Posted on 09/19/2025 7:33:27 PM PDT by marcusmaximus
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Foreign workers, starting September 21, can’t enter the U.S. on an H-1B visa unless their employer’s petition (the paperwork requesting the visa) includes an extra $100,000 payment to the federal government. This fee must be renewed and paid annually, according to United States Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.
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Nationally, there are approximately 730,000 active H-1B holders as of early 2025.
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Washington currently ranks 4th nationally for H-1B activity. The state, particularly the Seattle metropolitan area, is a major hub for the U.S. tech industry, with companies like Amazon and Microsoft relying heavily on H-1B visas to hire skilled foreign workers in fields like software engineering and AI.
The Technology Sector is an estimated $180 billion industry in Washington state with approximately 25,838 Labor Condition Applications (a metric for H-1B positions) in 2025—Amazon alone secured over 10,000 approvals and Microsoft more than 5,000. This concentration of H-1B visa holders means that Washington state could face a disproportionate effect because of the Proclamation compared to the national average.
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This new annual $100,000 fee, per H-1B visa worker, imposed on employers could possibly even impact the housing sector as H-1B visa workers who are laid off because of this new cost burden on employers, return to their country of origin. However, college graduates and new homebuyers may benefit.
(Excerpt) Read more at lynnwoodtimes.com ...
This fee will have unintended consequences. More companies will move more work offshore entirely.
There should be no tax write offs with the new fees.
The H-1B visa program would quickly shutdown.
730,000 active H-1B holders took the jobs of 730,000 Americans.
In that case the US better start producing a lot more engineers, doctors and programmers.
Brilliant move by Trump. Hire more Americans. Cost only about 73 billion if you want to keep hiring H1B’s Lowers state of Washington contribution to India finances. Increase fed govt. Coffers. Other USA computer start ups can compete hiring Americans if the tech companies gotta have their H1B’s
Very possible. In a way, they are working offshore if so many of their employees are here only to work.
If they officially took off to other shores that might kill corrupt Washington state political cash cow....which would be good. Or they could relocate to Idaho...not far away
IMHO
Yes. With higher IQs.
WINNING FOR AMERICANS
“Amazon alone secured over 10,000 approvals”
I’m having trouble figuring out why they would need that many.
Amazon “AWS” is huge in the datacenter/cloud computing space... most of those are for the AWS service...a few to the regular Amazon “sells stuff” website IT dept..
It looks like it isn’t “retroactive”...$100K only applies to new arrivals? Will have to find the EO and digest it.
The actual EO and proclamation:
“Give it a rest, jerkusmaximus. Are you gay for Modi?”
No, you got it wrong. This one hates Asians. Haven’t you seen his hateful Russians>>>>>Mongols posts?
I see the low intellect keyworders are at it.
Pretty sad that they can’t argue the point, but as noted they simply may not have the intellectual ability to do so.
They’re just mad their H1B invasion days will be coming to an end and they’ll have to move back to India.
They always pretend its just tech. NO IT ISN’T! I’ve done projects for a whole bunch of big banks. At least 1/4 of those big office towers for major banks are chocked full of H1b Indians from my experience.
No its not too high. If there is a dire shortage of American workers qualified in something truly critical or if somebody is a real superstar then fine. Let the company pay the $100K visa fee. It will still be worth it for them to bring that foreign worker over. The truth is the H1b program has long been a scam to bring over Indians who companies paid significantly less than Americans for those same jobs. That never should have been allowed. No other country allows that.
I happen to favor the free market. Companies and workers should determine wages according to the law of supply and demand. Bringing over hordes of cheap foreign labor is not the free market. That's rigging the game in favor of corporations to drive down wages. I am so glad president Trump just effectively killed that.
No they won't. They already tried this in the 90s. What they got was crappy work done by Indians. That's why they brought those functions back to the US and started importing the cheap foreign labor instead - so they could have direct oversight. Otherwise the work was not done right.
Washington State tech sector?
That’s Microsoft and its vassals.
Though the media always talks almost exclusively about tech ITS NOT JUST TECH. I work in banking and I can tell you there are hordes of H1b Indians employed in banking and no, not just in tech roles. Companies cheat and claim lots of regular jobs are "tech jobs" so they can bring in more cheap H1b Indian labor.
Secondly, companies will just need to restart those job training programs they killed off a generation ago if there aren't enough Americans immediately ready to fill those roles. We built the largest economy in the world before companies were allowed to bring in hordes of cheap H1B Indians. I'm sure companies will manage to carry on without them. They'll just have to hire Americans and pay American wages in America. What a novel concept!
“Oh no!!! Trump has put a tariff on Indian workers!
Obviously, it’s a TAX on American companies!
I’m a free-market hirer. This is wrong.”
- Rand Paul and neocon FReepers
“Nationally, there are approximately 730,000 active H-1B holders as of early 2025.”
Good grief!
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