Businesses and individuals are reevaluating their work visas after President Donald Trump took executive action and imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applicants, a move that immigrant advocates and employers worry could hurt the economy.

Last Friday evening, Trump signed an executive order imposing a $100,000 fee for each approved H-1B visa applicant.

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The H-1B is a three-year visa that may be renewed once for an additional three years. It is largely used to bring technology workers from India and other countries stateside to staff major corporations, such as Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Walmart.

The White House order stated that the measure was necessary to deter “certain foreign workers” whose admission “would be detrimental to the interest of the United States,” including by undercutting United States workers’ wages.

Additionally, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had stated on Friday at the executive order signing that renewal applications would also be charged $100,000, and that the fee would be imposed annually. Currently, H-1B visa fees are roughly $1,000, including a registration fee.

H-1B visas are a widely used means of working in the U.S. The government makes 85,000 available per year, and at last count, as many as 700,000 foreigners were approved to work in the U.S. in 2025.

H-1B visa workers and employers were unclear about how to interpret the order.

“When the government announces a major new policy potentially affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in an extremely concrete way,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, in a post to X. “AT THE VERY LEAST it owes people precise information.”

A leader of the American Immigration Lawyers Association described to the New York Times that members were “dealing with chaos” trying to understand who was affected.

“Renewals, first times, the company needs to decide is that person valuable enough to have $100,000-a-year payment to the government or they should go hire an American,” Lutnick said. “It can be a total of six years, so $100,000 a year.”

The changes will affect tech companies that recruit foreign talent, and businesses have been warned of the unintended consequences of the new fees.

“While SHRM understands the Trump administration’s goal of protecting the American worker, we encourage them to consider unintended consequences that could create major barriers for employers — particularly small and midsized businesses,” said Emily M. Dickens, head of government affairs at SHRM, the HR association. “We urge the White House to work with stakeholders to strike the critical balance of protecting American workers while ensuring employers can access the critical skills our economy needs.”

The White House issued a clarification late Saturday that stated the fee would only apply to people who applied outside the country, would not affect renewals, or would be applied annually, as originally suggested by Lutnick.

“To be clear: 1.) This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition. 2.) Those who already hold H-1B visas and are currently outside of the country right now will NOT be charged $100,000 to re-enter,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in a post to X. “H-1B visa holders can leave and re-enter the country to the same extent as they normally would; whatever ability they have to do that is not impacted by yesterday’s proclamation. 3.) This applies only to new visas, not renewals, and not current visa holders. It will first apply in the next upcoming lottery cycle.”

The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency added in a memo issued over the weekend that it would only apply to applicants who have not yet filed and do so after Sept. 21.

Josh Pugh, an Australian who advises expats on the visa processing moving to the U.S., explained that those abroad and applying for an H‑1B may need their potential employer to pay the new $100,000 fee.

“In terms of actual effects on applicants, these changes will mean that some job offers that previously ‘made sense’ on cost-benefit may now be borderline or no longer viable,” Pugh wrote in a recent analysis. Employers may shift recruitment strategies to prefer U.S.-based employees or transfers of workers already inside the U.S. rather than hiring from overseas.

Mark Krikorian, executive director at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, told the Washington Examiner on Monday that H-1B visa holders in the U.S. are on safe ground for now because the fee was presented as a “‘restriction on entry’ rather than a regular USCIS fee, so would only apply to people not yet admitted to the US.”

India’s spokesperson for external affairs, Randhir Jaiswal, said in a statement that the government is unsure about the full implications of the measure, but anticipated it was “likely to have humanitarian consequences by way of the disruption caused for families.” India is the largest origin of H-1B visas, followed by China.

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Under the Immigration and Nationality Act’s Section 212(f), the president has the authority to stop admitting foreigners if doing so would be harmful to U.S. interests.

However, Trump is expected to meet legal challenges and has already faced significant pushback from opponents, even other nations.