Jessica Mendoza (1:55)

And because most H1B visa holders work for tech companies, the sudden change ignited a firestorm across Silicon Valley.

Amrith Ramkumar (2:02)

The immediate reaction was pure panic. The state of plate is still changing as we're discussing this today. So this idea that it's not resolved and you don't know how your company's going to end up handling it is really tough for a lot of people.

Jessica Mendoza (2:17)

Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica mendoza. It's Wednesday, September 24. Coming up on the show, inside Trump's chaotic overhaul of the H1B visa.

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Jessica Mendoza (3:50)

So Amrit, what is an H1B visa?

Amrith Ramkumar (3:53)

So the program was created in 1990 as a way to bring in talented people from overseas. The idea being you pay a few thousand dollars to go through the process and then you get to be here for three years and you can renew once and that's another three years.

Jessica Mendoza (4:08)

Sponsoring employers have typically paid five to $10,000 in government fees, not including the cost of legal work to prepare the application. And not everyone who applies for an H1B visa gets one. There's a lottery system, so it's been.

Amrith Ramkumar (4:22)

Used for a long time and in recent years it's definitely taken off. The big tech companies have used it a lot.

Jessica Mendoza (4:29)

What is it that makes it so popular in the tech world?

Amrith Ramkumar (4:32)

These companies have a hard time filling all the jobs they need to, and anytime they can find different sources of labor, they're going to take advantage of it. So it's been a huge boon in some ways to them and been part of what has made the tech sector so successful, a lot of people say.

Jessica Mendoza (4:48)

And so why is the Trump administration changing it now?

Amrith Ramkumar (4:52)

The Trump administration sees this as a symbol of everything that's wrong with the current immigration system and how corporate America hires people. They see it as a way companies have gotten around hiring American workers. They think it's part of this push for years and decades to go overseas for everything, right? To push business overseas, to hire people from overseas and sort of neglect people who are born here and sort of deserve these jobs. So they see that as fundamentally unfair and they think cracking down on it can help push companies to hire more American workers without disrupting things too much in the tech sector.

Jessica Mendoza (5:31)

Whose idea was it to focus on the H1B visa?

Amrith Ramkumar (5:34)

In this case, it was mostly Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Howard Lutnick (5:38)

If you're going to train somebody, you're.

Amrith Ramkumar (5:41)

Going to train one of the recent.

Howard Lutnick (5:42)

Graduates from one of the great universities.

Amrith Ramkumar (5:45)

Across our land, train Americans, stop bringing.

Howard Lutnick (5:48)

In people to take our Jobs.

Jessica Mendoza (5:51)

Why would the Secretary of Commerce be leading the charge on immigration policy?

Amrith Ramkumar (5:56)

It is very unusual for the Commerce Secretary to be driving a big chunk of immigration policy in this way. Normally you would expect Department of Homeland Security, which oversees all the immigration aspects, and maybe even Department of Labor to be heavily involved. And those departments were listed in the proclamation that the administration put out. You have to understand the Commerce Secretary to understand this policy and how it fits into the bigger picture. So he's the one championing all of the revenue raising ideas.

Jessica Mendoza (6:30)

Lutnick is a former investment banker, and since joining the Trump administration, he's been a big promoter of all kinds of programs that could bring money into the government.

Amrith Ramkumar (6:39)

And so that's sort of how he and the President view the world. Right? Everything is a potential deal to be made, and immigration policy and the H1B visas, no different. So anytime they can raise some money and they feel like they have companies in a tough spot where they have leverage and they can ask for another $100,000 or a million dollars or even a billion dollars, they're going to do it.

Jessica Mendoza (7:01)

Lutnick's biggest idea for monetizing immigration is a project called the Gold Card. The idea is to provide a path to citizenship for foreigners willing to pay a million dollars. But the Gold Card wasn't well received by some Trump allies. They saw it as a pay for play scheme that didn't really restrict immigration. So Lutnick brought forward a new idea, a $100,000 H1B visa fee.

Amrith Ramkumar (7:24)

So going into Friday, no one as far as we can tell, really knew that this was going to happen. Even a lot of the people in the administration idea this was going to be rolled out late on a Friday and then the proclamation goes out. But it was mass confusion. So from the beginning, because the Commerce Secretary made it sound like it would be an annual fee and apply to existing visa holders. And the language in the proclamation that went out early Friday evening publicly was a bit vague and hard for people to decipher.

Jessica Mendoza (7:55)

For instance, the proclamation said that the entry of foreigners into the US under the H1B program is restricted, effective September 21, without much further clarity. So some people and companies wondered if they would have to immediately pay $100,000, especially for Visa holders re entering the country. Others worried that they wouldn't be allowed back in at all.

Amrith Ramkumar (8:17)

So within hours, you had these big tech companies that are pretty deliberate and don't always move that quickly jumping into action to send out notes to all their staff. If you're on an H1B visa either get back to the country or stay here. And like we don't know what's going to happen, but we'll be in touch with that kind of thing. So that was Friday evening. And then from what we can tell, all these companies and tech trade groups and lawyers and others were trying to get more information because no one knew what was going on.

Jessica Mendoza (8:52)

On Saturday, the day after the proclamation, the White House clarified matters. It said that the $100,000 fee would only apply to new H1B visa applicants and it would be a one time payment, not an annual fee.

Amrith Ramkumar (9:05)

But just the rapid walk back also confused people. And then we're told now that a lot of these discussions are still ongoing and that the Commerce Secretary still supports the fee being an annual payment, not a one time payment, even though the.

Jessica Mendoza (9:22)

Administration had already said that it is just a one time payment.

Amrith Ramkumar (9:28)

Correct. So where we sit now is the mass panic from Friday, early Saturday has sort of subsided, but there's still a lot of uncertainty about where this is going to go next and we'll likely see legal challenges and all sorts of things coming too.

Jessica Mendoza (9:46)

What this change in H1B visas means for Silicon Valley that's next.

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Jessica Mendoza (11:03)

How much does Silicon Valley rely on H1B visas?

Amrith Ramkumar (11:08)

Silicon Valley is hugely reliant on H1B visas for hiring. They bring in thousands and thousands of people in some cases depending on the company, and a huge source of talent and people overseas who really want to come to the US and work hard and make a life here.

Jessica Mendoza (11:23)

Some of Silicon Valley's biggest names, including Elon Musk and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, have previously been on H1B visas today, companies that sponsor the most H1B visas include Amazon, Microsoft and Meta. Amazon alone had more than 14,000 worker applications approved in the 2025 fiscal year.

Amrith Ramkumar (11:46)

So it's sort of been a key driver of the tech boom in the past few decades that people have cited and something that's really accelerated innovation in a lot of cases. And that sort of melting pot concept has again, accelerated a lot of things. So a lot of companies have used it for a long time.

Jessica Mendoza (12:04)

And so what are some of the biggest tech companies saying about this? How would they be affected by this fee?

Amrith Ramkumar (12:10)

Well, publicly, the companies are not saying anything because they're sort of scared of making the administration mad, and they're very careful in how they handle that relationship. And this is all based on our conversations with administration officials and executives at these tech companies and lobbyists and people at tech trade groups and people in immigration circles over the last few days. They have a lot of other ways to sort of find talent. But yeah, they also have to determine do we want to get in a fight with the administration over this and join potential lawsuits. So from what we can tell, those are sort of the major questions now and trying to still figure out how this process will work internally. Who's running point on it? Is the fee set at a one time or is it still potentially fluctuating after we go past a few months? So there's definitely a level of panic and anxiety there. And you have had some people like OpenAI's Sam Altman and Nvidia's Jensen Huang, who are both very close to the president. They've said basically that they think it could be a fine policy because you're basically going to be bringing in a much higher caliber of worker and the companies will have to really support them and really value them to pay the fee. And they think that could be actually helpful in some ways.

Jessica Mendoza (13:28)

Here's Jensen Huang on CNBC earlier this week.

Jensen Huang (13:31)

So I think immigration is really important to our company and it's really important to our nation's future. And I'm glad to see President Trump making the moves he's making.

Jessica Mendoza (13:41)

Sam Altman also supported the change in the same segment.

Jensen Huang (13:44)

We need to get the smartest people in the country. And streamlining that process and also sort of aligning financial incentives seems good to me.

Jessica Mendoza (13:50)

While some big companies like Nvidia and OpenAI are cautiously optimistic, Amrit says smaller startups are less likely to be able to afford that $100,000 fee, especially since they'd have to pay it for each employee. How would this change impact the way some of these companies operate versus how they do now? Like what they do now?

Amrith Ramkumar (14:10)

It's a really good question. Regardless of how this ends up, people have wanted to change the program for a long time and they don't like the idea that you're bringing in cheaper talent from overseas generally. So I think people are already grappling with some of those questions and making changes to their hiring practices and sort of bracing for some of this. But I think a move like this only accelerates those discussions.

Jessica Mendoza (14:33)

It's interesting. You know, the idea behind changing the H1B visa program seems to be want this desire to get more American citizens into some of these high paying, high skill jobs. I mean, are there American citizens that can fill these jobs at the rate that they need to be filled?

Amrith Ramkumar (14:50)

People around the tech companies say the answer is generally no. All right. Like that they do everything they can to get the talent that's here and they have to go overseas just because they're growing so quickly and they need again bodies to fill those jobs and there aren't enough they can find here. There are already issues getting talent in the tech sector. Does this make it even harder? Can other countries like the UK and others now take advantage of this and say, we're going to do a really friendly policy that is sort of the counter? So there are definitely lots of those questions swirling around.

Jessica Mendoza (15:21)

We've seen a lot of big tech companies try to forge or strengthen their relationships with this administration. Those executives were lined up behind him at the inauguration. Many of them have been to the White House in these meetings, thanking him at press conferences. How, if at all, could this change in the H1B visa program affect that relationship?

Amrith Ramkumar (15:40)

Yeah, it's another example of this tension that keeps coming up. Right. You have Trump and the big tech folks sort of playing nice and being super cozy together in general. Even if this change could be okay for them, most tech executives, honestly, if they were talking, would say like the H1B program has been a critical driver of growth in Silicon Valley over the past few decades. And it's definitely a tension point. And that's why though, people think the administration is also starting to walk things back and might ultimately soften them because they also know they don't want to anger the tech companies too much because the tech companies are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in the US if not more. I think the big takeaway is that Trump and his administration are caught between these two very strong forces. The MAGA base that wants to crack down on immigration. The MAGA base that's also very skeptical of AI for example, and then the tech community that the administration is embracing that wants to bring in high skilled people overseas without a ton of barriers.

Jessica Mendoza (16:58)

That's all for today. Wednesday, September 24th. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode from Michelle Hackman, Tarini Parti and Rolf Winkler. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.