US President Donald Trump has signed a declaration that requires a fee of $100,000 a year for businesses seeking to sponsor H-1B workers’ visas.
Trump signed the order on Friday, introducing another “gold card” visa for individuals who can afford $1 million for permanent residency in the United States.
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“The main thing is we have great people coming in and they’ll pay,” he told White House reporters.
The H-1B visa allows companies to sponsor foreign workers with specialized skills such as scientists, engineers and computer programmers, and extend them for 3 years at first, but up to 6 years.
Management officials said the changes to the H-1B programme would ensure that businesses will only sponsor workers with the rarest skill set.
“If you’re going to train someone, you’re going to train one of the most recent graduates from one of our land’s great universities. Train Americans. Take people to do our job,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.
However, such exorbitant fees could significantly convert the H-1B system created in 1990 and award 85,000 visas per year with the lottery system.
The program is subject to increased scrutiny from the Trump administration amid widespread crackdown on immigration linked to the US president’s boosting domestic work.
As part of that campaign, the Trump administration sought to introduce more restrictive policies on international students studying in the United States, including access to social media accounts and banning foreign travelers from several countries.
“Tax the edge of innovation”
The Trump administration previously considered changing the H-1B visa rules to support well-paid employers in order to essentially eliminate the lottery system.
Supporters of the H-1B program say it will bring the best and brightest to work in the US and create an advantage over foreign competitors. Critics have long accused businesses of abuse the program and using it to pay lower wages and reduce labor protections.
“All the big companies are participating,” Lutnick said Friday. The H-1B visa costs $100,000 a year.
“We spoke to them,” he said.
He added that the visa costs $100,000 a year for each of the three years of that period, but details are “still considered.”
Trump’s move could add millions of dollars to businesses, which could hit small tech companies and startups particularly hard.
Adding new fees “creates a hindrance to attract the world’s smartest talent to the United States,” said Deedy Das, partner at Menlo Ventures, a venture capital firm.
Some analysts have proposed that the fees would force companies to do high-value jobs overseas, potentially hindering the US’s position in the high-stakes artificial intelligence race with China.
“In the short term, Washington may gather winding up. In the long term, the US risks impose an innovation advantage and exchange dynamism for myopia protectionism.”
Others questioned the legality of the new rates.
“Congress only allowed the government to set fees to recover the costs of awarding the application,” wrote Aaron Reichlin Melnick, Director of Policy at the U.S. Immigration Council, about Blue Sky.
Under the current system, a small fee is required to enter the visa lottery, and if approved, subsequent fees can be thousands of dollars.
This year, Amazon is the top recipient of the H-1B visa, with over 10,000 people 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 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Agency.
Meanwhile, India was the largest beneficiary of the H-1B visa last year, accounting for 71% of approved beneficiaries. China was the distant second at 11.7%, according to government data.
The H-1B visa has been approved for 3-6 years.
