In December 2024, a battle erupted between the tech right and the nativist right over the H-1B visa program, which allows American 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 told the New York Post. "I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times."

Fast forward to September 2025, when Trump announced that 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 press release as 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.

American tech companies rely heavily on the H-1B visa and were immediately some of the most vocal opponents of the fee. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple were four of the top five H-1B beneficiaries in FY 2025, reports The Wall Street Journal. Large tech companies may be willing to take on the fee to an extent, but as a CNBC headline warned, "Startups and founders could be hardest hit by $100,000 H-1B visas." (As it stands, U.S. companies are already paying H-1B holders hefty salaries, with the median wage totaling $108,000 in 2021.)

The fee will affect workers in fields far beyond tech. Health care providers, religious groups, and educators are among those suing the Trump administration over the fee, "saying it would harm hospitals, churches, schools and industries that rely on the visa," reports the Associated Press. The fee could exacerbate teacher 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.

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 working paper. "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 observed that "tighter immigration rules don’t just limit U.S. hiring, but they can also accelerate relocating jobs to other countries."

Other countries are trying to attract foreign talent that might be deterred by U.S. visa policies, Roll Call reported in October. Germany’s ambassador to India and Bhutan compared 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 argued that "not as many people are going to get visas to the United States," which represents "an opportunity for Canada."

The H-1B program is imperfect. Many supporters of high-skilled immigration suggest fundamentally changing the visa or scrapping it altogether, arguing 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.

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