By Anjali Sharma
WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump on Friday introduced a new reform in the immigration policy of Washington by imposing a $100,000 fees on H-1B visa applications.
The move is a serious blow to the companies sponsoring skilled foreign workers in the US. The move is likely to hit technology giants and Indian IT firms in a harsh way.
IT companies and Indian techies came under severe blow on Saturday after US President Donald Trump announced huge visa fee.
Trump administration cited abuse of H-1B program and replacement of Amercican workers, Trump imposed huge hike on the fee to enter and live in teh United States of America.
he Trump administration said the reason behind the hike in visa fees was the “abuse of the H-1B program”.
The proclamation, titled “Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers,” makes the $100,000 payment mandatory for any new applications for H-1B program, which Trump claims threatens national security and displaces American workers.
According to the US President, the rationale is that the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program was created to bring temporary workers into the United States to perform additive, high-skilled functions, but it has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers.
The proclamation also stated that there are reports that US employees were being forced to train incoming foreign workers before being laid off. This abuse is not only an economic concern but a national security threat, it added.
The existing H-1B visa process costs employers between approximately $1,700 and $5,000, depending on the speedy process of the application. If we consider the present cost to be an average $5,000 and now with the addition of a $100,000 fee taking the total initial application cost to $105,000, we are looking at a massive increase of 2,100 per cent in the visa cost for skilled foreign workers.
For companies filing thousands of visas each year, the financial burden will be huge.
TCS, with over 5,000 approvals this year alone, would be looking at potential additional costs of more than $500 million under the new rule.
Tech multinationals such as Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Apple will be severely impacted as they are the hefty users of the H-1B program.
The multinational companies will face soaring costs to retain or recruit foreign talent.
According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services data: Amazon led with 10,044 H-1B workers as of June 2025, TCS followed with 5,505 approvals this fiscal year, ther top users included Microsoft (5,189), Meta (5,123), Apple (4,202), Google (4,181), Deloitte (2,353), Infosys (2,004), Wipro (1,523), and Tech Mahindra Americas (951).
The dominance of IT workers in the H-1B program has grown steadily, from 32% in FY2003 to over 65% in the last five years.
