Experts say that tech companies, which are the biggest beneficiaries of H-1B visas and small and medium businesses, will be hit hard by the recent fee hike introduced by the Trump administration.
Janice Flynn, managing partner at Flynn Hodkinson, while speaking to The Washington Post, said that the new changes would “freeze the ability for people or for companies to bring in skilled labour into the United States.” She said that it would cut off the pipeline of U.S.-trained talent and lead companies to consider whether they want to be based in the country.
Rahul Batra, the CEO of immigration law specialists Hudson McKenzie, said in an interview that the fee is “absolutely huge for companies to absorb" and “a lot of employers may decide not to sponsor renewals because the cost is too high.”
Experts also said that the policy would deter companies from using the program to bring in entry-level employees and give employers an incentive to use the program to recruit only top candidates.
Elon Musk is one of the many who arrived in the US on an H-1B visa. In December, he wrote, “The reason I’m in America, along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that made America strong, is because of H1B.”
Melania Trump also reached the US on an H-1 B visa in 1996.
There are about half a million people in the US on H-1B visas. The visa is given out on a lottery system due to the high demand, and about 85,000 visas are authorized by the Congress are available every year. In 2024, the US government received about 425,000 H-1B visa petitions. Applicants had about a 1 in 5 chance of receiving the visa.
Nasscom, an Indian IT trade association, said in a statement on Saturday, that “High-skill talent is vital to driving innovation, competitiveness, and growth for America’s economy. This is especially critical at a time when advances in AI and other frontier technologies are set to define global competitiveness.”