With the current blues of the immigration concerns and the US visa issues, President Donald Trump has proposed a new fee of H-1B visa of 100,000 dollars. According to the official news at the White House, the new proclamation will raise the price that businesses will pay to sponsor applicants of H-1B visa to 100,000 USD which is approximately 90 lakhs.
Trump Raises H-1B Visa Sponsorship Fee to $100,000
In a press briefing of the Oval Office on Friday, September 19, the Trump administration said that this new measure will guarantee that the applicants introduced by companies are very skilled and not substitutable by American workers.
We need workers, they [companies] need great workers. With this proclamation, America will now receive good workers, said Trump when he signed the deal at the Oval Office on Friday.
The H-1B visa is one of the most desired visas for entering the United States. This work visa is sponsored by American companies, predominantly in the IT industry, and the thousands of Indians enter the US with this work visa.
These restrictions, according to the White House, will not only secure the American workers, but also guarantee companies a roadmap to employ highly skilled workers to bring to the US.
Will Indians have to pay Rs. 90 lakh?
This annual payment will be paid on top of existing charges according to Bloomberg this will amount to a sum of 100,000 USD (about 90 lakh rupees). The H-1B visa application fees directly related to the H-1B visa application now have a registration fee of 215 pounds to enter the lottery in addition to a fee of 780 on Form I-129, and other filing fees.
Before this rollout, the bill called the American Tech Workforce Act was introduced in the Senate by Senator Jim Banks. The bill was an amendment that demanded that the wage floor of the H-1B visa be raised to $150,000; abolish the OPT programme of foreign students, and replace the visa lottery with one in which the highest bidder is given the position.
Majority of the H-1B visas are issued to India
According to government data, India was the biggest beneficiary of the H-1B visas last year with 71 percent of the beneficiaries approved, followed by China at a far distance with 11.7 percent.
More than 12,000 H-1B visits had been approved to Amazon.com and its cloud-computing branch, AWS, and over 5,000 H-1B visits had been granted to Microsoft and Meta Platforms in the first half of 2025.
New H1-B visa to add to visa hurdles
In the year 2020 to 2023, close to 71 percent of all H-1B visas were given to Indians. But, considering that the current modifications are being implemented to the US immigration system, the new charges will contribute to the misfortunes experienced by Indians in an attempt to get a US visa.
Besides the higher charges of sponsoring employees to H-1B visa, the US government will also implement a more rigorous test to citizenship applications beginning in October 2025. The number of questions will be raised to 128 under this and the applicants must provide 12 out of 20 questions which will be correct.
