programme.

Nasscom said the new policy could have “ripple effects” on the US innovation ecosystem and global job markets, pointing out that for companies, “additional cost will require adjustments”.

Nasscom added that policy changes of this scale were best “introduced with adequate transition periods, allowing organisations and individuals to plan effectively and minimize disruption”.

US officials on Friday said the change to the H-1B programme would ensure that companies would only sponsor workers with the most rarefied skill sets. However, such a prohibitive fee will likely vastly transform the H-1B system, which was created in 1990 and awards 85,000 visas per year on a lottery system.

Supporters of the H-1B programme say it brings the best and brightest to work in the US, creating an edge against foreign competitors. Critics have long charged that companies have abused the programme, using it to pay lower wages and to impose fewer labour protections.

Tech entrepreneurs – including Trump’s former ally Elon Musk – have warned against targeting H-1B visas, saying that the US does not have enough homegrown talent to fill important tech sector job vacancies.

However, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said: “All the big companies are on board.”

Geographically, California has the highest number of H-1B workers, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Some analysts suggested the fee may force companies to move some high-value work overseas, hampering the US’s position in the high-stakes artificial intelligence race with China, which at 11.7 percent of total H-1B visas ranks a distant second, according to government data.

Following the White House’s announcement, major US tech firms Microsoft, JPMorgan and Amazon advised employees holding H-1B visas to remain in the US, according to internal emails reviewed by the Reuters news agency.

The new fee marks the Trump administration’s most high-profile attempt to overhaul the country’s temporary employment visa system. Since taking office in January, he has launched a broad crackdown on immigration, including efforts to limit certain forms of undocumented immigration.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s foreign ministry on Saturday said its officials would “comprehensively assess the impact of these measures on the advancement of [South Korean] companies and professional talents into the US market and engage in necessary communication with the US”.

Hundreds of South Koreans were detained during a US immigration raid on a Hyundai-LG battery factory site in the state of Georgia this month.

Fee paid by companies set to transform high-skill work visa system, upon which technology sector relies heavily.

United States President Donald Trump has signed a proclamation requiring a $100,000 application fee for companies seeking to sponsor workers H-1B visas.

Trump signed the proclamation during an event in the Oval Office, while also introducing a separate “gold card” visa for individuals to pay $1 million to expedite their immigration.

Administration officials said the change to the H1-B programme would assure that companies would only sponsor workers with the most rarified skill sets.

“We need great workers, and this pretty much ensures that’s what’s gonna happen,” he said.

However, such a prohibitive fee will likely vastly transform the H-1B system, which was created in 1990 in an effort to boost industries with high-skilled, hard-to-fill jobs, particularly in science, technology, engineering and math.

The visas are reserved for people with bachelor’s degrees or higher and have historically been awarded via a lottery system.

The programme has come under increased scrutiny from the Trump administration amid a wider crackdown on immigration, which Trump has tied to boosting domestic labour.

As part of that campaign, the Trump administration has also sought to introduce more restrictive policies on international students studying in the US, including requiring access to social media accounts and a ban on foreign travellers from several countries.

The administration has previously considered changing the H-1B visa rules to favour higher-paying employers, essentially doing away with the lottery system.

Supporters of the H-1B programme say it brings the best and brightest to work in the US, creating an edge against foreign competitors.

Critics have long charged that companies have abused the programme, using it to pay lower wages and to impose fewer labour protections.

The technology sector would be the hardest hit by any major change.

This year, Amazon was by far the top recipient of H-1B visas, with more than 10,000 awarded. The company was followed by Tata Consultancy, Microsoft, Apple and Google.

Geographically, California has the highest number of H-1B workers, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Meanwhile, India was the largest beneficiary of H-1B visas last year, accounting for 71 percent of approved beneficiaries. China was a distant second at 11.7 percent, according to government data.

The H-1B visas are approved for a period of three to six years.

President Donald Trump’s administration wants to overhaul the nation’s visa programme for highly skilled foreign workers.

If the administration does what one official described, it would change H-1B visa rules to favour employers that pay higher wages. That could effectively transform the visa into what one expert called “a luxury work permit” and disadvantage early-career workers with smaller salaries, including teachers. It could also upend the current visa programme’s lottery system used to distribute visas to eligible foreign workers.

“This shift may prevent many employers, including small and midsize businesses, from hiring the talent they need in shortage occupations, ultimately reducing America’s global competitiveness,” said David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association whose practice includes representing employers in the H-1B process.

It’s hard to find US workers in certain types of specialty fields, including software engineers and developers and some STEM positions.

A White House office proposed the change on August 8, Bloomberg Law reported. Once the proposal appears in the Federal Register – the daily public report containing notices of proposed federal rule changes – the plan will become subject to a formal public comment period. It could be finalised within months, although it is likely to face legal challenges.

Joseph Edlow, the director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, told The New York Times in July that H-1B visas should favour companies that plan to pay foreign workers higher wages. The proposal Bloomberg Law described was in line with that goal.

PolitiFact did not see a copy of the proposal, and the White House did not respond to our questions. But the Department of Homeland Security submitted the proposed rule to a Trump administration office in July, the Greenberg Traurig law firm wrote.

Trump sought to reform the H-1B program during his first term but made limited progress. In January 2021, near the end of Trump’s term, the Department of Homeland Security published a final rule similar to the current proposal, but the Biden administration did not implement it.

Work visas were not a central part of Trump’s 2024 immigration platform, but it was a point of debate in the weeks before he took office, with billionaire businessman Elon Musk – a megadonor to Trump who would briefly serve in his administration – speaking in favour of them.

What are H-1B visas?

The H-1B visa programme lets employers temporarily hire foreign workers in specialty fields, with about two-thirds working in computer-related jobs, according to the Congressional Research Service. Most H-1B visa holders come from India, followed by China.

Currently, prospective H-1B employers must attest that they will pay the H-1B worker actual wages paid to similar employees or the prevailing wages for that occupation – whichever would result in the highest pay.

To qualify for the non-immigrant visa, the employee must hold a specialised degree, license or training required by the occupation. The status is generally valid for up to three years and renewable for another three years, but it can be extended if the employer sponsors the worker for permanent residency, which includes permission to work and live in the US.

Leopold said that the proposed change goes beyond the law’s current wage mandate.

“This statutory mechanism is designed to prevent employers from paying H-1B workers less than their American counterparts, thereby protecting US workers from displacement,” Leopold said.

Congress caps new H-1B visas at 85,000 per fiscal year, including 20,000 for noncitizens who earned advanced degrees. The government approved 400,000 H-1B applications, including renewals, in 2024, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

Amazon has led the nation’s employers since 2020 in its number of H-1B workers, Pew found.

The New York metro area received more H-1B application approvals than any other metro area; College Station, Texas had the highest concentration of approvals.

What could change with H1-B visas?

The proposed policy favours higher-paid employees, experts said.

Malcolm Goeschl, a San Francisco-based lawyer, said the rule will likely benefit tech companies, including many specialising in artificial intelligence. Such companies pay high salaries, including for entry-level positions. He said it will harm traditional tech companies’ programmes for new graduates.

“There will likely be plenty of lottery numbers available at the top of the prevailing wage scale, but very few or none at the bottom,” Goeschl said. “You may see young graduates shy away from the US labour market early on because of this. Or you could see companies just pay entry-level workers from other countries much higher salaries to get a chance in the lottery, leading to the perverse situation where the foreign workers are making a lot more money than similarly situated US workers.”

The prevailing wage requirements are designed to protect US jobs from being undercut by lower paid foreign workers.

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the change would likely make it nearly impossible for recent immigrant college graduates, who tend to earn lower wages, to launch their careers in the United States on an H-1B visa.

“The short-term benefit would be the people who get selected are more productive, but the long-term cost might be to permanently redirect future skilled immigration to other countries,” Bier said. “It would also effectively prohibit the H-1B for many industries that rely on it. K-12 schools in rural areas seeking bilingual teachers, for instance, will have no chance under this system.”

Amid a nationwide teacher shortage, some school districts have hired H-1B visa holders, including smaller districts such as Jackson, Mississippi, and larger districts, including Dallas, Texas. Language immersion schools also often employ teachers from other countries using this visa programme.

Why is there a debate about H-1B visas?

The debate around H-1B visas does not neatly fall along partisan lines.

Proponents say the existing visa programme allows American employers to fill gaps, compete with other countries and recruit the “best minds”. Critics point to instances of fraud or abuse and say they favour policies that incentivise hiring Americans.

In December, high-profile Republicans debated the visa programme on social media.

MAGA influencer Laura Loomer denounced the programme and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon called it a “scam”. On the other side, billionaire Elon Musk, a former H-1B visa holder whose companies employ such visa holders, called for the programme’s reform but defended it as an important talent recruitment mechanism.

Trump sided with Musk.

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties,” Trump told the New York Post in late December. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great programme.”

Senator Bernie Sanders disputed Musk, saying corporations abuse the programme as a way to get richer and should recruit American workers first.

Such visa debates have continued.

When US Representative Greg Murphy, a urologist, argued on X August 8 that the visas “are critical for helping alleviate the severe physician shortage”, thousands replied. Christina Pushaw, a Republican who works for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, pushed back: “Why not figure out the causes of the domestic physician shortage and try to pass legislation to address those?”