In December 2024, a battle erupted between the tech right and the nativist right over the H-1B visa program, which\u00a0allows<\/a>\u00a0American employers to hire foreign workers in specialty fields. When President-elect Donald Trump weighed in, he threw his support behind H-1B defenders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” he\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0New York Post<\/em>. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times.”<\/p>\n

Fast forward to September 2025, when Trump\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that new H-1B visa applications would be subject to a $100,000 fee (though he reiterated his support for the program just two months later). Touted in a White House\u00a0press release<\/a>\u00a0as a way to address the “systematic abuse of the program” that has “undermined both our economic and national security,” the fee will ultimately harm American companies and communities.<\/p>\n

American tech companies rely heavily\u2028on the H-1B visa and were immediately some of the most vocal\u00a0opponents<\/a>\u00a0of the fee. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple were four of the top five H-1B beneficiaries in FY 2025,\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/em>. Large tech companies may be willing to take on the fee to an extent, but as a CNBC headline\u00a0warned<\/a>, “Startups and founders could be hardest hit by $100,000 H-1B visas.” (As it stands, U.S. companies are already\u00a0paying<\/a>\u00a0H-1B holders hefty salaries, with the median wage totaling $108,000 in 2021.)<\/p>\n

The fee will affect workers in fields far beyond tech. Health care providers, religious groups, and educators are among those\u00a0suing<\/a>\u00a0the Trump administration over the fee, “saying it would harm hospitals, churches, schools and industries that rely on the visa,”\u00a0report<\/a>s the Associated Press. The fee could\u00a0exacerbate<\/a>\u00a0teacher and physician shortages, especially in rural areas that struggle to attract American workers. “About a third of H-1B workers are nurses, teachers, physicians, scholars, priests and pastors, according to the lawsuit,” according to the Associated Press.<\/p>\n

Though the Trump administration argues that its visa fee will address the “large-scale replacement of American workers,” it might not lead to companies hiring American workers instead of foreign workers after all. “Firms respond to restrictions on H-1B immigration by increasing foreign affiliate employment,” found a 2020 National Bureau of Economic Research\u00a0working paper<\/a>. “For every visa rejection,” the average multinational corporation hires 0.4 employees overseas, while the most globalized firms “hire 0.9 employees abroad for every visa rejection.” Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond economist Nicolas Morales\u00a0observed<\/a>\u00a0that “tighter immigration rules don’t just limit U.S. hiring, but they can also accelerate relocating jobs to other countries.”<\/p>\n

Other countries are trying to attract foreign talent that might be deterred by U.S. visa policies,\u00a0Roll Call<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0in October. Germany’s ambassador to India and Bhutan\u00a0compared<\/a> the country’s immigration policy to a German car: “It’s reliable, it’s modern and it is predictable….We do not change our rules fundamentally overnight.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney\u00a0argued<\/a>\u00a0that “not as many people are going to get visas to the United States,” which represents “an opportunity for Canada.”<\/p>\n

The H-1B program is imperfect. Many supporters of high-skilled immigration suggest fundamentally changing the visa or scrapping it altogether,\u00a0arguing<\/a> that it limits foreign workers’ mobility and long-term prospects and doesn’t prioritize the highest-skilled workers for the U.S. economy. But a $100,000 fee won’t fix those issues.<\/p>\n

The post Trump Thinks a $100,000 Visa Fee Would Make Companies Hire More Americans. It Could Do the Opposite.<\/a> appeared first on Reason.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Countries like Canada and Germany are lining up to welcome companies and workers priced out by the H1-B price hike. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":""},"categories":[19,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123165"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}