Big Tech companies prepare to skirt Trump's $100,000 H-1B fee

The world's biggest technology companies are looking to skirt President Trump's $100,000 H-IB visa fee , potentially leaving the brunt of the new policy to hit smaller startups.

- Amrith Ramkumar

Drawing largely on playbooks they have relied on for years, Amazon.com, Microsoft, Alphabet’s Google and others generally plan to find workers in categories that don’t have to pay the fee, including existing H-IB visa holders, students and people on other types of visas, according to people familiar with the companies’ plans.

Some of the companies have been reducing their reliance on the H-IB program in recent years and are discussing ways to avoid using the system in certain cases, the people said.

But many smaller companies, including startups in specialized areas such as artificial intelligence and healthcare, can't easily navigate the policy changes or invest in alternatives that are cheaper than the $100,000 fee but still more costly than the status quo.

“It's the big guys who are OK and the small guys who are either choosing a different path or going in a different direction,” said Morgan Reed, president of ACT| the App Association, a trade group for smaller tech companies that is asking the administration to give small businesses relief from the fee. “That's antithetical to what everyone is asking for.”

The administration in September announced its new fee for the H-IB visa, which is the main pathway to the U.S. for highly skilled foreign workers. Visa holders can eventually become eligible to apply for green cards, which would let them stay in the country indefinitely. The administration said in October that many people wouldn’t have to pay the fee, calming the panic that set in after Trump initially announced it.