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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday signed a proclamation that will require a $100,000 annual visa fee for highly-skilled foreign workers and rolled out a $1 million “gold card” visa as a pathway to U.S. citizenship for wealthy individuals, moves that face near-certain legal challenges amid widespread criticism he is sidestepping Congress.If the moves survive legal muster, they will deliver staggering price increases. The visa fee for skilled workers would jump from $215. The fee for investor visas, which are common in many European countries, would climb from $10,000-$20,000 a year.H-1B visas, which require at least a bachelor's...

A leading U.S. tech giant has issued an urgent advisory to its H-1B employees visiting India, warning that they may be unable to return to the United States after September 21, unless their visa petitions carry an additional $100,000 payment as required under a new Trump administration proclamation. Employees already in the U.S. have been told to remain there for the foreseeable future to avoid being locked out. While the proclamation does not directly reference H-4 dependents, the advisory recommends that spouses and children on dependent visas also avoid international travel. -snip- For H-1B employees currently outside the U.S., including...

-snip- 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. -snip- Nationally, there are approximately 730,000 active H-1B holders as of early 2025. -snip- 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...

The Trump administration is planning to add a $100,000 to the fee for H-1B visa applications, taking aim at a program that is used to attract highly skilled workers to the U.S. The additional fee, which was confirmed to CBS News by a White House official, would impact employers including tech giants such as Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Google, which have relied on the program to hire foreign workers. President Trump could sign a proclamation adding the new fee as soon as Friday, and which would restrict H-1B workers from entering the U.S. unless accompanied by the $100,000 payment, according...

A new proposal by Senator Jim Banks aims to restructure the H-1B visa system, drastically raising wage requirements and limiting alternatives companies use to hire foreign workers. -snip- The American Tech Workforce Act includes three main reforms. First, it increases the minimum required salary for H-1B visa holders from $60,000 to $150,000, which may disincentivize companies to look abroad for talent. The bill would also eliminate the OPT program, which allows foreign graduates to work in the U.S. for up to three years post-graduation. Thirdly, the bill replaces the current lottery system with a model awarding visas to the highest-bidding...

President Donald Trump is planning to introduce a new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas

Probably the strangest, saddest specter on the employment front in the U.S. is the inability of U.S. engineering graduates and older engineers to secure jobs in today's market.All that talk about STEM majors, and taking a demanding degree instead of a gut major in college rings hollow given that even liberal arts and fine arts college graduates have a better chance of getting a meaningful job than today's computer engineering majors.Seriously.According to Raghavan Mayur's TIPP Insights:This fact was documented by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York earlier in the spring.A link to the study and an anecdotal news report...

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin presented the West with a striking image: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping together, projecting a rare display of camaraderie among the three major world powers.“Always a delight to meet President Putin!” Modi wrote in a social media post.The move was welcomed by Russia and China, who are actively challenging the United States’ position atop the global order.Xi proposed “a multipolar world” with a new SCO development bank, parallel to Western global institutions. This threatens to hurt the influence of the international order based on...

If you think the H-1B visa program is about bringing in “the best and brightest,” think again. What we’ve actually imported is an army of cheap, unqualified labor that’s gutted our tech industry, sunk wages, and turned once-prestigious jobs into low-level coding sweatshops. Economist Peter St. Onge breaks it down perfectly in this clip… what was sold to Americans as this “high-skilled program” is now a marathon race-to-the-bottom that’s costing us our jobs, our innovation, and our competitive edge. But here’s the good news: President Trump and JD Vance are putting an end to the H-1B “bait-and-switch.” They’re ripping out...

After imposing steep tariffs on Indian goods, the US seems to be exploring a new front: potential tariffs on IT services, foreign remote workers, and outsourced business processes. Coupled with proposals to overhaul the H-1B visa system, and an increased levy on remittances made by Green Card holders and temporary visa workers, the move points to a broader strategy that could constrain India's most significant export engine: its human resources, including its engineers, coders, and students who sustain both Silicon Valley and the ITES boom in the US. The debate gained traction when conservative commentator Jack Posobiec posted on X...

The US H-1B visa system is about to undergo a major shakeup, which could impact many Indian professionals, who account for the largest percentage of recipients annually. According to US government data, 191,000 H-1B visas were issued to Indian professionals during the fiscal year 2023. In FY 2024, that figure increased to roughly 207,000. The White House has approved a proposal from US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to replace the long-standing lottery system with a wage-based selection process. Under the new framework, H-1B visas would be issued to applicants in order of the salaries offered to them, starting with...

New York: Indians working in the United States on H-1B or L-1 visas are reconsidering their long-term plans in the wake of rising uncertainties. A recent Blind poll, conducted anonymously for verified professionals, found that 45% would return to India if job loss forced them to leave the United States. Another 26% said they would move to a different country, while 29% remain undecided. Pay cuts and quality-of-life concerns top the list of worries for those contemplating a return. About 25% cited lower pay as a deterrent, 24% mentioned a dip in living standards, 13% highlighted cultural or family adjustments...

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Nov. 5 in the pair of challenges to President Donald Trump’s authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The court on Thursday morning released an updated calendar for its November argument session that reflects the addition of the tariffs dispute, which the justices added to their docket for the 2025-26 term on Sept. 9. The dispute over Trump’s tariffs is operating on a highly expedited schedule. The government will file its opening brief on Friday, just 10 days after the court announced that it had granted review; the challengers’...

Eli Lilly on Tuesday announced a $5 billion investment in a manufacturing facility in Virginia as the pharmaceutical giant looks to expand its domestic production capacity amid the threat of tariffs. The manufacturing facility is expected to generate 650 high-wage jobs and 1,800 construction jobs at the West Creek Business Park in Goochland County, Virginia. The facility will produce active pharmaceutical ingredients for cancer, autoimmune and other advanced therapies. Eli Lilly's announcement represents an expansion beyond the original plan for a $2.1 billion facility that would've created 468 jobs. Earlier this year, Eli Lilly outlined plans to spend at least...

As SCOTUSblog readers are likely aware, tariffs are taxes charged on goods bought from other countries. In February, President Donald Trump imposed dozens of new tariffs. Now the Supreme Court will decide whether he had the legal authority to do so. The stakes in the litigation are enormous. Tariffs are a crucial part of Trump’s agenda, with huge consequences in the United States and throughout the world. Indeed, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit struck down most of the tariffs, Trump said that their invalidation “would be a total disaster for the Country” and “would literally...

House Republican leaders are moving to again head off votes trying to cancel much of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff regime. A procedural measure Republicans on the Rules Committee advanced Monday night would extend until March 31 a block on efforts by Democrats and several Republicans to end the national emergencies underlying Trump’s sweeping tariffs — including on Mexico, Canada, Brazil and his “liberation day” levies from April. It would also block “resolutions of inquiry,” measures that can be used by the House to compel the release of information from the executive branch. The House is set to vote Tuesday...

Democrat lawyers want to define tariffs as taxes because taxes must be approved by Congress, not Trump. Taxes are imposed upon persons earning income in the U.S. Tariffs are import duties imposed upon foreign entities. They are not taxes. The courts need to get this right. If the courts says Congress must approve tariffs, Congress will be unable to comply. Tariffs change commonly, and there are 194 countries that will pay tariffs to us. There is no chance that Congress could handle that task, nor should it. Congress’s duty is to approve a rare change of income tax, which is...

What do Theresa May and Andy Burnham have in common with Michel Barnier, François Bayrou and Emmanuel Macron? All five were admirably honest with the public about the trade-offs inherent in financing an ageing society, and all five were duly punished for their candour by the public, the press, opposition politicians or all three.The past two decades of French and British politics are a graveyard of proposals to slow the upward ratchet of spending on growing elderly populations. The same two decades of French and British fiscal balances show the results. Public disbursements to older citizens have climbed higher and...

The federal government's budget deficit reached $2 trillion for the current fiscal year as the deficit has widened by nearly $100 billion from last year. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its monthly budget update for August, which showed the deficit reached $1.989 trillion in the first 11 months of fiscal year 2025. That amounts to a $92 billion increase in the deficit when compared with the first 11 months of fiscal year 2024. Overall, federal spending was up by $391 billion from a year ago, an increase of 5%, while tax receipts rose $299 billion, or 7%, in...

Pre-order sales of Apple's new iPhone 17 series have got off to a robust start in China, shattering previous records despite delays in the shipment of the iPhone Air.In the first minute after pre-orders began at 8pm Friday local time, sales on JD.com -- one of China's largest online shopping platforms -- surpassed the first-day pre-order volume of last year's iPhone 16 series, according to the e-commerce operator. The standard iPhone 17 with 256GB of storage emerged as the most popular variant, JD.com said.Those numbers excluded the iPhone Air, the company's thinnest model ever, as its release has been postponed...