The American technology sector is confronted in the face of $ 100,000 fees

When US President Donald Trump I signed an executive order last Friday To add a fee of $ 100,000 (£ 74,000) for applications for H-1B visas, a qualified foreign workers program, Abhishek Singh was immediately worried that he would have to move.

G -N Singh, a manager of software engineering, headquartered in the Seattle area, knew that his employer – launching the United States – would not be able to pay the fee at the top of his current salary.

G -n Singh, who has been working in the United States for ten years – the last seven of them on the H -1B Visa – have breathed a slight relief when the White House has clarified on Saturday that the fee is only about future candidates so far.

But his concerns are an indication of the potentially large -scale consequences of change, as it creates new weights for business, especially for startup companies, with what some say can be significant for innovation and economic growth.

The H-1B program is often associated with the giants of the US technology sector. Amazon tops the list of beneficiaries, with over 10,000 H-1B visas approved in the first half of 2025. Meta, Meta, Apple and Google provide more than 4,000 visas through the program by June.

None of the companies responded to requests for comment.

But while only 30 employers – mainly large technology companies – dominate the program, taking into account Awaiting 40% of the new available H-1B visasNot only the Begemots are ready to be affected by Trump’s executive order.

Startups, as well as smaller technology companies, also hire workers through H-1B visas. For them, a six -digit candidate fee may be crippling.

“If you are launching a new technology and have some risk -haired money, but you are worried about burning it too fast, it can kill you,” says John Skrenny, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who studies the development of workforce.

“What a Trump administration plan does not seem to admit is that not every company can spend $ 100,000 a visa,” he added.

Beyond the technology industry, organizations in industries such as education and healthcare, both of which hire foreign qualified workers through the H-1B program also fight what can mean the six-digit fee.

“We can’t afford $ 100,000,” said Karen Brady, CEO at Ryther, a non -profit behavioral target based in Seattle. “With regard to future hiring, we will not make more H-1B visas.”

The behavioral health sector fights a shortage of labor against the background of a spike in the need for a pandemic, said G -Ja Brady. Hiring employees through the H-1B program has helped to deal with the crisis, she said.

Seattle-based Reytter is currently working on two H-1B visa therapists, out of a total of 45, said Mrs. Brady, and they are both from China. Without these employees, there would be no employee of linguistic and cultural knowledge to communicate with families of similar origin.

“They coincide with some of our customers in a way that American workers don’t do,” she said. “I can’t replace it.”

In a research note Atakan Bakiskan, an economist from the Berenberg investment bank, he reduced his US growth estimate from 2% at the beginning of the year to 1.5%, saying that the $ 100,000 H-1B fee is part of the wider “Trump Administration”.

“With the new H-1B policy, the labor force is more likely to shrink than to expand forward,” he said. “Brain leakage will weigh strongly on productivity.”

In his executive order, Trump justified the new fee by referring to “abuse” with the H-1B program, nodding to many years of concern throughout the political spectrum that companies used the program to hire foreign employees at lower salaries.

Its administration also works on a broader repair of the program, which is usually overwhelmed by applications for approximately 85,000 new visas available every year, including a proposal to prioritize applications for higher paid workers.

Trump’s initial message has won praise from some, including Netflix co -founder Reed Hastings, which has split from many of his fellow technology leaders, calling the “great solution” fee.

Proponents of the change said that major technology companies, such as Amazon and Microsoft, which are the largest beneficiaries of the program, have money to absorb the new fee.

“If these are really specialized people and they bring a lot of value, $ 100,000 should not be a big deal for these employers,” says Ronil Hira, a professor of political science at Howard University, who focuses on immigration policy in the United States.

But policies that make it difficult for companies to hire qualified positions are also often encouraged companies to make up their operations instead of hiring American workers at an equivalent level of skills, said Dan Wang, a professor at Columbia Business School, focused on global migration and entrepreneurship.

“These policies do not really have the predicted effect of balancing the competitiveness of the labor market for US workers,” Prof. Wang said. “There is no trace of data that suggests that US workers would take advantage of it.”

Elise Fialkowski is co-chair of corporate immigration practice at Klasko Immigration Law Partners, which works with both start-ups and larger corporations.

She said last week some of her bigger corporate clients – many of whom already have subsidiaries or branches outside the United States – have begun to think about hiring talents in Canada, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Trump’s executive order “almost asks companies to work on the shore,” she said.

Despite the recovery, the Singh said that he was still considering leaving his launch if he was able to find a job in his homeland India or elsewhere – Canada, Japan, South Korea – worried that the administration would continue to solidify immigrants.

“Now there is uncertainty when everything can happen in the future,” said G -N Singh. “If we are expelled, then this is the only option we remain.”