US Gov acknowledges that 100K fee does not apply to existing H-1B visas holders [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45318060 - Sept 2025 (43 comments)
Visa holders on vacation have 15 hours to return to US or pay $100k fee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312877 - Sept 2025 (218 comments)
New H-1B visa fee will not apply to existing holders, official says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45316226 - Sept 2025 (3 comments)
Also recent and related:
Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305845 - Sept 2025 (1675 comments)
The H-1B Visa Program and Its Impact on the U.S. Economy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45309740 - Sept 2025 (51 comments)
Yeah that just seems like corruption by design.
Their arbitrary nature is designed to consolidate executive branch authority that can be welded as a weapon against corporations that might consider supporting his opposition in the future.
It's a classic fascist ploy, and is further proof that executive orders should be banned. In America we do not have kings who rule by decree, or at least we should not..
Executive orders that violate, or direct the violation of, existing law are illegal (or, at least, without legal effect) to the extent they do that, but whether or not a particular order meets that description is frequently a matter of dispute, which can end up in litigation.
See https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
Nothing in there says it only applies to new applicants.
I also would think that if this fee is applied to some countries and not others, it would pass muster since its the same as with tariffs - they don't need to be universal (or uniform).
I am not clear on the mechanics of this though. Is the fee is annual, one-time or renewal; but i suppose this will be cleared up once the EO is released if it hasn't already ?
I'm not a lawyer so it's possible, even likely that there's something I'm missing but to my laymans reading of the law it would seem to me he has the authority to put basically whatever process he wants into place.
Section 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1185(a), states exactly:
Unless otherwise ordered by the President, it shall be unlawful—(1) for any alien to depart from or enter or attempt to depart from or enter the United States except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and orders, and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may prescribe;
Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f), states exactly:
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
So that EO is almost certainly illegal, and will be litigated.
Personal Experience: H1B/Work PERM/Personal PERM/EADs/Naturalization
Are they are getting off the aircraft because they believe the "fee" will be required of their employment imminently, and that their employer will not pay it, and this will lead to their visa getting cancelled before they could return to the United States?
Would it? Aren't ICE agents showing up to court hearings and deporting people?
Hence, if you stay in the country nothing will change. And they can wait until this gets played out in the courts, media, congress etc.
If you're on an H-1B and you get fired or laid off, you have 60 days to find a new job or be deported. That creates an underclass of workers who are willing to put up with much worse working conditions and work longer hours. That drives down working conditions and wages for everyone.
A $100k per year fee doesn't fix that, but it does make them so expensive that they are really only viable for $300k+ positions.
There was abuse of the H1B program, but this new EO also has issues. The biggest one currently is the rollout. There is no guidance, no mechanism to pay the actual fee, no clarity on if it applies retroactively to existing visa holders etc.
That's entirely true. But that's not what I've been hearing since this EO was announced. I've just heard pro immigration arguments about all the good H-1B visas accomplish with none of the downsides.
It also incentivizes the CTO to promote a cost saving measure. For any job that doesn't absolutely require onshore presence, lets move it offshore. We can save 100k per position and also retain talent.
Companies have been offshoring jobs due to the tax rule change. Personally I know lot of Google teams which have been offshored. So, I don't understand why people think this will somehow cause job retention. Some jobs might be retained and more will be lost. Acting as if this $100k is somehow a good idea shows lack of understanding of how real world works.
In the meantime, rural medical teams who employ H1B doctors will be decimated. But before that these pesky billion dollar companies need to be taught a lesson.
A shakedown of and a head tax on immigrants.
I wonder what's next. Maybe stealing their 401Ks and their SS contributions?
Here's Bernie Sanders comments on the H-1B visa.
"The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire “the best and the brightest,” but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad."
Trump isn’t going after them, he is converting them into another channel for arbitrary favoritism and graft.
Being against the H-1b as a bad system does not conflict with being against the way Trump is making that system worse.
But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not saying people were anti H-1B visa and now they still are, but disagree with Trump's "solution" I'm seeing comments full of "H-1Bs are good actually".
That’s possible; it is also possible that it isn’t. And it is possible that even if it is, we are a few days or weeks away from an appeals court retroactively invalidating the injunction and allowing cancellations of visas based on failure to return when the injunction was in effect, or else “only” with immediate effect when the injunction is lifted.
If you are an employer who wants to keep your H-1B employees, you probably don’t want to gamble unnecessarily with this, you want the employees to act in a way which minimizes your risk.
> Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
It's a stupidly broad law, but Congress passed it, and now they're too dysfunctional to do anything about it. So I guess we're stuck with it.
Yes, you have to be a genius to go through a 1yr online remote masters program which is mostly group work and essentially a fee for undercutting others on the queue:
Current setup simply brings in foreign labor so that capitalists can reduce wages and they pocket the profit, while Americans pocket the costs. Not to mention migrating for purely economic reasons is obviously not going to make the locals like you very much.
Furthermore as we've seen with "return to office", companies are more concerned with having control than with the bottom line. This new dynamic gives them one more thing to hold over H1Bs heads. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of H1Bs increases.
If H1B is gone we will see a decrease in wages not an increase.
If you have to pay 100k, you might as well hire an American worker. The "shortages" will mysteriously disappear.
I know the twitwall is frustrating (it is to us too) but we want HN posts to link to original sources, and for the site name to the right of the title to reflect that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
We're happy to pin the alt links to the top of a thread and/or to move them into the top text, as I did in the current case.
All through Trump's second term, and before, people have said things precisely like this. And here we are. At some point we realize that people just make such confident pronouncements because they think it bends reality towards their hopes.
>Only an act of congress can change visa requirements
It isn't a visa requirement. It's a processing fee. As of midnight no H1B will be considered without the fee. It is very real, and it is absolutely going into effect. Now places like Microsoft are panicking in the information gap currently, but the admin has clarified that it only applies to new H1B applicants.
As to the legal limbo, not only won't there be one, the Supreme Court has rubber stamped just about everything this admin has done.
The guy has both houses of congress, the courts, the DOJ, the full apparatus of government...at this point I find it simply amazing that people still dismiss the reality that he basically does whatever he wants.
