America’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee will redefine tech sector hiring

Indian IT service majors will be hit but let’s accept that the US programme had got warped and some reform was inevitable

- SIDDHARTH PAI

In a sweeping policy shift, the White House has announced a new directive that imposes a $100,000 fee on every new H-IB visa petition filed for foreign workers outside the US.

Effective 21 September 2025, this measure will likely cause tectonic shifts across the technology sector, which has long relied on the H-IB programme to bridge gaps in skilled labour—especially in fields like software engineering, data science and artificial intelligence (AI). This rule change could reshape talent acquisition, workforce planning and even long-term business models for both Indian and US tech majors.

The H-IB visa programme, designed to let US employers hire foreign nationals in specialty occupations, has long been debated. Critics argue that it enables wage suppression and the displacement of domestic workers. At the same time, proponents maintain it fills essential gaps in the labour market that US educational institutions cannot meet quickly enough. The new proclamation, titled ‘Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers,’ leans firmly in favour of the former argument, citing a range of statistics to justify it (shorturl.at/Otstz).

According to the White House, from 2003 to 2019, foreign STEM workers in the US grew from about 1.2 million to 2.5 million, while overall STEM employment in the US grew at less than half that pace. The administration also points out that over 65% of all H-IB petitions in the past five fiscal years have gone to IT workers, compared to just 32% in 2003. A significant proportion of these visas have been used by outsourcing and consulting firms, many of which leverage the programme to place junior or mid-level employees at client sites in the US, often at lower cost than hiring local workers.