WASHINGTON — President Trump will sign an executive order Friday adding a $100,000 fee to all H1-B visa applications, a White House official confirmed to The Post.
The move marks the latest crackdown by the administration on migrants coming into the US for job opportunities, and is likely intended to limit visa applicants to those from higher financial brackets.
The administration views the current H1-B visa program — which admits hundreds of thousands of workers into the US each year — as a way for companies to exploit lower-wage employees, ultimately impacting US salaries.
The White House is particularly concerned with US students shunning STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields due to foreign competition and views the presence of foreign workers as a national security threat, according to Bloomberg, which first reported on the order.
Tech companies heavily rely on the visas to get foreign talent into US-based companies, with Newsweek estimating earlier this year that 60% of all computer-related jobs are filled by H1-B visa holders.
