Following US President Donald Trump's announcement on Friday hiking the annual fee for H-1B visas to $100,000, netizens have pointed out a loophole in the scope of the move.
According to White House staff secretary Will Scharf and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, the move was aimed at ensuring that people being brought into the US are "very highly skilled" and do not replace American workers.
However, netizens have since pointed out that the new H-1B rules do not apply to "individuals already in the US on H-1B status, or to student visa holders on OPT seeking to change their status to H-1B".
This is because the move only applies to foreigners seeking H-1B visa entry via the sponsorship route.
The Optional Practical Training (OPT) programme, a temporary work permit for those on a student visa (F-1), is a popular route for foreign students to gain work experience (and even transition into work visas) after the completion of their studies.
However, calls to eliminate or better regulate the OPT programme have grown louder over the past few months, due to concerns of mismanagement and the exclusion of a skilled American workforce.
Big companies in the US are unlikely to be affected by the H-1B policy, because they source their foreign workers via L-1 visas, or via the OPT programme.
L-1 visas allow these companies to temporarily transfer employees from their foreign branches into the US.
However, mid-level and junior H-1B workers are set to be affected by the move, with one tech worker saying that many of them would now have to face the $100,000 fee and be stuck in the US for years without being able to visit their home countries, or self-deport.
"The point of all these loopholes and ambiguities is to turn the process into the punishment. That makes it very painful to continue being an underpaid serf H-1B, even if you already have it," the worker wrote.
Companies in foreign countries that outsource workers to the US are also likely to be affected, forcing them to rely on other US visas, or perhaps rethink their US operations as a whole.