Trump hits H-1B-VISA with $ 100,000 fee, targeting the program that launched Elon Musk and Instagram

Elon Musk

President Trump made it equally more expensive for businesses to hire foreign workers through the H-1B program. The White House announced on Friday that Trump signed a proclamation that required employers to pay a hefty charge of $ 100,000 for new H-1B visa applications, a huge jump from the current $ 215 lottery registration fee.

H-1B-VISA allows US companies to hire foreign workers in areas that typically require technical expertise such as that, engineering, mathematics, gold medicine. The program is limited to 65,000 new Visa annully plus another 20,000 to foreign candidates with advanced degrees from US universities. Visa is amazed through a lottery system and typically lasts three years, although holders can expand them or apply for green cards.

The new feature of the administration is designed to crack down on what it calls widespread abuse of the program, as it accuses display -American workers. According to the White House, the proportion of IT workers with H-1B-VISA Skyrocket from 32% in 2003 to over 65% today, while an effortless among the recent candidates for computer science has hit 6.1%.

Silicon Valley will undoubtedly be in weapons over the initiative. The limitations are aimed at a program that helped create some of the region’s biggest success stories.

Elon Musk, Trump’s close allies for most of this year, originally worked in the United States on an H-1B after arriving as a student. In fact, Musk, Musk, who took out a pierced critic of the H-1B program in his platform X, tweeted to the individual, “The reason I am in America with so many critical people building Spacex, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because a big step back and f *** in the face.

Mike Krieger, Instagram co-founder, who became Chief Product Officer at AI Giant Anthropic, is one of the aforementioned success stories. The Brazilian-born Stanford Grad World on the early instant messaging platform meebo on an H-1B visa.

Earlier this year, the National Venture Capital Association in a letter to the National Science Foundation argued that “ROIST the annual CAP for H-1B-Visa, which is sent to educated and very talented immigrants who work in jobs every year that require a significant amnt for technical and specialized education, are basically more successful immigrant companies.”

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The NVCA notes that although “H-1B-VISA is not ideal for immigrants who want to find imperceptibly finding companies in the United States, they are still critically important for success with immigrant companies Belcaus, they provide valuable work experience and expand to get the pipeline for potential immigrant starts.

On Friday, tech managers at X We Ready managed warning about talent fleeing to more inviting countries. And Amazon, Google and Microsoft have reportedly told employees with H-1B visa to avoid foreign trips and remain in the US for now.

Meanwhile, in his proclamation on Friday, the Trump administration fully went on to the program and pointed to specific companies that approved thousands of H-1B workers while at the same time dismissing US employed. According to the fact sheet in the White House, a named company received approval of 5,189 H-1B workers in this tax year, while cutting approx. 16,000 American jobs.

The proclamation – which says it is partially rooted in an attempt to “protect our national security” – includes the Wiggle Room; Exceptions to case to case are possible if they are considered in the national interest.

It also instructs the Secretary of Work to revise payroll requirements to prevent the undermining of US employees.

This post has been updated to include reports on how Amazon, Google and Microsoft react.

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