Trump’s new $100K fee on H-1B visas will hurt tech companies : NPR

Friday, President Donald Trump listens to a journalist’s issue in the White House Oval Office.

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Alex Brandon / AP

President Trump’s latest decree on immigration will strongly reduce a visa program used by hundreds of thousands of people currently living in the United States.

He also threatens certain operations of large technological companies that have made great favor of favor with Trump this year, which raises the question of how much return these companies receive on this investment in progress.

On Friday, the president signed a decree adding costs of $ 100,000 so that the highly qualified workers entered the country through the H-1B Visa program. It is a steep and spectacular overhaul for a program that many large companies have used to hire thousands of software engineers and other highly specialized workers.

Now, some of these companies warn their workers to stay in the United States – or rush to return at midnight tonight.

“We realize that it is a short notice, but the return soon is advisable and you should do everything possible to erase American customs before 12:00 HAE (9:00 pm PDT) on Sunday September 21, 2025,” Amazon wrote to employees this weekend, according to an internal memo published by Business Insider and also reported by Reuters. (Amazon spokespersons did not respond to requests for NPR comments on Saturday.)

Microsoft and JPMorgan Chase sent messages similar to employees after Trump signed the decree. (Microsoft did not respond to requests for NPR comments; a JPMorgan Chase spokesperson refused to comment.)

The new fees of $ 100,000 only apply to new visas, and not to renewals or to current visa holders, a White House official said on Saturday.

The H1 -B program is popular among companies – but criticized through the political spectrum

More than half a million US residents are in the United States on H-1B visas, according to an estimate of the US government in 2020. The congress makes it possible to issue 85,000 H-1B visas through a lottery each year, for which the United States is currently charging registry of $ 215 (although companies are then paying thousands of dollars. law).

The H-1B program is intended for highly educated and highly qualified workers such as software engineers or health professionals. American companies seeking to hire a foreigner on an H-1B visa must first attest that they have not been able to find American workers with similar skills and that the foreigner will earn a salary similar to what an American worker would win.

It is not only technological companies that use this program, although they dominate it. Government data show that other large workers’ sponsors on H-1B visas include JPMorgan Chase, Walmart and Tata and Cognizant recruitment firms, which place software engineers and other workers from other large companies.

The White House says that these American employers have abused and “deliberately exploited” the VISA H-1B program to “replace, rather than complement, American workers with work at a lower cost and low qualification,” said Trump’s decree.

Similar criticisms have long been raised by economists and labor politicians through the political spectrum, notably the Senators Bernie Sanders (I.-VT.) and Eric Schmitt (R.-Mo.) and the representative Ro Khanna (D.-Calif.). A study in 2020 of Leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) revealed that most H-1B employers pay migrant workers less than market wages.

“The program exploits workers,” said Ron Hira, professor of political science at Howard University who studies high qualified immigration and who testified before the Congress to call for an overhaul of the H-1B visa program.

Hira on Saturday showed Trump’s executive order. “In many ways, this effort, at least directional, is in the right direction. It has been expected for a long time,” he said.

But some immigration-oriented groups have gone bankrupt for the president’s changes to the H-1B program. “This policy reduces our talent pipeline, undermines jobs and maintains the competitive advantage of America to world rivals,” wrote the American Immigration Council, a non -profit organization affiliated with an association of immigration Lawyers, on Bluesky.

Large technological companies and their billionaire founders have spent this year trying to court Trump

Whatever the ultimate impact on workers, Trump’s new costs for H-1B visas are a slap opposite the technological industry, which hires thousands of workers born abroad each year. This year, Amazon has sponsored the greatest number of workers on H-1B visas, followed by Tata, Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google.

Tesla, the electric car manufacturer led by OneTime Trump Ally Elon Musk, also strongly uses the H-1B program (and has been accused in a trial of using it to underpass the workers).

Musk and Trump are published publicly this spring. Now, Trump’s new features on Visa H -1B’s program highlights other technological companies – and billionaires that manage them – also fail in their continuous efforts to arouse the president’s favor.

The founders and CEOs of almost all the best H-1B sponsors assiduously courted Trump during his second term. They attended its inauguration, gave money to its inaugural fund, tried to avoid its prices by promising to invest billions of dollars in the United States and, earlier this month, many returned to the White House to attend a dinner with Trump.

However, the new costs of $ 100,000 on H -1B visas are the last policy that Trump has unveiled that will make things more difficult – and perhaps more expensive – to do business.