America’s largest business lobby explores lawsuit against Trump’s H-1B visa fee

Economic Times India ^ | 9/25/2025 | Staff

[marcusmaximus]

America’s largest business lobby, the US Chamber of Commerce, is exploring legal action against the Trump administration’s decision to impose a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applications, Bloomberg reported. The move has reignited debate on the role of Indian professionals in the US economy and the political calculations behind Washington’s tightening visa rules.

Chamber officials this week consulted member companies in a series of calls and virtual meetings to test support for a lawsuit. The consultations reflect widespread unease among large corporations, particularly technology firms, which are the heaviest users of the H-1B programme.

The Chamber had previously challenged a Trump-era proclamation in 2020 that suspended new nonimmigrant visas, a case it won in federal court. This time, its ability to move forward hinges on convincing companies to join the lawsuit and demonstrate legal harm.

-snip-

The fee announcement followed months of campaigns by Trump’s political base targeting Indian professionals on social media. Critics argue this move undermines America’s own competitiveness, as Indian workers are among the most educated, highest-earning, and most assimilated immigrant groups in the country.

[rarestia]

You are correct that American students in engineering or computer science are intelligent and inquisitive. Whites still make up over 50% of that cohort, but that doesn’t indicate competitiveness comparable to Asian students. Our statistics are going to be racially skewed, as we are still a majority white nation for now. Asians represent the fastest growing cohort overall, however.

That does not mean that white students are going to get jobs, because by and large, white American workers demand a higher salary than individuals coming from poorer east Asian countries. Yes, this is a problem of greed by American corporations. I see it regularly in my work, as I am employed by one of those big tech corporations. They are introducing austerity measures and letting go of talent by using stack ranking practices in the name of culling the herd to keep the best, but I’ve seen them retain people due to preferred race or gender over talent or capability. That does seem to be shifting back to merit-based ethics, but it’s going to be a long, hard slog only to likely swing back toward the DEI crap in the next 10 years based on what direction the political winds blow.

[ek_hornbeck]

Asian hires, particularly foreign (H1B) hires, are not due to DEI, since affirmative action programs actually discriminate against Asians. DEI is around to boost low-achieving blacks and to a lesser extent Hispanics.

So the racial skew that you describe is due neither to DEI nor to intrinsic merit, but simply the fact that H1B hires will work for peanuts. Even if the quality of their work isn't quite on par with that of Americans trained at US universities, their low salaries more than compensate for it in the eyes of corporations.

[rarestia]

You’re viewing race through an American sociocultural lens. Put on your business glasses for a moment and realize that big tech companies are discriminating against white American workers. You go into any scrum pit in a dev shop, and you can count the number of white people, man or woman, on one hand.

[ek_hornbeck]

My point is that anti-white discrimination in big tech hires is due to corporate greed rather than DEI policy - they want an H1B import or a recent immigrant who’ll work for half of what Americans work for.

[rarestia]

We agree completely on that point. White Americans are expensive resources.

[ek_hornbeck]

This is why I don’t trust Silicon Valley Oligarchs like Musk, Ellison, Zuckerberg any farther than I can throw them no matter how chummy they have tried to get with Trump or how many conservative-sounding slogans they mouth. Their agenda is to replace expensive, demanding white American tech workers with cheap and docile Asian workers. They’re no different from agribusiness etc. who want to replace American workers with Mexican and Central American illegals.