Trump torpedos H-1B visa program, throwing million Indians into turmoil

TOI correspondent from Washington: Lives and careers of more than a million Indians were thrown into turmoil over the weekend after US President Donald Trump issued an executive order instituting an annual $100,000 fee for H1-B visas for skilled foreign workeHrs.H1-B professionals in America traveling to India for work or vacation returned from airports, and those in India rushed back to the US to beat the September 21 date when the new rules kick in, even as immigration attorneys geared up for legal challenges when courts open Monday. The White House chose to bring down the hammer on H-1Bs after business hours on Friday evening, ostensibly to forestall immediate challenges.There are an estimated 730,000 H-1B visa holders currently in the US, more than 70 percent of them from India, with almost 500,000 dependent H-4 visas which allows the spouse and unmarried children under 21 of a principal H-1B worker.Flanked by his Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Trump signed executive orders on new H-1B rules and launched a $ 1 million “Gold Visa” from the White House Oval Office, saying “we’re going to have great people coming in and they’re going to be paying….We’re going to take that money and we’re going to be reducing taxes and we’re going to be reducing debt.”

Providing the rationale for the tectonic rule change, Lutnick said the $ 100,000 fee is intended to discourage companies from using the H-1B program to hire entry-level foreign workers at lower wages – a vocal MAGA charge – thereby protecting American jobs and incentivizing the hiring of domestic talent.The new fee, Lutnick said, would “stop the nonsense of letting people just come into this country on visas that were given away for free.”

Companies will have to “decide if a person is valuable enough to have a $100,000-a-year payment to the government, or they should head home, and they should go hire an American,” he added.The top ten companies that filed for H-1B approvals in 2024 include a mix of Indian and American companies with operations in both countries: Amazon, Microsoft, Meta (Facebook), and Apple from US, and Infosys, Cognizant, TCS, and Wipro from India.Immigration attorneys geared up over the weekend to contest the executive notification, arguing among other things that imposing new rules and fees is the domain of the US Congress and the matter has to be legislated. Democratic lawmaker Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois called it a "reckless attempt to cut America off from high-skilled workers who have long strengthened our workforce, fuelled innovation, and helped build industries that employ millions of Americans.

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