The fee for the H-1B visa, a “specialized worker visa,” will increase to $100,000, 100 times the current amount. According to a Bloomberg News report, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on the 19th outlining the changes to the H-1B visa program.H-1B visas are for skilled workers in fields such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and the number of visas issued annually is limited to 85,000 through a lottery system. The basic stay is three years, with extensions possible, and permanent residency can also be applied for.
President Trump believes that the issuance of H-1B visas is stealing American jobs. He claims that companies are using H-1B visas, which are heavily used by Chinese and Indian nationals, to bring in foreign workers at low costs, thereby eroding American jobs. Furthermore, internal White House documents obtained by Bloomberg diagnosed that the “abuse” of H-1B visas is a factor that discourages Americans from pursuing careers in STEM fields.
Accordingly, Bloomberg reported that President Trump plans to direct the Secretary of Labor to initiate the process of establishing regulations to revise the prevailing wage level for the H-1B program. In particular, he judged that the lottery system for H-1B visas has resulted in mass applications by staffing companies, and he plans to drastically increase the application fee from the current approximately $1,000 to $100,000.
In a July interview with the New York Times, Joseph Edlo, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, announced plans to revise the H-1B visa issuance system and strengthen screening.