Current H-1B holders can breathe: $100,000 fee only for new visas

U.S. President Donald Trump displays a signed executive order on gold card visa in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 19, 2025 Photo: Reuters

A new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas in the United States that goes into effect on Sunday will be levied per petition and will not be applied to existing visa holders re-entering the country, the White House said on Saturday.

“This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X on Saturday.

Fee only applies to new H-1B Visas

Leavitt said that current H-1B visa holders who are currently outside of the country will not be charged $100,000 to re-enter the United States.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Friday said the fee, would be paid annually but added that details were “still being considered.” The White House clarification on Saturday represented a walkback from Lutnick’s statement.

Some companies including Microsoft, JPMorgan, and Amazon had responded to the Friday announcement by advising employees holding H-1B visas to remain in the United States, according to internal emails reviewed by Reuters. A Goldman Sachs internal memo seen by Reuters on Saturday urged employees with such visas to exercise caution on international travel.

Leavitt said on X that H-1B visa holders can leave and re-enter the country as they normally would and that the new fee would only apply in the next H-1B lottery round and not to current visa holders or renewals.

Read: Trump to impose $100,000 fee per year for H-1B visas^[1]

The White House said the fee was being imposed to level the playing field for American workers which it said are being “replaced with lower-paid foreign labor.”

The proclamation imposing the new fee on H-1B visa applications, which was signed by President Donald Trump on Friday, could disrupt the global operations of Indian technology services companies that deploy skilled professionals to the United States, Indian IT industry body Nasscom said early on Saturday.

In a fact sheet distributed on Saturday, the White House said it would allow an H-1B visa application without the $100,000 fee on a case-by-case basis “if in the national interest.”

The fact sheet said that the share of IT workers with H-1B visas had risen from 32% in FY 2003 to over 65% in recent years.

Trump’s proclamation requires the Departments of Labor and Homeland Security to issue joint guidance for verification, enforcement, audits, and penalties, and directs the Labor Secretary to start a rulemaking process to “revise the prevailing wage levels for the H-1B program” and “to prioritize high-skilled, high-paid H-1B workers.”

Panic grips H-1B workers

Panic, confusion and anger reigned as workers on H-1B visas from India and China were forced to abandon travel plans and rush back to the US after President Donald Trump imposed new visa fees, in line with his wide-ranging immigration crackdown.

Tech companies and banks sent urgent memos to employees, advising them to return before a deadline of 12:01 am EDT on Sunday, and telling them not to leave the country.

A White House official on Saturday clarified that the order applied only to new applicants and not holders of existing visas or those seeking renewals, addressing some of the confusion over who would be affected.

But Trump’s proclamation a day before had already set off alarm bells in Silicon Valley.

“It is a situation where we had to choose between family and staying here,” said an engineer at a large tech company whose wife had been on an Emirates flight from San Francisco to Dubai that was scheduled to depart at 5:05 pm local time on Friday.

A video of the incident was circulating on social media, showing a few people leaving the plane. Reuters could not independently verify the veracity of the video.

The engineer’s wife, also an H-1B visa holder, chose to head to India to care for her sick mother.

Read more: $100,000 annual fee on H-1B visa will disrupt Indian tech companies: NASSCOM^[2]

“It’s quite tragic. We have built a life here,” he told Reuters.

On the popular Chinese social media app Rednote, people on H-1B visas shared their experiences of having to rush back to the US – in some cases just hours after landing in China or another country.

India hit hardest

India’s $283 billion information technology sector will have to overhaul its decades-old strategy of rotating skilled talent into US projects following US President Donald Trump’s move, to impose a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visas from Sunday, according to tech veterans, analysts, lawyers and economists.

The sector, which earns about 57% of its total revenue from the U.S. market, has long gained from US work visa programs and the outsourcing of software and business services — a contentious issue for many Americans who have lost jobs to cheaper workers in India.

India was by far the largest beneficiary of H-1B visas last year, accounting for 71% of approved beneficiaries, while China was a distant second at 11.7%, according to US government data.

Future H-1B Visas for critical roles only

Immigration lawyers, who received frantic calls over the weekend due to the chaos and confusion created by Trump’s proclamation, in which he accused the IT sector of manipulating the H-1B system, said the new visa fee was steep.

“We expect that companies will become far more selective in deciding which candidates to sponsor, reserving H-1B filings for only the most business-critical roles,” Vic Goel, managing partner at US law firm Goel & Anderson said. “This would significantly reduce access to the H-1B program for many skilled foreign nationals and could reshape employer demand.”

Before the White House clarified, that the order applied only to new applicants and not holders of existing visas or those seeking renewals, companies including Tata Consultancy Services, Eli Lilly, Microsoft, JPMorgan, and Amazon advised employees on H-1B visas to stay put or return to the US before Sunday, according to internal messages seen by Reuters, forcing many workers from India and China to abandon travel plans and rush back.

Many immigration lawyers expect Trump’s move to be challenged legally soon.

“We are anticipating that several lawsuits will be immediately forthcoming this week,” Alcorn Immigration Law CEO Sophie Alcorn said.

The fresh challenge for the Indian IT sector comes as it awaits clarity on a propsed a 25% tax on outsourcing payments and struggles with weak revenue growth in its mainstay US market as clients defer non-essential tech spending amid inflationary pressures and tariff uncertainty.