Trump administration issues $100,000 H-1B visa fee, unsettling AI talent market

President Trump issued a proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa petitions, effective from 12:01am Eastern on the following Sunday, 21 September. The White House said the fee applied to petitions filed after that deadline, including the annual lottery cycle, and did not affect visas already issued or petitions already filed; it framed the measure as intended to “curb abuses and protect American workers” and as an initial step toward further changes, including Department of Labor moves to raise prevailing-wage requirements and a Department of Homeland Security shift toward prioritising higher-paid roles in the visa lottery.

The H-1B programme was a major channel through which AI companies hired specialised engineering talent from abroad; Amazon and its cloud unit AWS alone had been approved for more than 14,000 H-1B visas in the first half of 2025. The short notice before the fee took effect caused some employers to act immediately — Amazon reportedly told staff travelling abroad to return to the US before the deadline to avoid being caught by the new rule at the border.

Reaction split along familiar lines. Immigration lawyers and some employers said a fee of that size would be prohibitive for all but the largest companies and would sharply curtail hiring of foreign-born engineers and researchers, a workforce AI labs had relied on heavily. Others, including some AI-focused investors, argued that raising the cost of skilled immigration would push talent and, eventually, research activity toward countries with more open visa regimes, weakening rather than protecting US competitiveness in AI. The administration followed with a further rule the following month formalising and adjusting the fee structure.