President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday to require an annual fee of $100,000 for H-1B visa applications. Those visas allow employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations.
H-1B visas
The president said the move is to stop what he calls the overuse of the program.
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“We need workers,” Trump told reporters from the Oval Office. “We need great workers. And this pretty much ensures that that’s what’s going to happen.”
The president believes this will incentivize companies to train American workers for these types of jobs while still providing a pathway to bring in skilled foreign workers.
“If you’re going to train somebody, you’re gonna train one of the recent graduates from one of the great universities across our land,” Trump said. “Train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs.”
The move is the latest effort by the Trump administration to control immigration and will likely face legal pushback.
“The most anti-legal immigration administration in American history continues to threaten US prosperity and freedom,” David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, said on X. “This action would kill the H-1B visa and ban some of the highest-value employees in America. Utterly incomprehensible.”
Cost to employers
That new fee will add a premium for companies to bring in workers on the H-1B visa.
Foreign skilled workers make an average salary of $119,000 per year, and this new plan nearly doubles that cost.
Nearly 400,000 H-1B applications were approved in fiscal year 2024.
If the United States gets that same number of applicants under the new program, that’s $40 billion in federal revenue from businesses.
Those visas are also good for three years, and the administration hasn’t decided if they’ll require yearly payments or just charge the $300,000 upfront.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the new plan came after they spoke with companies but did not say which ones.
“Everyone’s going to be happy, and we’re going to be able to keep people in our country that are going to be very productive people,” Trump said. “And in many cases, these companies are going to pay a lot of money for that, and they’re very happy about it.”
Foreign investment
The move comes less than a week after Trump tried to reassure foreign investors that the U.S. was open for business following a raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia.
That raid ended with hundreds of South Korean workers being detained, many of whom had the H-1B visa.
Construction of that $7 billion plant has now been suspended until at least 2026.
