US President Donald Trump has signed a proclamation imposing a $100,000 (over ₹88 lakh) fee on H-1B visa applicants, significantly altering one of the most widely used visa programs for skilled foreign workers.
Explaining the move, Trump said, “We need workers. We need great workers, and this pretty much ensures that that’s what’s going to happen.” He added that the change would ensure foreign hires are “actually very highly skilled” and not replacing American workers.
White House staff secretary Will Scharf described the H-1B system as “one of the most abused visa” programs. “What this proclamation will do is raise the fee that companies pay to sponsor H-1B applicants to $100,000. This will ensure that the people they’re bringing in are actually very highly skilled and that they’re not replaceable by American workers,” Scharf said.
The H-1B visa, created in 1990, allows US companies to employ foreign professionals with specialised skills, particularly in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). It is typically granted for three years and extendable up to six years.
Impact on Indian Tech Workers and New ‘Gold Card’ Program
Indians are the largest beneficiaries of the H-1B program, accounting for 71% of approved visas last year, followed by China at 11.7%, according to government data. In the first half of 2025, Amazon and its cloud unit AWS received over 12,000 H-1B approvals, while Microsoft and Meta Platforms secured more than 5,000 each.
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With the new proclamation, Indian applicants face significantly higher costs, especially given the long Green Card wait times that require multiple H-1B renewals. Each renewal could now cost more than ₹88 lakh.
Alongside the H-1B changes, Trump reintroduced a stricter citizenship test, requiring applicants to study 128 questions and correctly answer 12 out of 20 orally.
He also launched a new ‘Gold Card’ visa program, priced at $1 million for individuals and $2 million for businesses. “We think it’s going to be very successful… It’s going to raise billions of dollars, which will reduce taxes, pay off debt, and do other good things,” Trump said.
US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said the plan would only allow “extraordinary people at the very top” who can create businesses and jobs in America. Criticising the existing employment-based green card system, Lutnick said: “Historically, the employment-based green card program led in 2,81,000 people a year. And those people, on average, earned $66,000 a year, and they were five times more likely to go on government assistance programs. So we were taking in the bottom quartile, below the average American. It was illogical. The only country in the world that was taking in the bottom quartile. We are going to stop doing that.”
