In alignment with President Trump’s campaign promises to be tough on immigration and protect American workers, his administration announced last week a $100,000 one-time H-1B visa fee, a massive increase from the previous $2,000-$5,000 fee. The H-1B visa program is intended to recruit highly skilled, highly paid foreign talent to supplement American companies, specifically in critical science, technology, engineering, and math fields. In 2024, about 400,000 H-1B applications were approved, with about 73% from India and 12% from China. No other birthplace accounted for even 2% of H-1B workers, with two from Uzbekistan in FY 2025.
The H-1B visa program began after World War II under the guise of “Operation Paperclip” where the US recruited about 1,600 Nazi scientists from Germany to simultaneously burgeon America’s nascent nuclear industry and disable post-Nazi Germany. Today, US China hawks suggest reforming the H-1B program into a “Second Operation Paperclip” to recruit top scientists to counter to the growing number of material science, physics, and chemistry research coming out of China.
On October 1, China officially introduced a new “K-Visa” designed to recruit young science and technology talent from graduates in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and young professional engaged in relevant research. The K-Visa is unlike other skilled immigration programs by not requiring a Chinese employer or inviter at the application stage, appealing to young graduates and entrepreneurs without formal job offers. Beijing announced its visa on August 7, weeks before Trump announced the H-1B visa fee, but geopolitical tensions are undeniable in the global competition in science and technology. seeing highly skilled tech workers as national security assets.
The White House’s proclamation stated that the H-1B visa program “has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor,” undermining American economic and national security. Accordingly, the fee is intended to put scarcity around H-1B applications, giving advantage to American citizens and encouraging only highly specialized and skilled foreign applicants to bolster American companies.
The Trump administration justifies its H-1B overhaul due to the widespread manipulation by information technology (IT) outsourcing companies. While Amazon remains the top employer of H-1B approvals, the majority of employers filling H-1B slots are foreign companies such as Cognizant (93k), Infosys (61k), Tata Consultancy Services (60k). Silicon Valley venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya stated that these outsourcing consulting companies have “gamed the system” through perfecting the application process and gaining the bulk of H-1Bs over American companies.
Similarly, supporters of the executive order contend that in practice, H-1Bs are not being awarded to the program’s intended high skilled engineers and AI researchers. Since FY 2020, the average salary for an H-1B visa holder is slightly under $120,000 – a salary surpassed by most executive assistants at tech startups. Jason Calacanis, an early investor in Uber, described the IT sector’s widespread abuse of the visa program, calling it a form of “indentured servitude” where companies will grant H-1Bs to lower skilled workers, underpaying and overworking them under the threat of visa revocation, supporting the high fee to discourage artificial wage suppression and labor abuse.
Those against the new executive order prescience a US “brain drain” in vital industries through the loss of engineers, doctors, and researchers. Nearly a quarter of US physicians are international medical graduates, and hospitals are petitioning the Department of Homeland Security to grant exemptions for health care workers. Additionally, in alignment with the rest of the US administration’s anti-immigration discourse, it signals an unwelcoming environment and discourages young talent away from the US and towards China.
Like the reactions to most of Trump’s polices, moderates tend to support the reform, but not in execution. California representative Ro Khanna suggests that the blanket $100,000 fee places an unfair burden onto start-ups, non-profits, and universities, while acknowledging the systematic abuse by IT firms able to “game” the application system.
The MAGA rift divides tech pundits – notably, Musk and Ramaswamy – who support foreign recruitment as “essential for America to keep winning,” against long-time Republicans demanding less immigration and more investment in American workers. Despite Republican division over reform or removal of the H-1B visa program, Trump continues to defend the program and immigration recruitment more broadly, stating in the past that he would like to “staple green cards onto US diplomas.”
Most American voters see “immigration” in singularity, encompassing all people seeking to start a new life abroad. However, immigration can and should be considered and granted for different grounds: asylum, family, talent recruitment, labor needs. At minimum, Trump’s H-1B reform and partisan disagreement is bringing necessary nuance to the dialogue and debate on US immigration policy.
* The Institute for Advanced International Studies (IAIS) does not take institutional positions on any issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IAIS.
