What is US’ H-1B visa programme and how is Trump changing it?

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump continued his sweeping crackdown on immigration on Sept 19 turning his focus to a visa programme for skilled foreign workers.

He signed a proclamation that adds a US$100,000 (S$130,000) fee for new applicants for H-1B visas that allow foreign workers like software engineers a chance to be employed in the US.

The H-1B visa is designed to help companies fill openings for which American workers with similar abilities cannot be found. But immigration hardliners and far-right activists have long argued that the visa allows companies to replace American workers with foreign ones.

The issue has divided even Mr Trump’s supporters, and the President’s stance on the programme has shifted over time.

Before the new proclamation’s signing in the Oval Office on Sept 19, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick laid out the rationale for the fee that the administration is attaching to what he called the “most abused visa”.

“The whole idea is, no more will these big tech companies or other companies train foreign workers,” Mr Lutnick said.

“They have to pay the government US$100,000, then they have to pay the employee – so it’s just not economic. If you’re going to train somebody, you’re going to train one of the recent graduates from one of the great universities across our land.”

The fee is likely to face legal challenges. It is slated to go into effect on Sept 21 and will only be required for new applicants, according to a memo on Sept 20 from US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Here’s what you need to know.

What is the H-1B visa programme?

Congress passed legislation creating the H-1B programme in 1990, as a labour shortage loomed. When former president George Bush signed it into law, he said the programme would “encourage the immigration of exceptionally talented people, such as scientists, engineers and educators”.

Employers have used the visas – which are valid for three years and can be extended – to hire foreign workers with specialised skills, mainly in science and technology, to fill openings for which American workers with similar abilities cannot be found.

Employers submit a petition to the government on behalf of a foreign worker they want to hire, describing the job and the qualifications of the person selected to fill it. The H-1B programme confers temporary status in the US, not residency. However, many employers eventually sponsor workers with H-1B visas for a green card, which puts the person on a path to US citizenship.

On Sept 20, confusion remained about how the new fee would work. Mr Lutnick said on Sept 19 that it should be paid annually by the American company hiring the foreign worker. But a day later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in a post on social media that the US$100,000 would be a one-time fee.

Who are the workers under the programme?

Congress makes 65,000 H-1B visas available each year for workers with a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent, and 20,000 more for those with a master’s degree or higher. Universities and research organisations are exempt from those caps.

Many of the workers who have received the visas are software engineers, computer programmers and others in the technology industry. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and IBM were among the companies that employed the most H-1B visa holders in 2024, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services. But many do work in other professions, including education, healthcare and manufacturing.

There is no cap for each country, and a vast majority of recipients come from India.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs emphasized the ties between the two nations in a Facebook post on Sept 20 and expressed concern that the abrupt changes could have “humanitarian consequences” for families. Many H-1B visa holders bring their spouses and children with them to the US, where they can live together for decades on dependent visas.

Why has the H-1B visa programme been criticised by some Republicans?

There are about 730,000 H-1B holders in the US, according to an estimate earlier in 2025 from fwd.us, an immigration advocacy group. That is a small fraction of the more than 163 million people employed as at September.

Critics of the visa have argued that US employers often use H-1B visas to hire foreign workers who are willing to accept lower salaries than Americans seeking the same positions. Many of those critics are Republicans who back Mr Trump and share his hard-line stance on immigration.

However, some of Mr Trump’s prominent backers are leaders in the tech industry, which relies heavily on H-1B workers because employers say they cannot find enough qualified American workers to perform the same jobs.

The announcement of the new fee has spurred chaos and confusion across industries. But it is poised to hit the tech sector of the economy particularly hard.

Do H-1B holders replace American workers?

To obtain an H-1B visa, employers must attest that they have searched for qualified domestic candidates first, and that an H-1B worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of American workers.

There have been episodes in which the programme has been used to bring immigrants for jobs that American workers had held. In 2015, about 250 technology workers at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, were told that they were being laid off, and that they would have to train their replacements – H-1B visa holders who had been brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Similar episodes in 2015 affected employees of Toys “R” Us and the New York Life Insurance Company.

The programme requires employers to pay H-1B workers, at a minimum, either the average wage for the job and the city where it is based, or the average wage of US-born workers doing the same job.

Companies are prohibited from paying H-1B workers less than other workers with similar skills and qualifications. Still, about 60 per cent of the positions paid “well below” the local median wage for the occupation in 2019, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which cited the Labour Department’s “broad discretion” to set H-1B wage levels. NYTIMES