President Trump made it equally more expensive for businesses to hire foreign workers through the H-1B program. The White House announced on Friday that Trump signed a proclamation that required employers to pay a hefty charge of $ 100,000 for new H-1B visa applications, a huge jump from the current $ 215 lottery registration fee.
H-1B-VISA allows US companies to hire foreign workers in areas that typically require technical expertise such as that, technique, math or medicine. The program is closed to 65,000 new Visa annually plus another 20,000 to foreign candidates with advanced degrees from US universities. Visa is awarded through a lottery system and typically lasts three years, although holders can expand them or apply for green cards.
The administration’s new steps are designed to crack down on what it calls widespread abuse of the program, which it accuses of displacing American workers. According to the White House, the proportion of IT workers with H-1B-VISA skyrocketed from 32% in 2003 to over 65% today, while unemployment among the recent candidates for computer science has hit 6.1%.
Silicon Valley will undoubtedly be in weapons over the initiative. The limitations are aimed at a program that helped create some of the region’s biggest success stories.
Elon Musk, Trump’s close allies for most of this year, originally worked in the United States on an H-1B after arriving as a student. In fact, Musk, who questioned a perceived critic of the H-1B program in December on his platform X, twitly twittered to the individual that “the reason I am in America with so many critical people who built Spacex, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong, is because of H1B. that likes that you might be able to understand. ”
Mike Krieger, Instagram co-founder, who became Chief Product Officer at AI Giant Anthropic, is one of the aforementioned success stories. The Brazilian-born Stanford degree worked on the early instant messaging platform Meebo on an H-1B visa.
Earlier this year, the National Venture Capital Association in a letter to the National Science Foundation argued that “the swelling of the annual CAP for H-1B-Visa, which is sent to educated and very skilled immigrants who work in jobs every year that require a significant amount of technical and specialized education, is fundamental to generate more successful immigrant funds.”
TechCrunch -event
San Francisco
|
27-29. October 2025
NVCA noted that although “H-1B-VISA is not ideal for immigrants who immediately want to find companies in the United States, they are still critically important for success for immigrant-based companies because they deliver valuable work experience and expand pipeline for potential immigrant start-ups.” (H-1B’s demands for employer and employee make it virtually impossible for founders to achieve directly, forcing them to spend years tied to employers before getting green cards that let them launch their own startups. When Krieger wanted to coincide Instagram in 2010, transferring the transfer of his visa months, and he said he almost left the start before it was launched because of these complications.)
On Friday, tech leaders at X already warned about talent that fled to more inviting countries. And Amazon, Google and Microsoft have reportedly told employees with H-1B visa to avoid foreign trips and remain in the US for now.
Meanwhile, in his proclamation on Friday, the Trump administration went full on its criticism of the program and pointed to specific companies that approved thousands of H-1B workers while at the same time dismissing US employees. According to the fact sheet in the White House, a named company received approval of 5,189 H-1B workers during this fiscal year while cutting approx. 16,000 American jobs.
The proclamation – which says it is partially rooted in an attempt to “protect our national security” – includes the Wiggle Room; Exceptions to case to case are possible if they are considered in the national interest.
It also instructs the Secretary of Work to revise payroll requirements to prevent the undermining of US wages.
This post has been updated to include reports on how Amazon, Google and Microsoft react.