Silicon Valley Split Over Trump Administration’s $100K H-1B Fee

(TNS) — Major employers that historically have hired large numbers of H-1B employees have begun disqualifying job applicants who require H-1B visa sponsorship since President Donald Trump used his executive power to impose a new $100,000 fee on applications for the work visa.

Silicon Valley and tech leaders have been split over the policy, with some arguing the fee would hurt innovation as many startups won't be able to hire top talent and others saying they are willing to pay it to get the best workers.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the fee is meant to encourage companies to turn to American workers instead of foreign workers, and ensure those entering on this visa are only the "top, top people."

Still, other tech giants, notably, the Silicon Valley-based semiconductor and computing company Nvidia, have vowed to continue to apply for H-1Bs.

The new visa fee could dramatically reshape how American companies hire, recruit and train talent. Already, some companies appear to be pivoting to recruiting American workers, although many other tech executives reiterated a commitment to facilitating immigration of skilled workers.

The policy is being challenged in court by a coalition of organizations.

Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, responded to a request for comment by stating that this policy "gives certainty to American businesses who actually want to bring high-skilled workers into our great country but have been trampled on by abuses of the system."

"President Trump promised to put American workers first, and this commonsense action does just that by discouraging companies from spamming the system and driving down American wages," Rogers wrote in a statement. "Americans have many reasons to celebrate this unprecedented action by President Trump to protect Americans from cheap, foreign labor."

Established in 1990 during President George H.W. Bush's administration, the H-1B program is the primary skilled visa for foreign workers in the U.S., eligible only to those in "speciality occupations."

Previously, the fee to file a H-1B petition — legally required to be covered by the employer — was a few hundred dollars, with an additional $4,000 per employee fee for large, H-1B-dependent employers.

Trump's Sept. 20 proclamation, which the White House later clarified applies only to new H-1B applicants, would require a $100,000 payment by employers for each H-1B worker it is seeking to employ.

Companies in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, including Google and Meta, employ H-1B visa holders in large numbers, most commonly as software engineers, a recent Chronicle analysis found. They are usually well paid, with salaries upward of $150,000 per year at major tech companies. Workers who hold H-1B status must be paid certain minimum salaries.

For every 100 workers living in the Bay Area, roughly one was working on an H-1B approved in the last four years, the Chronicle analysis showed.

Nvidia CEO and founder Jensen Huang wrote in a memo to staff that was published by Business Insider last week that the company planned to "continue to sponsor H-1B applicants and cover all associated fees."

In an interview aired on CNBC, Huang said that "Immigration is the foundation of the American dream." He is an immigrant from Taiwan.

Nvidia declined to comment. The company was among the top employers of H-1B workers nationwide in the 2025 fiscal year, with 1,473 beneficiaries approved.

Meanwhile, K. Krithivasan, CEO of the second-largest employer of H-1B workers this year, Tata Consultancy Services, an Indian technology and consultant services company, told the Deccan Chronicle, a newspaper based in India, this week that the company would not hire new H-1B applicants because of the new visa fee. Instead, he said it would look toward expanding the workforce with U.S.-based manpower.

The company had 5,505 H-1B workers approved this fiscal year. It did not respond to a request for comment.

"On H-1B, we have significantly localized our workforce in the U.S," said Tata's chief human resources officer Sudip Kunomal, on a quarterly earnings call this month. "We believe our business model will be able to adapt quickly to any changes in immigration policy."

Some major H-1B employers' recent job postings indicate they're no longer sponsoring the visas for new applicants, though it seems to vary depending on the role.

Software engineer jobs posted after the fee was announced at Deloitte, Cognizant, and Walmart stated either that applicants must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. without need for sponsorship, now or in the future, or that immigration sponsorship is not available for the role.

All three companies were among the top 10 largest employers of H-1B beneficiaries nationwide for the 2025 fiscal year, according to U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services data. They did not respond to a request for comment.

Fariba Faiz, a San Francisco-based immigration attorney who specializes in H-1B petitions, said that when she first heard about the new $100,000 fee, she thought it was a joke.

"It was that outrageous," she said. "Everybody is panicking and there's a lot of misinformation out there. People are thinking of quitting jobs and moving their family because 'I don't have a future here.'"

Her clients are primarily small to mid-sized employers, like tech startups and community clinics. They will be hit much harder than major tech corporations that can afford to pay the $100,000 fee, she said. But so far, she said, none of her clients have rescinded job offers for prospective employees who require immigration sponsorship.

"It's a wait-and-see mode," she said. "They're all thinking about how this is going to affect them and they're looking at their budgets."

She said it's not clear whether the H-1B fee applies to people who are physically in the U.S. on other legal immigration statuses, such as F-1 student visa status. Many of her clients' employees are in that situation, she said, and if the client has to pay it, she said they won't be able to.

Trump's presidential proclamation and a memo issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection states the fee applies to people who are applying from outside the United States.

But an FAQ on the website for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers applications, does not make that clear. USCIS deferred a request for comment to the White House. A White House official did not respond directly to questions about whether the visa fee applies to people already legally present in the U.S. with a different immigration status seeking to apply for an H-1B visa, and instead said that it applies to new visa applicants and not renewals or current visa holders.

One of Faiz's clients, a tech startup, is considering offshoring operations by opening a small office in another country for foreign workers, which would be cheaper than paying the fee, she said.

Richard Green, an Irvine-based immigration attorney, said one of his clients, a higher education institution, was in the middle of hiring an H-1B worker as a researcher when Trump announced the new fee. The client decided to switch to applying instead for a J-1 visa, which is for exchange visitors conducting research in the U.S.

Another client was considering poaching an H-1B worker from another firm, he said. After Trump's policy was announced, they decided not to do so because of the uncertainty of whether the fee would apply to the person.

"People are really confused as to what this applies to and where it applies," he said. "The problem I'm seeing is that the signal-to-noise ratio is crazy high."

He said that attorneys like him are waiting for more clarity from USCIS.

Top executives at major H-1B employers called for protecting merit-based immigration in the wake of the new policy.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in an interview with CNBC at a conference in India last month that he believes in "merit-based immigration," including giving green cards to graduates of American universities, an idea that Trump floated while campaigning in 2024.

Google's Senior Vice President James Manyika said at The Washington Post's Live Global AI Summit in late September that companies like his cared deeply about "having access to the best talent, from wherever they are," calling it a "competitive issue."

But he added that H-1B visa workers are a "small proportion of our talent" and he did not think Google would have to offshore operations because of the difficulty of hiring people in the U.S. He said it was important to "continue to invest in American and U.S. talent."

Parul Koul, a Google software engineer and president of the Alphabet Workers Union, told the Chronicle that Google has not communicated to workers what steps it will take regarding future H-1B petitions.

The Alphabet Workers Union represents more than 1,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada working at the multinational tech conglomerate. It organized a protest in New York in September against the visa fee and called for Google to extend protections to existing H-1B workers, including allowing laid-off employees to use their severance to extend time on payroll.

Once laid off, H-1B workers have to find a new employer within 60 days or leave the country.

"Google has the power, leverage, and responsibility to defend against attacks on immigrants that stifle innovation and competition," Koul said.

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