Washington – Friday, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation which will require annual visa costs of $ 100,000 for highly qualified foreign workers and deployed a “gold card” visa of $ 1 million as a path of American citizenship for rich people, movements that face almost certainly legal challenges.
If the movements survive the legal hunting, they will produce incumbent price increases. Visa fees for qualified workers drop from $ 215. The fees for investor visas, which are common in many European countries, drops from $ 10,000 to $ 20,000 per year.
H-1B visas, which require at least one baccalaureate, are intended for highly qualified jobs that technological companies have trouble filling. Critics say that the program is a pipeline for foreign workers who are often willing to work for as little as $ 60,000 per year, well below $ 100,000 wages and more generally paid to American technology workers.
Trump on Friday insisted that the technology industry would not oppose this decision. Commerce secretary Howard Lunick said that “all large companies” are on board.
Representatives of the largest technological companies, including Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta, did not immediately respond to messages to comment on Friday. Microsoft refused to comment.
Lutnick said that the change will probably lead to much fewer H-1B visas than the 85,000 annual ceiling would only allow “it is simply more economical”.
“If you are going to train people, you will train Americans.” Lutnick said at a conference call with journalists. “If you have a very sophisticated engineer and want to bring them … then you can pay $ 100,000 per year for your H-1B visa.”
Trump also announced that he would start to sell a “gold card” visa with a path to American citizenship for $ 1 million after checking. For companies, it will cost $ 2 million to sponsor an employee.
The “Trump Platinum card” will be available for $ 5 million and will allow foreigners to spend up to 270 days in the United States without being subject to American taxes on non-American income. Trump announced a $ 5 million gold card in February to replace an existing investor visa – this is now the Platinum card.
Lutnick said that Gold and Platinum cards would replace employment -based visas that offer citizenship ways, including teachers, scientists, artists and athletes.
Critics of H-1B visas that say they are used to replace American workers have applauded this decision. American technology workers, a defense group, called it “the next best” to completely abolish visas.
Doug Rand, a senior official of citizenship and immigration services in the United States during the Biden administration, said that the increase in the costs proposed was “ridiculously without law”.
“It is not a real policy – it is the fans service for immigration restrictions,” said Rand. “Trump makes the headlines and inflicts panic and does not care if this survives the first contact with the courts.”
Lutnick said that H-1B costs and the gold card could be introduced by the president, but that the Platinum card needs convention approval.
Historically, H-1B visas were distributed at the lottery. This year, Amazon was by far the best recipient of H-1B visa with more than 10,000 awarded, followed by Tata Consultancy, Microsoft, Apple and Google. Geographically, California has the greatest number of H-1B workers.
Critics say that H-1B spots often go to entry-level jobs, rather than management positions with unique skills requirements. And although the program is not supposed to reduce American wages or move American workers, criticism say that companies can pay less by classifying jobs at the lowest skills levels, even if specific workers have more experience.
Consequently, many American companies find cheaper to contract assistance offices, programming and other basic tasks to consulting companies such as Wipro, Infosys, HCL Technologies and Tata in India and IBM and Cognizant in the United States, these consulting companies hire foreign workers, often from India, and contract them to save employers money.
First lady Melania Trump, former Melania Knauss, obtained an H-1B work visa in October 1996 to work as a model. She was born in Slovenia.
In 2024, lottery offers for visas plunged almost 40%, which, according to the authorities, was due to success against people who “played the system” by subjecting several candidates, sometimes questionable, to unjustly increase the chances of being selected.
Large technological companies that use H-1B visas have requested changes after massive increases in offers left their employees and their potential hires with thinner chances of winning the random lottery. To face what he recognized was probably fraud and abuse, USCIS this year said that each employee had only one blow to the lottery, that the person had a job offer or 50.
Critics have greeted the change, but said that more must be done. The AFL-CIO wrote last year that, although the changes to the lottery “included certain steps in the right direction”, it did not succeed in the necessary reforms. The Labor Group wants visas granted to companies that pay the highest wages rather than random lottery, a change that Trump sought during his first mandate in the White House.
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Ortatay reported to Oakland, California, the writers of the Associated Press Adriana Gomez Licon in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.
