US President Donald Trump speaks when he sits next to a “Trump Gold Card” sign in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, on September 19, 2025.
Ken Cedeno | Reuters
Large technology companies and foreign governments hurry to react after President Donald Trump has announced plans to impose a fee of $ 100,000 for H-1B-VISA on Friday, which threatens to improve the program that underpins the technology employees.
According to an official of the White House, the fee would apply to new H-1B applicants, not for extensions or current visa holders. It will apply first in the upcoming lottery cycle and does not apply to 2025 lottery winners, the person said. The White House also made it clear that the new fee of $ 100,000 is not a annual fee, as already reported by several media business.
The step could cause a massive blow – mainly in the field of technology and financial sectors – that is heavily dependent on highly qualified immigrants, especially India and China.
In the announcement, Shockwaves were sent by some of the country's largest technology and finance companies:
- Amazon The immigration team advised its H-1B and H-4-visa owners to stay in the USA and to return overseas on September 21 before 12:01 p.m.
- JPmorgan Chase's The law firm sent a memo in which H-1b-Visa owners in the law firm were asked to stay in the United States and to avoid international trips until further instructions, according to a person familiar with the matter.
- Goldman Sachs informed the employees that they had H-1b-visa for caution if they travel internationally based on instructions from the fragomatic company of the immigration service, according to an internal memos of Reuters.
- Microsoft According to reports, the owners of H-1b-Visa also advised to stay in the United States and return overseas, and warned that international trips could endanger their immigration status, as reported by Reuters.
The fee is the most aggressive step of the government to limit the legal immigration. Since taking office in January, Trump has promoted a broad procedure against the illegal and legal entry to the USA, but the announcement on Friday is the most important attempt to clamp the employment visa.
Amazon employed most of the H-1B owner than 14,000 at the end of June. Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google each had over 4,000 such visas among the top 10 recipients for the 2025 financial year.
CNBC has contacted all public companies on the TOP 10 H-1B receiver list to get a comment. The White House did not immediately respond to an e -mail in which a comment was asked.
“President Trump promised to put American workers in the first place, and this healthy measure does exactly that by stopping companies from relaxing the system and reducing wages,” Taylor Rogers, a spokeswoman for the White House, told CNBC. “There are also American companies certainty that actually want to bring highly qualified workers to our large country, but have been used by feet by abuse of the system.”
“Humanitarian consequences”
The announcement also disturbed the status quo in overseas, in which foreign governments were able to assess the effects of the new rules on their countries.
The Indian Ministry of External Affairs said that it was studying the visa restrictions and their effects and emphasized that both the Indian and the US industry are interested in maintaining competitiveness in innovations. The probable disturbance of the individual families was also emphasized.
“This measure probably has humanitarian consequences from the disorders caused by families. The government hopes that these disorders can be adequately addressed by the US authorities,” said the Indian Ministry of External Affairs in an explanation.
The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said that it assesses the effects of Korean companies and specialists.
Below you will find a searchable list of 100 US companies that were in the 2025 H1-B recipient financial year.
– Annie Palmers CNBC contributed to this report.