The White House on Saturday and Sunday made efforts to clarify
its Friday proclamation that would impose a $100,000 fee on H1-B visas—a
specialized visa for highly skilled workers that is most often used by
technology and finance companies like Amazon, Google, Goldman Sachs, Meta,
Microsoft and JPMorgan Chase & Co.—that it would apply only to new visa
applications and not existing H1-B work visas.
The fee, announced with a bit more than single day of notice
that it would go into effect at 12:01 am Eastern time Sunday, was short on and
conflicted regarding details. Companies, as a result, scrambled over the
weekend to draw H1-B visa holders back to the United States from paid leave,
business trips and international project work lest they incur the $100,000 fee to
re-enter the country, according to reports in the New
York Times and the Wall
Street Journal.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Saturday
wrote on social media platform X, “This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time
fee that applies only to the petition” for such visas. This appeared to be a
walkback of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s Friday statements from the Oval
Office announcing the action that the fee would be annual and meant to limit
the H1-B visa program to positions that would strictly recruit “the great
engineers” and “impressively detailed executives.”
Some H1-B visa
critics accuse companies of using them to displace U.S. workers for cheaper
foreign workers.
Corporate executives, legal counsel and HR departments
continued to view the issue with caution over the weekend, advising H1-B visa
holders to return immediately and to cancel planned international travel.
A technology worker wrote on a Reddit thread from Saturday,
“My company is in full meltdown mode. The directions are … come back to the US
within 12 hour[s]; if you can’t, stay put and postpone any ticket back; if you
have a ticket for this week cancel it.” Another wrote, “24 hour notice for a
nearly 12-24 hour flight is wild.”
A medical worker posting on another Reddit thread Saturday
wrote, “I am at a conference in Canada and they interrupted the conference to
recommend that H1-B visa holders return home (to the US) early before the Trump
EO goes into effect tonight. Multiple universities have sent out emails
recommending the same.”
The White House on Sunday continued to assure companies that
the new fee should not impede international travel for existing H1-B visa
holders and would apply only on a go-forward basis.
Until Sunday, the visa fee for skilled workers was $215. The
executive order, which also created a “gold card” visa that enables foreign
nationals to purchase a path to citizenship for $1 million, is almost certain
to be challenged in court.
The Trump administration also has plans to create a
“platinum card” visa that would allow foreign nationals to remain in the
country for 270 days without being subject to U.S. taxes on non-U.S. income.
Lutnick said the platinum card visa would require congressional approval.