The tech industry is reeling from President Trump’s latest executive order, which requires H-1B visa applicants to pay a $100,000 fee. Tech companies are the biggest beneficiaries of H-1B visas, raising questions about whether the added cost will harm their ability to fill key roles.
The six-figure charge is a significant increase from previous fees, which typically ranged from $2,000 to $5,000, CNBC reports. The edict also created mass confusion and even panic among current H-1B holders and employers, thanks to conflicting statements from the White House.
On Friday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the fee would be charged annually. The next day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt then tweeted, “This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition.”
Specifically, it’s required for new H-1B employment-based applications filed after 12:01 a.m. ET on Sept. 21, 2025, not those who already have an H-1B visa.
There was also confusion about whether H-1B visa holders could travel. One man decided not to travel to his sister’s wedding in Korea since his visa application is still in process. Leavitt says people “can leave and re-enter the country to the same extent as they normally would.”
The new policy expires on Sept. 25, 2026, though Trump reserves the right to extend it after next year’s lottery. That gives Silicon Valley leaders a few months to curry favor with the president and convince him to drop the fee. Congress could also step in; there have been bipartisan reform efforts in the past, though nothing really took off.
Trump insists that tech CEOs are on board. “I think they’re going to be very happy,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Friday. “We’re going to be able to keep people in our country that are going to be very productive people. And in many cases, these companies are going to pay a lot of money for that, and they’re very happy about it.”
Secretary Lutnick echoed those claims. “All the big companies are on board,” he said. “If you’re going to train somebody, train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs.”
In a joint appearance on CNBC, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman were asked about the president’s plans for the H-1B program. Both said they want to hire the smartest people from around the world, but issued vague support for Trump’s efforts.
“Streamlining [the H-1B] process and also sort of aligning financial incentives seems good to me,” Altman said.
“I’m glad to see President Trump making the moves he’s making,” said Huang, who stressed that “immigration is the foundation of the American dream.” (Huang was born in Taiwan and lived in Thailand before coming to the US as a child.)
Which Tech Companies Have the Most H-1B Visas?
The US grants 85,000 H-1B visas each year. Amazon secured the most H-1B visas in the past two years, with 9,257 in FY2024 and 10,044 in FY2025 for Amazon.com, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Amazon Web Services (AWS) also secured another 2,347 visas in 2025, while Amazon Data Services got 543.
That’s a small fraction of Amazon’s estimated 350,000 corporate employees, according to The Guardian. Still, it’s unlikely that Amazon is thrilled about potentially paying over $1 billion for foreign workers. That might be the Trump administration’s goal. As Trump’s executive order notes, “The large-scale replacement of American workers through systemic abuse of the [H-1B] program has undermined both our economic and national security.”
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Indian IT firm Tata Consultancy Group (TCS) was second on the list, with 5,505 in 2025, followed by Microsoft at 5,189, Meta at 5,123, Apple at 4,202, and Google with 4,181. Also on the list with between 1,000 and 2,000 visas are Oracle, Intel, and Nvidia.
Combined, all these companies would spend billions to retain H-1B staff. But like the tariff scheme, this is another way to funnel more money into the US Treasury. On Friday, Trump also signed another EO to establish the Trump Gold Card, which allows wealthy foreigners to purchase US citizenship for $1 million.
EO Targets ‘Manipulation’ by Indian IT Firms
India is the top country of birth for H-1B workers at 73%, according to Pew Research, and H-1B employees are big business for India-based IT firms. In addition to TCS, Cognizant secured 2,493 visas in 2025, while Infosys had about 2,000.
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“Information technology (IT) firms in particular have prominently manipulated the H-1B system, significantly harming American workers in computer-related fields,” according to Trump’s EO, which notes that the share of H-1B visas for IT workers grew from 32% in 2003 to over 65% in the last five years.
“American IT workers have reported they were forced to train the foreign workers who were taking their jobs and to sign nondisclosure agreements about this indignity as a condition of receiving any form of severance,” the EO adds. “This suggests H-1B visas are not being used to fill occupational shortages or obtain highly skilled workers who are unavailable in the United States.”
USCIS says the number of eligible applicants for the 2026 application year was much lower than 2025, and that it has “undertaken extensive fraud investigations, denied and revoked petitions accordingly, and continues to make law enforcement referrals for criminal prosecution.”
In a statement, India’s Ministry of External Affairs says it is studying the “full implications” of Trump’s EO, but noted that the move “is likely to have strong humanitarian consequences by way of the disruption cause for families. [The Indian] government hopes that these disruptions can be addressed suitably by the US authorities.”
Accel’s Prashanth Prakash, however, tells CNBC International that the change could be “a positive,” as it might encourage tech workers to “come back and work on startups in India.”
Last year, Vivek Ramaswamy—the short-lived co-head of DOGE and now GOP candidate for Ohio governor—made headlines when he argued on X that the US prioritizes “mediocrity over excellence,” and that a “culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”
His DOGE co-lead, Elon Musk, also championed the visa program at the time. Neither he nor Ramaswamy has weighed in on the $100,000 fee.
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As a news and features writer at PCMag, I cover the biggest tech trends that shape the way we live and work. I specialize in on-the-ground reporting, uncovering stories from the people who are at the center of change—whether that’s the CEO of a high-valued startup or an everyday person taking on Big Tech. I also cover daily tech news and breaking stories, contextualizing them so you get the full picture.
I came to journalism from a previous career working in Big Tech on the West Coast. That experience gave me an up-close view of how software works and how business strategies shift over time. Now that I have my master’s in journalism from Northwestern University, I couple my insider knowledge and reporting chops to help answer the big question: Where is this all going?
This article was published by WTVG on 2025-09-22 15:55:00
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