On September 19, the Trump administration announced a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applicants effective September 21. This news immediately triggered a chain reaction, and American technology giants and visa holders stepped up their response over the weekend, causing anxiety and confusion across the United States as of today.

H-1B visa is an important channel for American companies to hire overseas high-skilled talents, especially relied on by Silicon Valley technology companies. Previously, the application fee was about $1,000, but the new regulations suddenly increased to $100,000, which is equivalent to a hundredfold increase.

According to CCTV news reports, Trump said when signing the announcement that this policy "actually gives enterprises the motivation to hire Americans". Earlier, U.S. Commerce Secretary Lutnick claimed that the fee was "calculated annually", but White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later clarified that this was a one-time fee, which only applied to new applications and did not involve renewal or existing visa holders.

Trump signed the announcement (data map)

Emergency technology operations.

Worried about losing people.

However, the clarification did not completely remove people¡¯s concerns. In response to the potential shock, tech giants such as Amazon, Alphabet (Google¡¯s parent company), Microsoft and others have warned H-1B visa holders not to leave the country recently, and urged overseas employees to return to the United States as soon as possible on Saturday, otherwise they could face entry barriers. JPMorgan has also issued similar notifications to employees.

At the same time, immigration lawyers send notifications to companies and visa holders in an attempt to answer questions but are often difficult to give precise answers. Technology services company Qualcomm even urged all H-1B employees outside the U.S. to return to the U.S. immediately to avoid being affected by the new regulations. Microsoft reminds employees, ¡°If you have a H-1B identity and are in the U.S., try to stay in the U.S. as much as possible and don¡¯t want to leave the U.S. in the near future.¡±

Microsoft headquarters in China

Google and Microsoft declined to comment, and Amazon, Meta, Apple and Walmart did not respond. In an internal memorandum, Goldman Sachs said it had worked with lawyers to study policy details and would communicate with employees in a timely manner when more information was available.

At the same time, industry organizations also expressed concerns about the potential impact of the new regulation. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it was communicating with the government to assess the impact of the policy, fearing it would impact employees, households and. The head of the technological industry alliance Progressive Chamber of Commerce Adam Kovacshevich was concerned that the new regulation would force companies to rethink their reliance on the H-1B project, affecting the U.S. ability to absorb top talent in key areas such as AI.

Chaos spreads:

Someone was called out of the conference room to the airport.

The wave of policy chaos spread rapidly, with ordinary visa holders and their families in the first place. U.S. immigration lawyer Sheba Amber revealed that some customers are on cruise ships in international waters, while others are anxious about being able to buy a return ticket in time. She said: ¡°Some people are even totally helpless to consider flying first to Guam or Hawaii because it¡¯s not easy to temporarily find a direct international flight to the U.S.¡±

Social media is also filled with descriptions of ¡°travel chaos,¡± with some claiming to have been sent directly to the airport after being temporarily called out of the conference room. Some travelers attempted to transfer through Abu Dhabi in order to complete the entry procedures before arriving in the United States; others chose to cancel the trip.

Nolan Church, who served as head of human resources at Silicon Valley enterprises, said that everyone is now in the midst of a busy response. He said that his newsgroup with other company executives has not stopped overnight. Many people have long anticipated that policies could change, but the extremely short return time window still brings huge logistical challenges.

He stressed that this was not an exaggeration, they just wanted to make sure the families were not dismantled. Church is now a hunter-head consultant, and he mentioned that an insider even allocated dozens of H-1B employees to each human resource employee, asking them to intensely send information confirmation of the journey. If someone was abroad, the company would "at any cost" bring them back to the United States.

Some American netizens maliciously grab tickets

Prevent Indian employees from returning to the United States

In addition, according to the Global Times citing Indian media reports, some American netizens called on the forum to maliciously book flights from India to the United States, using the platform's 15-minute lock-in ticket rule, in an attempt to prevent Indian H-1B employees from returning to the United States. They complained that foreign workers "robbed American jobs" and even displayed screenshots showing hundreds of tickets.

A H-1B employee who refused to disclose his name said his visa would still take weeks before it came into effect. Even though the White House clarification gave him some relief, he did not dare to risk leaving the United States to visit a mother with a heart attack in India because once an emergency arose, he might have to make a tough choice between a career and family responsibilities he had struggled to build for years.

According to the Global Times, the move of the American netizens was ¡°toward the highest proportion of Indians among H-1B visa holders¡± and denounced the move as disrupting Indian travel. According to the Indian Express, 72% of the 400,000 H-1B visas issued by the U.S. between October 2022 and September 2023, were issued to Indian citizens.

Immigration experts warn that this move may only be the beginning. Stevenson, an American immigration lawyer, bluntly said: "We believe that this is only the first step for the government to attack the H-1B project."

related news

Trump throws H-1B ¡°bomb¡±: companies hurry out employees

A White House announcement on H-1B visas shaken large and international student groups.

The core idea of the announcement is that employers must obtain and retain documents proving that they have paid $100,000 before filing an H-1B application for an expat outside the United States, or they will not be able to enter the country.

First Finance learned from several U.S. colleges and tech factory employees that the company's human resources (HR) department sent emergency emails to employees after 22:00 local time on the 19th, asking international employees not to leave the United States.

The company sent an urgent email to its employees

¡°H-1B travel ban¡±

A U.S. college employee told First Finance that HR said in an email: ¡°Earlier tonight, the White House issued a presidential announcement restricting H-1B employees from entering the U.S. We are reviewing it carefully and awaiting further official guidance. A well-known law issued the following recommendation: At present, we strongly advise H-1B visa holders not to leave the U.S. Once they leave, it could seriously affect your ability to apply for a visa again and re-enter the U.S. If you are currently outside the U.S. and hold an H-1B visa, we strongly recommend that you make sure you return to the U.S. before midnight on Sunday, September 21, 2025.

In addition, employees of a major technology company also expressed similar views on China Business News, saying that their company's HR also sent an email to employees around 9 o'clock that night, asking H-1B visa holders not to leave the United States.

For a long time, the H-1B system has been controversial, with some employers replacing U.S. workers with foreign workers, especially low- or medium-low-paying technical jobs, lowering wages and reducing costs. There are analysts who believe that foreign applicants can directly control the flow of "new entry" labor without affecting H-1B employees already working in the U.S.

However, many H-1B visa holders who have already worked in the U.S. are also concerned. One H-1B visa holder said to the first financial report: ¡°This is actually a ¡®H-1B travel ban.¡¯ If a visa holder re-enters the U.S. after leaving the U.S., it is likely that each employer will have to pay $100,000 each time. The H-1B visa for Chinese expires once a year, and if you have been in the U.S. without going out, you don¡¯t have to enter the U.S. from abroad, and the employer doesn¡¯t have to pay $100,000, but if you want to travel, travel or visit family, you need to re-entry a visa annually, and you have to pay $100,000 when entering.¡±

A Chinese and international student group working in the U.S. instantly exploded the pot. A visitor who visited his family home said: ¡°We urgently signed up today¡¯s flight, hoping to catch up with the last direct flight to the U.S. before $100,000 comes into effect.¡±

Due to the sudden incident, some netizens said, "Book a flight to Hawaii first, get back to the United States as soon as possible, and then find a way to connect." According to the data, if you fly from Shanghai to the United States, the nearest American territorial state is Hawaii.

A reporter from China Business News also observed that in just a few hours, the price of the flight from Shanghai to Hawaii (Honolulu) on September 20, which was originally only priced at four or five thousand yuan, has increased by several thousand yuan.

Prices of flight tickets

According to reporters, theoretically, according to the current announcement, new applicants for H-1B visas outside the U.S. without paying $100,000 may not be able to enter the U.S. even if they hold a H-1B visa. At the same time, $100,000 is generally required to be paid by employers, not individuals. But because the announcement is sudden and the details are still to be interpreted, the current U.S. employers are not quick to react to this.

Could it be rejected?

According to insiders, the Trump administration has previously planned to abolish the H-1B visa lottery system by adopting a salary-based screening process. The new system will prioritize higher-paying jobs during visa screening. That¡¯s why H-1B visas have repeatedly become Trump¡¯s ¡°victims¡±, one of the reasons may be that H-1B visa holders don¡¯t have the right to vote, and therefore will not have an impact on the election. Under the ¡°America¡¯s Priority¡± claim, fighting H-1B visas or being seen as a positive initiative by some Republican supporters.

The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant U.S. work visa that allows U.S. employers to hire foreign employees in specific professional fields, usually requiring applicants to have at least a bachelor's degree or equivalent. Usually initially approved for 3 years, can be renewed once (totally up to 6 years). If you apply for a green card, it can be extended further. The prerequisite for obtaining a H-1B visa must be to find a company or institution willing to guarantee for employees, and individuals cannot apply on their own. Employers need to submit an H-1B application to the U.S. Immigration Office (USCIS), but this is just the start, because the demand far exceeds the majority of applications to first pass the annual H-1B draw, with a quota of approximately 85,000 per year

The Trump speech.

The "main force" of H-1B is highly concentrated in a few countries and regions, especially in IT industry talent exporting countries. Among them, India accounts for the absolute majority, accounting for 70%-75% (mainly software engineers, programmers, IT consultants); Followed by China, accounting for 10%-15%, mainly in scientific research, finance, education and some IT fields; Others include: Canada, South Korea, Philippines, Britain, etc. According to USCIS data, Indian and Chinese applicants account for almost more than 90% of H-1B visas.

Some immigration lawyers told First Finance that the announcement could also be rejected soon.

The reason is that according to the current Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the U.S. Immigration Service and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have the right to set and adjust immigration application fees through legal procedures. Historically, H-1B fees include basic application fees, ACWIA training fees, anti-fraud fees, and additional surcharges paid by some employers, which are in the order of several thousand dollars in total. Charging a $100,000 application fee would be a huge leap in an order of magnitude, far beyond the "cost recovery" logic and more like a "restrictive" policy. The president can indeed require DHS/USCIS to adjust policies by executive order, but the creation of fees must go through the rulemaking process set out under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). If the application fee of $100,000 is directly charged simply through an administrative order, it is likely to be questioned as exceeding the legal authorization.