President Trump announced a move to dramatically reshape the nation’s immigration system, attaching hefty new fees to H-1B visas and rolling out a “gold card” for those willing to pay $1 million to secure U.S. residency.
A new $100,000 annual fee for H-1B visa applications is intended to crack down on a system the Trump administration says has been used by tech companies to avoid hiring American workers. Currently, applicants for the H-1B visa must pay a small fee to enter into the lottery system, and the winners of that lottery pay a larger fee to submit their full applications for vetting.
“We’re having people come in, people that in many cases are very successful or whatever, as opposed to walking over the borders,” Trump said in the Oval Office as he signed the proclamation changing the H-1B program.
An executive order signed by Trump on Friday rolls out a gold card available to people who pay $1 million to the U.S. Treasury. Corporations can sponsor an individual for $2 million. The visas are expedited, and the Department of Homeland Security will still vet the individuals, which will cost applicants $15,000. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that this visa will replace other similar employment-based paths to permanent residency programs within a month.
The new gold card would use existing green card categories known as EB-1 and EB-2, which people can qualify for if the government determines they have “extraordinary ability” in their fields. Lutnick said 80,000 of these visas would be available, down from 140,000 employment-based visas that are annually awarded now. He said other employment-based visa categories would be suspended in order for the new system to work.
“We’ll be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said. “We’re going to take that money and we’re going to reduce taxes, we’re going to reduce debt.”
The H-1B program has put Trump at odds with U.S. tech companies, the leaders of which have met with Trump frequently in his second term. Amazon.com , Google and Tesla are among the biggest users of the visas, which let companies bring foreign workers to the U.S. on a temporary basis. The workers overwhelmingly come from India and fill jobs in such fields as software development, computer science and engineering.
The goal of implementing the higher fees, Lutnick said, was to make sure corporations “hire Americans and make sure the people that come into the country are top, top people.”
H-1B fees are typically paid for by employers sponsoring visa applicants. It currently costs $215 to enter an applicant into the lottery, and more than $5,000 in fees to file a visa application—without factoring in lawyers’ fees.
The administration is also exploring a “platinum card” program, for a $5 million fee, which would allow an individual to live in the country for up to 270 days a year without being subject to tax on non-U. S. income. Congress would need to approve the program.
It isn’t clear whether the White House’s latest actions will face legal challenges. Typically, new visa fees must either be set by Congress or be levied through formal regulations, which first undergo months of public notice and comment.
Adam Kovacevich , head of pro-tech group Chamber of Progress, said the increased fees on H-1B visas would likely stop many companies from using them, especially smaller companies with limited resources. The new policy could also make it harder for the U.S. to compete with China in developing technologies like artificial intelligence.
“I strongly suspect the administration is going to realize in the coming days and weeks that this policy clashes with his stated goal of winning the AI race,” he said.
The debate over the H-1B system has split members of Trump’s administration and his backers. Some aligned with the MAGA movement say that it has allowed primarily Indian men to take lucrative tech and engineering jobs away from Americans, while more business-minded Republicans—including David Sacks , Trump’s AI czar—argue it is crucial for businesses to recruit the best global talent.
“Tech companies are on board, we’ve spoken to them,” Lutnick said of Friday’s moves.
The visa program lost one of its most vocal backers in Elon Musk when he left the administration in the spring. Some immigration officials, including Joseph Edlow , who heads up the agency responsible for issuing H-1B and other visas, have been more skeptical.
Under Edlow, the agency, called U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, had been preparing to release a new regulation that would have given preference to visa applicants with higher salaries. But that regulation had been stalled by the White House, according to people familiar with the matter.
Created by Congress in 1990, the H-1B program is the main pathway to the U.S. for highly skilled foreign workers. Visa holders can eventually become eligible to apply for green cards, which would let them stay in the country indefinitely.
The program is vastly oversubscribed. Companies file hundreds of thousands of petitions for the visas each year, and new visas are capped at 85,000 a year. A lottery system helps decide who gets one. Employees of universities and other nonprofits are generally exempt from the cap.
There are roughly 700,000 people on H-1B visas currently living in the U.S., according to a National Foundation of American Policy analysis of government data. Many of those have been living in the country for more than a decade, waiting in a yearslong backlog for a green card.
Write to Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com and Michelle Hackman at michelle.hackman@wsj.com
