Washington: In a move that is likely to have far reaching consequences on the technology sector, US President Donald Trump signed a proclamation imposing a $100,000 (over Rs 88 lakh) fee on H1B visa applicants.
The move is aimed at ensuring that the people being brought into the country are “actually very highly skilled” and do not replace American workers, Trump said.
“We need workers. We need great workers, and this pretty much ensures that that’s what’s going to happen,” he said.
According to Will Scharf, White House staff secretary, the H1B non-immigrant visa programme is among the “most abused” in the country’s current immigration system.
“What this proclamation will do is raise the fee that companies pay to sponsor H1B applicants to $100,000. This will ensure that the people they’re bringing in are actually very highly skilled and that they’re not replaceable by American workers,” he said.
The H1B visa is a temporary US work visa that allows companies to hire foreign professionals with specialised skills. It was created in 1990 for people with a bachelor’s degree or higher in fields where jobs are deemed hard to fill, especially science, technology, engineering, and math.
This visa is initially granted for three years, but can be extended to a maximum of six years. For those who receive a Green Card (permanent residency), the visa can be renewed indefinitely. To apply, candidates register online with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), following which a lottery system randomly selects applicants.
Bloomberg has reported that the Trump administration is weighing further changes to the way applications are considered.
Once granted, the visa ensures equal pay and comparable working conditions to those of their American counterparts.
Indians make up the majority of H1B visa holders. According to government data, India was the largest beneficiary of H1B visas last year, accounting for 71 per cent of approved beneficiaries, Reuters reported. China was a distant second at 11.7 per cent.
In the first half of 2025, Amazon and its cloud-computing unit, AWS, had reportedly received approval for more than 12,000 H1B visas, while Microsoft and Meta Platforms had over 5,000 H1B visa approvals each.
The fees are likely to add to the problems faced by Indians while trying to get a US visa. While Indians could apply for a Green Card, the wait time is usually longer. During this time, they would need to renew their visas time to time, and each time pay over Rs 88 lakh.
Additionally, the US government is also introducing a more demanding test for citizenship applicants – which Trump had implemented during his 2020 presidency, but was scrapped by the Joe Biden administration. According to reports, applicants will be required to study a pool of 128 questions covering US history and politics, and correctly answer 12 out of 20 questions orally.
Trump also signed an executive order for a ‘Gold Card’ visa program with fees set at $1 million for individuals and $2 million for businesses.
“We think it’s going to be very successful… It’s going to raise billions of dollars, which will reduce taxes, pay off debt, and do other good things,” the US president said.
Through the ‘Gold Card’ plan, the US will only allow “extraordinary people at the very top” to come to the US who can create business and jobs for Americans, US secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick said.
He further noted that the employment-based green card program is “illogical”, adding that the US was taking in “bottom quartile” people who earned only $66,000 a year.
“Historically, the employment-based green card program led in 2,81,000 people a year. And those people, on average, earned $66,000 a year, and they were five times more likely to go on government assistance programs. So we were taking in the bottom quartile, below the average American. It was illogical. The only country in the world that was taking in the bottom quartile. We are going to stop doing that,” Lutnick said.
