The United States government has imposed a fee of $100,000 per year (approximately €85,000) as compensation for issuing H-1B visas, which are intended for highly skilled foreign labor in specialized sectors. This is intended to prevent the “abuse” that, according to US authorities, has been perpetrated against US workers until now.
“The H-1B nonimmigrant visa program was created to bring temporary workers to the United States to perform additional, highly skilled functions, but it has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than complement, US workers with less-skilled and lower-paid labor,” reads the document issued by the White House with the proclamation of the new fee.
For the administration of US President Donald Trump, companies in sectors such as technology have been taking advantage of this visa program to hire foreigners without the appropriate skills or qualifications, causing US workers to be “laid off” and their wages to tend to fall.
The H1-B visa type was designed to “fill jobs for which there are no highly qualified and educated US workers” and, instead, “hurts the wages and job opportunities” of US employees, according to the White House.
“We need workers. We need excellent workers. And this virtually guarantees that’s what’s going to happen,” the US president stated after signing the order in the Oval Office.
Thus, companies seeking to hire such a worker will have to pay $100,000 in addition to their salary, which will cause companies to prefer training “a recent graduate from one of the best universities in our country” rather than an unqualified foreigner. “It’s just not economical,” said U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
