Trump’s $100,000 Fee for H1B: A Tariff on Talent

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On September 19, 2025, President Trump signed a proclamation, Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers, that redefines how global enterprises must think about talent. It imposes a US$100,000 annual surcharge on every H-1B sponsorship, payable each year for the visa’s duration.

The White House frames this as a patriotic filter, telling companies they must “pay if they truly need the talent” while promising to redirect the proceeds toward debt reduction and domestic training.

Greyhound Research sees it differently. This is not an incremental adjustment. It is a tariff on skills. It equates genius with balance sheets and forces enterprises to ration critical talent. It also raises an existential question: does the United States still deserve its reputation as the gravitational center of innovation?

The timing is problematic. Global CIOs already rank immigration volatility as a top risk to digital delivery. Per Greyhound CIO Pulse 2025, 61 percent now place it among their top three concerns, up from 42 percent in 2023.

This 2025 proclamation transforms this anxiety into hard costs and operational disruption. And it validates what Greyhound warned in 2020. Restricting visas does not create American engineers. It exports work. The United States now risks losing the very minds it needs most, even as its competition with China grows sharper.

Looking Back: Trump’s 2020 H-1B Actions

This is not the first time Trump has targeted skilled migration. In 2020, his administration pursued a series of reforms aimed at raising the prevailing wage threshold for H-1B workers, making it more difficult for companies to justify sponsorship. Eligibility rules were tightened, petitions were subjected to heavier scrutiny, and a suspension on entry for certain H-1B holders was introduced under the guise of pandemic restrictions. The result was stranded employees abroad, delayed projects, and mounting enterprise frustration.

At the time Greyhound Research published a dossier titled, Trump Takes Another Stab At H1B: Little Realizing It May Cause More Harm Than Good. We cautioned that these measures would accelerate offshoring, destabilize global IT services delivery, and undermine America’s ability to attract STEM talent.

Enterprises adapted quickly. Indian IT firms reduced their reliance on visas by investing in larger onshore, nearshore, and offshore delivery centers. U.S. technology companies froze hiring or shifted engineering roles to Canada and Europe. Universities and research hospitals voiced concerns about losing international faculty. Markets reacted with caution, recognizing that uncertainty in immigration policy translates directly into execution risk.

Those steps felt harsh in 2020. The new $100,000 fee introduced in 2025 makes them look like a dress rehearsal.

H-1B Landscape: Who Uses It, and Where the Pressure Falls

Before analyzing the 2025 proclamation, it is essential to understand the current shape of the H-1B program. Greyhound Research has examined recent reports from USCIS, NFAP, and related sources. What emerges is a program still central to U.S. innovation but under growing constraints and concentrated risk.

Employers – The most active sponsors are household names. Amazon, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Google, Microsoft, IBM, HCL, Capgemini, and Meta dominate the lists year after year. Some firms outside the usual IT orbit, such as Tesla, are also stepping up their sponsorship. The important point is not the numbers but the pattern. America’s largest technology platforms and global IT services companies rely on the program at scale, and they rely on it consistently.

Industries – Technology and professional services sit at the center. Software developers, systems engineers, and IT consultants make up the bulk of petitions. Universities and research institutions use H-1Bs to bring in professors and post-doctoral researchers. Hospitals use them to fill specialist medical roles. Manufacturers lean on them for advanced engineering and design. The program is not evenly spread across the economy. It is sharply concentrated where STEM expertise is most scarce.

Countries of Origin – The pipeline is also narrow. India supplies the overwhelming share of H-1B professionals, with China a distant second. Other countries, such as Canada, the Philippines, South Korea, Mexico, and Taiwan, contribute much smaller proportions. This skew leaves the system highly exposed. If the flow of talent from one or two countries falters, the shock will be felt across every U.S. boardroom that depends on global skills.

Trends – Over time, the balance has shifted from new hires to renewals. Companies want to keep their H-1B employees for the long haul, often using multiple extensions before moving to permanent residency. At the same time, the lottery for new visas has become more crowded, while the odds of winning have fallen. The signal for enterprises is clear. Bringing in new H-1B talent is increasingly uncertain, but retaining it once secured is essential.

Greyhound Research believesthe landscape tells a simple story. The H-1B program is indispensable, but it is oversubscribed and overconcentrated. It props up critical sectors of the economy while depending heavily on a narrow set of companies, roles, and countries. By layering a $100,000 annual fee on top of this already fragile system, the administration is striking hardest at the firms and industries least able to replace that talent. For enterprise leaders, immigration has moved from a back-office compliance function to a frontline test of resilience and strategy.

What the 2025 Proclamation Adds

The proclamation issued on September 19 is more severe than any of its predecessors. It does not alter wage thresholds or extend processing delays; instead, it creates a six-figure barrier that every employer must now overcome to bring skilled talent into the United States.

From September 21 onward, employers will be required to show proof of a $100,000 annual payment for every H-1B sponsorship. The measure applies immediately to foreign nationals currently outside the country, pushing enterprises to fast-track the return of employees before the effective date. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor have been tasked with lifting prevailing wage levels, a move that further increases the financial strain on companies already competing fiercely for specialized skills.

The order makes room for a limited “national interest” exemption that could apply to roles in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, healthcare, or national security. Yet the lack of clarity around how these exemptions will be interpreted has left employers uncertain, forced to decide whether to petition under criteria that remain vague.

Greyhound Research’s standpoint is clear. This is not a routine tightening of visa policy; it is the culmination of a path first set in motion in 2020. Then, we saw selective restrictions; now, the intent has shifted to outright deterrence. For enterprises, universities, and the wider U.S. innovation economy, the impact will be both immediate and profound.

A Tale of Two Signals: Taxing Skills, Selling Visas

The contradictions in this policy moment are hard to ignore. At the same time, the administration has imposed a $100,000 annual surcharge on H-1B visas and launched investor “Gold” and “Platinum” visas, which grant fast-track residency to anyone able to pay between $ 1 million and $ 5 million. The juxtaposition is jarring. On one side, the government is pricing out the scientists and engineers whose skills underpin the innovation economy. On the other hand, it is opening the door wide to anyone with capital, regardless of where that money comes from or what it contributes to national competitiveness.

Greyhound’s standpoint is clear. This is a fundamental misstep in the Trump administration’s immigration journey. America does not merely need more money; it needs more talent. Even drug lords have money. A country in the midst of an innovation race with China cannot afford to treat financial inflows as a substitute for human capital. For more than a century, the United States has drawn its strength from attracting the world’s best minds, not from auctioning residency to the highest bidder.

Greyhound Research believes that if this policy mix continues to conflate wealth with value, the risks are stark. The innovation pipeline could hollow out just as competitor nations double down on recruiting global talent. Capital may continue to flow, but the very skills required to deploy it productively will be heading elsewhere.

Immediate Enterprise Reactions

Enterprises have not waited for the dust to settle. Within hours of the proclamation, some of the largest employers of H-1B talent moved into crisis mode. Microsoft issued internal guidance urging its visa-holding employees to remain in the United States and for those currently abroad to return before the new rules take effect. Another advisory from the company cautioned that those already inside the U.S. should stay put “for the foreseeable future”. JPMorgan sent similar instructions to its H-1B staff, making clear that being outside the country once the fee and entry restrictions are enforced could leave employees stranded and projects disrupted. These messages were less about strategy than about survival, aimed at ensuring continuity in the days immediately following the announcement.

Markets also registered their verdict. Shares of Infosys, Wipro, and Cognizant fell between two and five percent, reflecting investor concern that a model built on moving engineers into U.S. client sites has been destabilized overnight. For these firms, the fee does not simply raise costs; it strikes at the heart of their operating model.

Universities and research hospitals likewise expressed alarm. Many institutions depend on H-1B sponsorship to secure faculty in engineering and medicine or researchers in labs that cannot easily find domestic equivalents. Their leadership warned that the fee will limit their ability to attract talent just as they compete globally for breakthroughs in AI, quantum computing, and healthcare.

Greyhound Research believes the reactions reveal a sector under pressure to adapt quickly. Some firms are focused on immediate compliance, rushing employees back into the U.S. before the deadline. Others are bracing markets for increased costs and operational risks. The one constant is uncertainty, as boards and executives scramble to rework talent strategies around an entirely new cost structure.

Policy and Legal Landscape

Greyhound Research views the $100,000 H-1B fee as more than a budget line item. It lands in a legal grey zone that will now dominate boardroom discussions. Congress has historically set the limits on visa fees, and the courts have already struck down earlier attempts to adjust prevailing wages by executive action. The likelihood of a legal challenge is high.

Yet for enterprises, this is beside the point. Boards cannot run talent strategies on the assumption that judges will ride to the rescue. Cases will drag on. Appeals will be filed. Meanwhile, business leaders need to decide whether to greenlight projects, renew contracts, and backfill critical roles.

Our analysis is straightforward. Assume the fee holds. Build budgets and models around that reality. Stress-test delivery with the higher cost base. Expand offshore capacity now rather than later. If the courts eventually soften the measure, that will be an upside, not your baseline plan.

The bigger message is that uncertainty itself is corrosive. Even if the proclamation falls apart in court, the chilling effect on enterprise planning is immediate. Companies hereon will definitely be slowing offers, adjusting mobility, and shifting investments because no one can gamble on Washington’s timelines.

Economic Consequences

Greyhound Research’s analysis shows that the economic fallout from this proclamation will be both immediate and far-reaching. The new fee doubles the cost of employing a foreign professional in the U.S., pushing the total expense of a $120,000 engineer closer to $220,000 once sponsorship costs and wage revisions are factored in. For most firms, this is not a line item they can absorb quietly.

The consequence will be sharp segmentation of roles. Large technology companies will continue to sponsor only a handful of indispensable foreign specialists—AI researchers, cryptographers, and engineers working on critical platform components—while shifting routine development work to global centers in India, Canada, or Eastern Europe. Startups, already cash-constrained, have no such option. Many will relocate teams to more immigration-friendly jurisdictions or embrace remote-first models that bypass U.S. visa processes entirely.

The biopharma sector faces its own dilemma. Drug discovery and advanced research depend heavily on international PhDs and post-docs. If these scientists cannot be cost-effectively sponsored, companies will globalize their labs to Switzerland, the UK, or Singapore, and universities may struggle to recruit talent into the U.S. pipeline. Hospitals that rely on foreign clinicians to serve underserved areas will find it harder to fill roles, with downstream consequences for healthcare access.

Consulting and IT services firms, long reliant on moving engineers into client sites, are particularly exposed. With stock prices already down in the wake of the announcement, their playbooks will tilt further toward automation, local hiring in smaller U.S. cities, and nearshore hubs across Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Financial services companies are somewhat more insulated, as many already operate large captive centers in India and elsewhere. They are likely to double down on offshore analytics and IT delivery while reserving U.S. sponsorships for must-have quantitative analysts and traders.

For enterprises, the message is clear. This policy does not neutralise global competition; it redistributes it. The U.S. may collect fees in the short term, but in the long term, it risks trading away its role as the preferred destination for the world’s best minds.

Impact on the U.S. Economy

Greyhound Research sees the $100,000 H-1B fee as more than an enterprise headache. It lands squarely on the U.S. economy itself, operating like a tax on knowledge work. When companies pay it, money is pulled from budgets that would otherwise fund hiring or innovation. When they refuse to pay, the work moves abroad. The net effect is fewer high-value projects being built in the U.S. and more being delivered from Canada, India, or Europe.

The pressure is sharpest in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and biotechnology. These are fields already short of talent. The U.S. leans heavily on international PhDs and post-docs to stay ahead. At the same time, China is doubling down on talent acquisition, funding AI research, and using state programs to draw scientists into its orbit. By making entry into the U.S. more expensive and uncertain, Washington risks pushing the brightest minds into competitor ecosystems.

American universities and labs are another fault line. They depend on international scholars to staff cutting-edge programs in quantum computing, biomedical sciences, and clean energy. If that pipeline narrows, grants will deliver less, and the U.S. lead in frontier research will erode.

Healthcare systems will feel the strain too. Many hospitals in rural and underserved communities rely on foreign clinicians to fill gaps. Raising the sponsorship cost makes it harder to bring those professionals in. Patients in these regions will be the first to feel the consequences.

Then there is reputation. For decades, the U.S. has been the obvious choice for ambitious engineers and scientists. A six-figure toll at the border sends the opposite signal. It tells the world that money is welcome, but talent must pay extra to come in. Countries such as Canada, the UK, and Singapore are already capitalizing, branding themselves as open alternatives. In an era when innovation is inseparable from national security, the message matters as much as the policy.

Impact on the US AI Leadership

Greyhound Research analysis shows that artificial intelligence is the pressure point where U.S. immigration policy collides most directly with global competitiveness. The $100,000 H-1B fee arrives at a moment when demand for AI talent is skyrocketing and supply is already painfully short.

A widening gap at home. Over one-third of AI jobs in the U.S. remain unfilled. Demand for AI skills has grown by more than 250 percent since 2015, yet the number of domestic graduates cannot keep pace. U.S. companies report acute shortages of machine learning engineers and AI research scientists. Nearly 60 percent of AI PhD graduates from U.S. universities are foreign-born. Immigration is not a marginal issue for AI. It is the core mechanism by which the U.S. sustains its talent pool.

Heavy reliance on visas. The largest employers of AI engineers—Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Apple—also rank among the biggest H-1B sponsors. Many of those hires are placed in AI and data science roles. The H-1B program has become, in practice, an AI talent program. Imposing a six-figure fee on this channel risks pricing out precisely the people who build the models, design the chips, and push the frontiers of AI.

Competitors are seizing the moment. While the U.S. puts up barriers, others are rolling out red carpets. Canada’s “Tech Talent Strategy” created an open work permit for U.S. H-1B holders, and all 10,000 slots filled in under 48 hours. The UK has introduced Global Talent and High Potential visas to lure AI specialists. Singapore’s ONE Pass gives top tech professionals five years of flexibility to work across multiple employers. China’s AI talent programs combine fast-track visas with research grants and incentives to bring scientists back or in. The message is clear: talent is wanted, and there are fewer hoops to jump through outside the U.S.

The shift is real. Case studies illustrate the consequences. A key OpenAI researcher was forced to relocate to Canada in 2025 after her U.S. green card was denied—a move that investors called a “brain drain” of American AI. Startups like Datalogue have opened labs in Montreal to hire international engineers more easily. Big Tech has long used Vancouver as a pressure valve for U.S. visa caps. Each of these moves strengthens innovation ecosystems abroad while weakening the U.S.’s own gravity.

Implications for enterprise and security. For companies, AI talent is not just another hiring category. It is the linchpin of competitiveness. Without it, product timelines slip, costs rise, and rivals gain ground. For the nation, the stakes are even higher. The National Security Commission on AI has already warned that China stands a realistic chance of overtaking the U.S. within the decade. Talent is the deciding factor.

Greyhound’s standpoint is clear. The fee threatens to choke off the very pipeline that feeds U.S. AI leadership. Boards must treat AI hiring as a strategic priority, investing in global hubs of excellence and lobbying for exemptions that recognize AI as a matter of national interest. In the AI era, talent is destiny. Policies that drive it away are policies that hand the future to competitors.

 Impact on Indian IT

Greyhound Research analysis finds that Indian IT services firms are among the most directly affected by the $100,000 H-1B fee. For decades, their model has revolved around the land-and-expand approach: placing Indian engineers on U.S. client sites, building trust through face-to-face collaboration, and then scaling delivery from campuses in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune. That playbook is now under real pressure.

In the near term, firms such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL, and Cognizant will lean harder on offshore capacity. Clients will notice fewer engineers in U.S. offices and more work being coordinated remotely from India or via nearshore hubs. Canadian cities like Toronto and Waterloo, Eastern European locations including Poland and Romania, and ASEAN markets such as the Philippines and Vietnam are positioned to gain as Indian IT spreads its footprint.

U.S. enterprises are likely to adjust their behavior, too. Some will use the fee as a bargaining chip to demand cost concessions from vendors. Others will press for more local hiring, forcing providers to absorb higher expenses and reducing delivery flexibility. The burden will not be equal. Large Tier-1 firms with scale and deep offshore benches can absorb the shock. Mid-tier and smaller firms, more dependent on onsite presence, will feel it far more acutely.

Greyhound Research expects the industry to adapt as it has through earlier rounds of restrictions. But the texture of client relationships will change. The old rhythm of Indian engineers working shoulder-to-shoulder with U.S. client teams will give way to remote or nearshore engagement. Less face-time will mean more emphasis on governance, digital collaboration tools, and tight project oversight.

Looking further ahead, the fee could accelerate a structural decoupling between U.S. projects and the physical presence of Indian engineers. That shift will alter expectations on both sides. Clients may become more comfortable with distributed delivery, but they will also test new suppliers in Canada, Europe, and Southeast Asia. Indian IT will remain a formidable force, yet the way it engages with U.S. enterprises will not look the same again.

Strategic Workarounds Enterprises Are Deploying

Greyhound Research analysis shows that enterprises are not sitting on their hands. The $100,000 fee may or may not survive in court, but no board can afford to wait for judges to decide talent strategy. Workarounds are already being executed.

The most visible move is the expansion of Global Capability Centers in India. More than 1,800 are in operation across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Gurgaon. These are not call centers; they run high-value work in AI, cybersecurity, analytics, and product engineering. Global firms such as Google, IBM, UBS, and Wells Fargo are consolidating core functions there. Indian IT majors have already cut their U.S. visa reliance in half, proving that complex projects can be shifted offshore without losing momentum.

The second shift is toward nearshoring. Canada has positioned itself as the natural alternative. Its Global Talent Stream approves permits in as little as two weeks, and in 2023, Ottawa offered 10,000 open work permits to U.S.-based H-1B holders—the cap was reached in under 48 hours. Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal are fast becoming magnets for engineering teams once destined for the Bay Area. Beyond North America, Ireland, Poland, Romania, and parts of Latin America are also drawing investment as delivery hubs for consulting and IT.

The third lever is the greater use of alternative visas. O-1s for extraordinary ability, TNs for Canadian and Mexican professionals, and E-3s for Australians are now standard parts of the playbook. Many firms are also building structured rotation programs that place employees abroad for a year so they qualify for L-1 intracompany transfers. These are stopgaps, not replacements for H-1Bs, but they are proving vital for securing niche expertise.

The fourth workaround is the embrace of remote-first models. What began as pandemic survival has turned into a deliberate strategy. Enterprises are hiring globally and keeping talent in place, working virtually with U.S. teams. This eliminates visa risk altogether, though it demands heavy investment in IT security, compliance frameworks, and leadership skills for managing across cultures and time zones.

Finally, some companies may even consider the administration’s own “Gold” and “Platinum” investor visas, which offer residency in exchange for US$1–5 million. It is a controversial path, but for a handful of irreplaceable hires, it may be cheaper to buy in than lose them to a competitor abroad.

Greyhound’s standpoint is clear. These adaptations show remarkable enterprise agility, but they also underscore how disruptive the fee really is. Each of these paths carries its own risks. Political pushback is real, regulatory scrutiny will follow, and running global teams at scale always creates friction. But the bigger point is this: immigration is no longer an HR chore you can park in the back office. It now sits on the front line of business resilience and must be treated as a core plank of corporate strategy.

Risks of These Strategies

Greyhound Research analysis makes clear that none of the current workarounds are without consequences. Building bigger capability centers in India or expanding into Canada may keep the lights on, but it also paints a target. Washington has shown it is willing to penalize offshoring, and a new tax or procurement restriction could be next.

Alternative visas bring their own exposure. O-1s, TNs, E-3s, and L-1s can buy time, but if companies lean too heavily on them, they risk being branded as loopholes. And loopholes rarely survive long in the political spotlight.

Remote-first hiring, now embraced as a strategy, is no silver bullet either. Running teams across time zones creates friction. Security controls get harder, intellectual property is harder to police, and culture is harder to sustain. What looks elegant in a PowerPoint can be messy in execution.

Concentration is another danger. Betting too heavily on one market—whether it is India, Canada, or anywhere else—creates a single point of failure. If local politics shift or U.S. regulators tighten again, enterprises could find themselves caught flat-footed.

Our standpoint is blunt. Immigration risk can no longer be managed as an HR function. It now sits alongside cyber, supply chain, and energy as a board-level resilience issue. Every workaround has costs. The companies that hedge across regions, diversify visa pathways, and build governance muscle for distributed teams will be the ones able to ride out this storm.

Greyhound Standpoint

The $100,000 H-1B fee is not immigration reform. It is a tariff on skills. It signals to the world’s brightest engineers, scientists, and clinicians that the United States is willing to tax their presence while simultaneously selling residency to those who can simply afford it.

Greyhound Research warned in 2020 that such measures would do more harm than good. Five years later, that warning is reality. Enterprises are freezing hiring, universities are recalculating enrollments, service vendors are repricing delivery, and competitors like Canada are enjoying a brain gain at America’s expense.

For boards and CXOs, the imperative is clear. Talent strategy must now be treated with the same urgency as cybersecurity or energy resilience. Diversify delivery geographies. Reserve scarce visa spending for truly differentiating roles. Build offshore and nearshore capacity as hedges. And above all, acknowledge that immigration volatility is not noise on the margin—it is a defining variable in enterprise architecture.

The larger truth is this: America’s long-term strength has never come from taxing talent. It has come from attracting it. If policy continues to confuse capital inflows with human capital, the U.S. risks hollowing out its innovation pipeline just as China and others double down.

In a world competing fiercely for scarce genius, rationing it by decree while selling visas for money is the fastest path to irrelevance. The enterprises that recognize this early and re-architect their talent strategies accordingly will be the ones still standing strong when the politics of the moment fade.

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