A new $100,000 charge on each new employer-filed H-1B petition risks draining talent, straining universities and nonprofits, and dulling America’s edge in AI and other frontier tech.
President Trump announced a $100,000 payment for new H-1B applications filed on or after Sept. 21, 2025, arguing the visa has been used to undercut U.S. workers. The White House framed it as a fix for “abuses,” and officials told TIME it applies to new applications, not renewals—but legal challenges are likely.
Some leaders cheered replacing randomness with price signals. Sam Altman called financial incentives “good,” and Reed Hastings said a steep fee could reserve H-1Bs for “very high-value” roles, reducing the lottery’s role. Others, like CoreWeave’s CEO, called it “sand in the gears,” warning about operational friction and lost hiring.
Demand for H-1Bs far exceeds supply, triggering a lottery and years-long waits for green cards. Critics on the left cite underpayment of visa holders; critics on the right claim job displacement. During Trump’s first term, denials spiked and an attempted H-1B ban failed in court. The $100k levy is a new tactic aimed at reshaping who applies—but it could land hardest on smaller firms and research institutions.
Who gets squeezed first
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Universities & nonprofits (often fee-exempt in other proposals) could be priced out of recruiting global experts—Harvard typically sponsors ~125 new H-1Bs a year, which TIME notes would exceed $10 million under the new charge alone.
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Indian talent pipelines: Roughly 70% of H-1B holders are Indian; higher costs could redirect talent to the U.K., Canada, or India, or push more offshoring by U.S. firms. Smaller startups may simply stop hiring.
Even reform advocates in the story doubt a flat $100,000 fee addresses the real frictions—lottery inefficiency, capped supply, long green-card queues, and limited mobility. As TIME frames it, the policy pits the goal of protecting some jobs today against sustaining U.S. tech leadership tomorrow—an experiment likely to be contested in court and tested in the market for global talent.
