Trump has announced new restrictions on H-1B visas for skilled workers. He says it allowed for “a massive change in American workers.”
Current H-1B holders will be waived from new fees, according to the White House
The new $100,000 fee for the US H-1B visa, which will take effect Sunday, will be collected on a per petition and will not apply to existing holders of valid visas re-entering the country, the White House said on Saturday.
Seattle-based software engineer Henry Pan was on a high-speed train in his hometown of Nanjing, China, when President Donald Trump’s new visa restrictions hit his mobile phone.
He went home with his girlfriend to attend his sister’s wedding, but emails and headlines piled up quickly, urging visa holders to return to the US within 24 hours.
On Friday, September 19th, Trump announced new restrictions on foreigners who hold H-1B visas that allow people with higher education and special skills to work legally in the United States. The president’s declaration sent hundreds of thousands of working professionals, employers and immigration lawyers to Tailspin.
The 1,770-word order denounced the “massive change in American workers” and “systematic abuse” in the H-1B program, and lamented the growth of foreign shares of the workforce in the computer and mathematics profession. We ordered restricted entry for H-1B visa holders.
Chaos continued.
The video on the phone circulated that worried H-1B travelers were about to take off international flights before they took off. Major American high-tech companies, Law firms and research institutes sent panicked emails to H-1B workers, warning them not to leave the country or return to their next flight.
Pan and his girlfriend scrutinised declarations, social media and even Chatgup to understand.
John Madeiros, a Minneapolis-based immigration lawyer who chairs Nilan Johnson Lewis’ corporate practices, said the requirement is as confusing as dramatic and appears to be designed to “feel a sense of confusion.”
“The most shocking part about the declaration issued on Friday evening is that it will come into effect at 12:01am on September 21st,” he said. “That’s how this administration does things: preparation, fire, purpose.”
What is an H-1B visa?
The H-1B visa is a work visa for educated professionals issued to workers such as accountants, software engineers, highly specialized doctors, scientists, and researchers. It can be renewed for up to six years and requires a bachelor’s degree at least. FWD.US, a nonprofit advocating for immigration reform, estimates that over 730,000 people live in the US on H-1B or more than 1.3 million people, including dependents.
The program was renowned for the centre of division among Trump supporters late last year, with billionaire technological mogul Elon Musk (H-1B from South Africa who once lived in the US) published as a supporter of the Maga for the sloppy da of the foreign workers program.
The US government issues approximately 85,000 new H-1Bs each year, and updates hundreds of thousands of existing H-1Bs each year.
Pan, who has a master’s degree in computer science, assumed the worst case scenario.
Although they had just arrived on a week-long holiday that morning, he and his girlfriend fled Nanjing on a Saturday afternoon and boarded a last-minute flight via Seoul, South Korea, to Seattle. He missed his sister’s wedding on Sunday and didn’t let Beijing do it to see her grandparents who had been preparing for her visit for weeks.
“I was at home for just 20 minutes before leaving again,” Pan said. “We both felt really sad.”
Open questions about $100,000 fees
A few days later, H-1B workers, employers and lawyers say there are more questions than answers about how the new limit and $100,000 fees apply.
Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made a comment shortly after Trump signed the declaration that White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt was exposed on social media site X the following day.
Leavitt said the fee is only one-time, not an annual fee. At the time of declaration, overseas H-1B visa holders will not be charged with re-entry. Fees apply only to new visa applications, not current visa holders.
It should have all been that it should have spelled out the bailouts to H-1B workers and their corporate sponsors, but Xiao Wang, chief executive of immigration services firm Boundless Miveligration, said the lack of details left many unanswered questions and made his clients uneasy.
“In a world where missing a checkbox can tell if someone can work in this country, the core is a problem,” he said. “Each clarification of rebutting what was said previously takes hours, if not days, to increase the fear of people doing something wrong and being punished later.”
Madeiros said his corporate client is “going crazy.”
“We have policies that are being done without much thought, and instead of passing through Congress to get meaningful reforms, we have policies being made through social media posts,” he said.
“We are helping employers with large international executives,” he said. “They tell foreigners, “Travel is your own fault, as they don’t know if it doesn’t apply to you.” ”
Growth of the H-1B program
The H-1B program has been expanding since 2000. US Citizenship and Immigration Services approved approximately 400,000 H-1B petitions or renewals for advanced foreign workers in 2024, almost double the number approved in 2000.
The total number of H-1B approvals peaked in 2022, exceeding 440,000. Shortly after the Great Recession, 2010 was the lowest approval in recent history.
The Trump administration claims that brokers are using the H-1B program to import cheap, temporary labor into the United States and fill the technology jobs that can go to American workers.
In 2024, 71% of H-1B petitions approved by USCIS were sent to Indian citizens, according to the agency’s latest annual report. Many of them work in low-paid, temporary categories, experts say. Almost two-thirds of approved petitions were sent to workers in computer-related jobs.
Following the declaration, the White House fact sheet won approvals of thousands of H-1B workers in fiscal year 2025 and laid off thousands of American workers. The White House did not name the company and did not specify whether the hired and laid back workers were in the same department.
However, the administration quietly launched Project Firewall, an enforcement operation to search for abuse by employers in the H-1B program, on the same day as Trump’s declaration.
“By eradicating fraud and abuse, the Department of Labor and federal government partners ensure that highly skilled jobs go to Americans first,” U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez Deremar said in a statement.
Wang, released by USCIS on September 23rd, will give significant weight to applicants in the most skilled category of H-1B Visa Lottery and those who have won university degrees from American universities. It would bring the balance closer to the original intentions of the program, Wang said, bringing in very skilled workers and maintaining those who invested in American education.
But the risk of rapid or sudden change can undermine the competitiveness of the country, Wang said. Eradication to travel to the US is an expensive, multi-year decision.
“It only works when the return on investment is clear,” he said. “People will choose a more stable country like Canada for the long-term damage to the US.”
Short-term panic has long-term effects
A hangover from weekend panic remains for those whose lives and livelihoods are on balance.
Jackie Chan was relaxed at the start of a surf vacation in Coast Japan when news of the H-1B restrictions broke local time at 5am on Saturday. When Trump signed the declaration on YouTube, she saw Hart Race.
“Everyone said the same thing: ‘You have to go back soon,'” recalls the software engineer. “I was terrified. I was worried that my company might fire me if I didn’t come back in time.”
Like Pan, Chen abandoned his vacation, booked a flight that day, returned to the US, arrived just before he thought it was the deadline for Sunday night.
However, a spectacular twist occurred along the way on the flight to Seattle. Leavitt clarifies that existing H-1B holders will not be affected.
“At that moment I felt very angry and irritated. I felt like I was played,” said Chen, who holds a master’s degree in data science. “They don’t value people like us who hold H-1B visas. They can casually say something because we feel that is not important.
The rushing return cost unexpectedly – cancellations, last minute airfares, and after she sublimated her Seattle apartment during her Japanese holiday, she spent $200 per week at the hotel.
For Chen, mental tension is more painful than financial loss.
“One thing is losing two weeks of potentially beautiful holidays,” she said. “The second is that this policy is causing us to suffer back and forth, and we don’t know what’s coming next.”
“This incident made me realize that I might have to find myself in Plan B,” she said. “Maybe it’s not just America.”
USA Today Senior Data Reporter Dian Zhang can visit dzhang@usatoday.com.
Lauren Villagran, who covers immigration in USA Today, can be contacted at lvillagran@usatoday.com.
