CUPERTINO, Calif. – A new Trump policy is causing fear and confusion in Silicon Valley. It tacks a $100,000 fee onto the H-1B visa, which allows highly skilled workers in STEM to come to the U.S. on a temporary basis.
Visa confusion
What we know:
Big tech companies, like Amazon, Apple, Meta and Google are among the biggest users of the H-1B visa.
But the Trump administration’s new policy aims to encourage hiring here at home by making those visas very expensive, meaning companies will now have to pay top dollar for top talent.
“If they have somebody they want to add to the payroll, $100,000 would be a big obstacle,” says Ahmed Banafa, a technology professor with San Jose State University.
The change has been met with fear and confusion. Even though the fee will only impact new visas, some current H-1B holders were afraid to leave the country, delaying a flight out of SFO as seen in a post on Instagram.
Impact on tech sectors
And in Silicon Valley, business leaders say this could have a devastating impact, especially on fast-moving sectors like AI.
“We can’t turn off the H-1B visa overnight. Our culture, our communities and our education system are not ready to take that load,” says Harbir Bhatia, CEO of the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce and Innovation.
“A strong domestic workforce is something we all very much support, we just don’t have enough of the STEM talent within our country right now to power our innovation economy,” says Ahmad Thomas, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.
Immigration experts fear if the best and brightest can’t come to the U.S., those jobs will move elsewhere.
“This is going to make it harder for people to come here full stop. It is going to make it harder for American companies to compete for talent in what is very much a global race for talent. It is going to lead to larger companies moving operations abroad,” says Jeremy Robbins, executive director of the American Immigration Council.
Trump policy proponent
Not everyone agrees. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, posted on X: “I’ve worked on H-1B politics for 30 years. Trump’s $100k per year tax is a great solution. It will mean H1-B is used just for very high value jobs, which will mean no lottery needed, and more certainty for those jobs.”
But whether this will help hiring at home, experts are skeptical.
“There’s only about 730,000 H-1B visa holders in the U.S. right now, so as you can see, it’s a small percentage. So the argument that it’s impacting jobs…it just doesn’t add up when you look at the evidence,” says Mariam Masumi Daud, an immigration attorney with Johnson & Masum.
The change took effect on Sunday.
