H-1B visa shock: Trump admin proposes hiking fee to over $100,000

JUST IN: Trump administration proposes hiking the H-1B visa fee to over $100,000.

A hundred thousand dollars to hire one foreign worker. That's the new price tag the Trump administration wants to put on the H-1B visa.

Right now the fees run in the low thousands. This proposal would multiply that by a factor of, well, a lot. The H-1B is the workhorse visa of American tech, it's how Silicon Valley staffs its engineering floors, and you can see the man behind the move here.

Who actually pays? Google, Microsoft, Amazon, they can write that cheque and grumble. A fifty person startup cannot. So the likely effect isn't fewer visas overall, it's the giants hoovering up the talent while everyone smaller gets priced out of the game entirely. India's tech sector, which supplies the bulk of H-1B holders, will be reading this very closely.

It's a proposal, not law yet. But the direction of travel could not be clearer, skilled immigration to America is about to get very, very expensive.

This is Dave King, reporting for HIT.