Months after the subject of H-1B visas caused a firestorm in the political world, President Donald Trump’s latest executive order is putting the American workforce first.

On Friday, the White House released a proclamation titled “Restriction On Entry Of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers,” imposing a $100,000 fee for every H-1B visa application. This provoked howls of protest from Silicon Valley and other industries that — apparently — just can’t survive without the controversial system. But beneath the outrage is a fundamental truth: for too long, the H-1B program has been misused, and what seems like a steep fee — around 50 times more than before — is not just sensible, but long overdue.

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In short, this is a step in the right direction.

Make no mistake: the idea behind H-1Bs is a good one. As the proclamation states in its opening paragraph: “The H-1B nonimmigrant visa program was created to bring temporary workers into the United States to perform additive, high-skilled functions.” However, as the proclamation continues, the H-1B program has also “been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”

It remains true that we should all want America to attract the best and brightest talent from around the world, and it is also true that we collectively benefit when the world’s elite are able to innovate here. But the reality of the H-1B visa system has drifted far from that ideal, with corporations abusing the system to import cheap, pliable, and unprotected labor, thereby undercutting the wages and job opportunities of American workers.

Sure, for the corporations, it makes perfect sense. After all, when profit is your only metric, who wouldn’t prefer a cheaper foreign employee whose legal immigration status is tied to your company rather than an American employee who is both more expensive and free to leave for better opportunities at any point? But when you also consider that the supposedly specialist “high-skilled” visas are being used to fill even the lowest-skilled jobs around, it’s obvious that the underlying premise of H-1Bs has been betrayed.

There are several potential answers to this problem, ranging from capping visas, removing the absurd lottery system, or banning the visa altogether. But the $100,000 fee may prove to be a careful and targeted solution that allows companies to continue employing the best and brightest, but without mass-importing the cheapest and most desperate.

The Trump administration is forcing companies to actually consider whether an imported worker is worth the cost, and that is the real reason — indeed, the only reason — industries are freaking out, as they fear that the profitable H-1B scam is on its way out.

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In fact, with employment stalling in America, perhaps $100,000 isn’t even enough? But for now, it’s a clear indication to companies that — for the first time in decades — it might be more efficient to hire American workers, rather than relying on an endless stream of underpaid imported workers.

And if an immigrant is still worth the $100,000 fee, perhaps they are truly exceptional: the entire point of the H-1B visa system in the first place!

Ian is a syndicated columnist. Follow him on X (@ighaworth) or Substack.