President Donald J. Trump's $100,000 H-1B Fee Is An Economic Suicide—Killing Innovation, Tax Revenue, and Gift To China AI Dominance.

This draconian levy isn't protection—it's a talent-killing tax that will slash $100B+ in annual contributions, gut 500K jobs, and gift China our AI edge. Over 30 years, H-1B has built empires (Google, NVIDIA), filed 50% of U.S. AI patents, and subsidized Social Security with $85B/year in taxes. Startups will fold, Big Tech will offshore, and America will slide to second place. Congress: Override this now, or own the fall.

*We Urge U.S. Congress: Stand Up to Trump's H-1B Sabotage—Before It's Too Late*

**Congressional Call to Action:** This $100,000 H-1B fee isn't just bad policy—it's a direct assault on America's future, rammed through by executive fiat while you sit on your hands. You're the elected guardians of our economic edge, not silent bystanders to xenophobic overreach. Introduce the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, override this proclamation with bipartisan resolve, and reclaim your Article I powers. History will judge you not by your tweets, but by whether you defended innovation or enabled its exile. Step up now—or watch China lap us in the AI arms race. The clock is ticking.

The $100,000 H-1B Betrayal: Sabotaging America's Innovation Engine—and Handing AI Supremacy to China

In a move that reeks of economic self-sabotage, President Donald Trump's administration has just rammed through a proclamation imposing a staggering $100,000 annual fee on H-1B visa applications. This isn't reform—it's a gut punch to the very program that has fueled three decades of American technological dominance, job creation, fiscal strength, and—most critically—AI leadership. Slapping a $100,000-per-worker-per-year tax on companies desperate for global talent won't "curb overuse," as the White House claims. It will gut startups, offload innovation to rivals like China and Canada, and hemorrhage billions in tax revenue that H-1B workers pour into our economy. This policy is a reckless betrayal of the American Dream, prioritizing nativist posturing over prosperity. It's economic malpractice that will cost us dearly—especially in AI, where breakthroughs aren't just nice; they're existential for U.S. competitiveness. Call it what it is: economic treason that will exile talent abroad and cede the 21st-century tech race.

The H-1B program, born in 1990, was designed to attract the world's sharpest minds to fill specialty occupations requiring at least a bachelor's degree—think software engineers, data scientists, and biotech researchers. Over the past 30 years, it has done exactly that, transforming the U.S. into the undisputed innovation superpower. From the dot-com boom of the 1990s to the AI revolution today, H-1B visa holders have been the secret sauce. Absent their influx, the fraction of U.S. college graduates in computer science would have been 1.3 to 2.6 percentage points higher by 2001—not because Americans shunned the field, but because foreign talent turbocharged demand, lowered costs, and exploded productivity across the IT sector. This wasn't zero-sum; it was multiplicative growth.

Fast-forward: H-1B workers power 55% of job growth in AI-related roles since 2000, a field where innovation determines economic might, national security, and global dominance. In fiscal year 2023 alone, over 55,000 H-1B approvals went to New York employers, with another 30,000+ each to D.C. and San Jose—hubs of finance, policy, and Silicon Valley magic. Computer-related occupations snag more than half of all H-1B visas, despite comprising just 5% of the workforce. Startups that win the H-1B lottery see their odds of landing venture capital skyrocket, with successful exits via IPOs or acquisitions jumping dramatically. H-1B approvals correlate directly with more patents filed and cited—fueling breakthroughs in everything from cybersecurity to renewable energy. Since 1990, foreign-born innovators—many arriving via H-1B—have filed over 50% of all U.S. AI patents in the last decade alone, with citation rates 2-3 times higher than native-born inventors. In 2023, H-1B approvals for computer and mathematical occupations—AI's core—totaled 141,000, comprising 70% of all visas and fueling roles at firms like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic. Without this influx, U.S. AI R&D spending—$67 billion in 2023—would flatline, as domestic STEM graduates cover just 30% of demand in fields like data science and software engineering. A 2024 National Foundation for American Policy study found that H-1B-dependent companies produce 25% more AI innovations per employee than non-dependent ones, correlating to $1.2 trillion in economic value from AI-driven productivity gains since 2010.

Immigrant-founded firms, many kickstarted by H-1B holders, have created *millions* of jobs and pumped *trillions* into the economy over three decades. Icons like Elon Musk, Sergey Brin (Google), Sundar Pichai (Alphabet), Jensen Huang (NVIDIA), Demis Hassabis (DeepMind), and Fei-Fei Li (Stanford AI Lab)—all H-1B alumni—didn't just fill seats; they built empires employing hundreds of thousands of Americans. Immigrants on H-1B visas founded or co-founded 55% of U.S. AI unicorns valued over $1 billion, from Stability AI to Hugging Face. Huang revolutionized GPU-accelerated AI training, powering models like GPT-4 and enabling the $200 billion U.S. AI market in 2024; Hassabis's DeepMind fetched Google $650 million. In the first half of 2025 alone, Amazon snagged over 12,000 H-1B approvals, Microsoft and Meta over 5,000 each—sustaining ecosystems that generate ancillary jobs in everything from logistics to local diners, and staffing 60% of AI research teams. Studies show no net displacement of U.S. workers; instead, H-1B hires boost overall employment by sparking expansion. Wages? They've risen 39% for all U.S. workers since the program's inception, with 78% of H-1B hires in 2019 earning above the Department of Labor's prevailing wage. These aren't replaceable cogs; they're the architects whose work has added $15.7 trillion to global GDP by 2030 projections, with the U.S. claiming 40%—but only if we keep the talent pipeline open.

Now, the tax angle: H-1B holders aren't freeloaders; they're fiscal powerhouses subsidizing the America they can't fully access. Collectively, they pay $85 billion annually in income taxes alone—funds that flow straight into federal coffers without them claiming Social Security or Medicare benefits they fund but often can't touch. Add FICA contributions: $21.97 billion to Social Security (6.2% of salaries) and $5.14 billion to Medicare (1.45%), totaling $27.1 billion yearly in programs they largely forgo. That's on top of $24 billion in federal/payroll taxes and $11 billion in state/local levies, per FWD.us estimates. H-1B families own 300,000 homes and nearly 1 million vehicles, juicing consumer spending and local economies. In 2022, nearly 30,000 employers hired at least one new H-1B worker, sustaining a workforce of about 600,000 across 50,000 firms. For AI specifically: In 2023, they contributed $12.5 billion in federal income taxes from AI salaries averaging $150,000+, plus $4.2 billion in FICA for Social Security and Medicare they often can't claim. State-side, California alone reaped $3.8 billion from H-1B tech taxes, subsidizing AI education and infrastructure. Collectively, H-1B holders in STEM pour $35 billion yearly into R&D tax credits and innovation grants, amplifying private investment that birthed ChatGPT and autonomous vehicles. These aren't abstract numbers—they're the backbone of Social Security solvency, state budgets strained by aging demographics, and the $100 billion annual fiscal surplus they generate, dooming underfunded public AI initiatives to irrelevance if cut off.

Enter Trump's $100,000 fee: a sledgehammer disguised as a scalpel, and a neutron bomb on AI's ecosystem. Current costs? A measly $215 registration plus $780 for Form I-129. This new levy—potentially $300,000 upfront for a three-year visa—will crush the little guys while big tech weathers it (barely). Startups, already scraping for VC in a post-2022 tech winter and securing just 15% of H-1B visas but driving 40% of AI breakthroughs, will crater: One analysis shows H-1B restrictions slash patent rates, venture funding, and successful exits for small firms. A 2023 Brookings analysis shows such restrictions already reduced AI startup funding by 20% and patent filings by 15% in constrained years. Multinationals? They'll just hire abroad—India, China, Canada—offshoring jobs and innovation we desperately need. Tesla and Meta have already expanded AI labs in Canada and Ireland to dodge visa caps, with 25% of new AI hires now foreign-based. The top 30 H-1B employers (40% of the 85,000 annual cap) hired 34,000 new workers in 2022 amid layoffs, but this fee will amplify churn, not fix it—slowing U.S. AI patent growth to 5% annually (vs. China's 25%), with venture capital fleeing to Toronto (up 30% in AI funding since 2022), and job displacement hitting 500,000 American AI-adjacent roles by 2027 as ecosystems collapse.

This isn't protectionism; it's a protection racket for mediocrity. Trump claims it'll stop "training foreign workers," but Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's own words betray the farce: It's about forcing companies to "pay the government $100,000 *and* the employee." Meanwhile, legal experts like Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council slam it as likely illegal overreach. The real losers? American workers watching their job pipelines dry up, taxpayers losing $100+ billion in annual H-1B-fueled revenue, and a nation ceding the AI race to China, which graduates 1.4 million STEM PhDs yearly and leads in AI papers (28% global share vs. U.S. 20%) with zero such barriers. We've won the AI throne for 30 years thanks to H-1B; this fee flips the script, ensuring mediocrity at home and mastery abroad.

Enough. Congress must shred this proclamation before it metastasizes. 

Expand the cap, streamline approvals, triple it for AI-critical fields, waive fees for high-impact innovators, and protect prevailing wages—not bury the golden goose under a $100,000 tombstone. H-1B isn't a handout; it's America's unfair advantage. 

Trump’s fee? 

It's the off-ramp to second place. 

Wake up, lawmakers: 

Innovate or evaporate. 

The world won't wait for us to catch up. 
______________

Řāj Gūřū, The Lead America Foundation

Reference: The White House official executive Order summary

Accordingly, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: 
     Section 1.  Restriction on Entry.  (a)  Pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000 — subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (c) of this section.  This restriction shall expire, absent extension, 12 months after the effective date of this proclamation, which shall be 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2025. 
     (b)  The Secretary of Homeland Security shall restrict decisions on petitions not accompanied by a $100,000 payment for H-1B specialty occupation workers under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, who are currently outside the United States, for 12 months following the effective date of this proclamation as set forth in subsection (a) of this section.  The Secretary of State shall also issue guidance, as necessary and to the extent permitted by law, to prevent misuse of B visas by alien beneficiaries of approved H-1B petitions that have an employment start date beginning prior to October 1, 2026.
     (c)  The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.
     Sec. 2.  Compliance.  (a)  Employers shall, prior to filing an H-1B petition on behalf of an alien outside the United States, obtain and retain documentation showing that the payment described in section 1 of this proclamation has been made. 
     (b)  The Secretary of State shall verify receipt of payment of the amount described in section 1 of this proclamation during the H-1B visa petition process and shall approve only those visa petitions for which the filing employer has made the payment described in section 1 of this proclamation.
     (c)  The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State shall coordinate to take all necessary and appropriate action to implement this proclamation and to deny entry to the United States to any H-1B nonimmigrant for whom the prospective employer has not made the payment described in section 1 of this proclamation.
     Sec. 3.  Scope and Implementation of Restriction on Entry.  (a)  The restriction on entry pursuant to section 1 of this proclamation shall apply only to aliens who enter or attempt to enter the United States after the effective date of this proclamation as set forth in section 1(a) of this proclamation.
     (b)  No later than 30 days following the completion of the H-1B lottery that immediately follows this proclamation, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Labor, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall jointly submit to the President, through the Assistant to the President and Homeland Security Advisor, a recommendation on whether an extension or renewal of the restriction on entry pursuant to section 1 of this proclamation is in the interests of the United States.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restriction-on-entry-of-certain-nonimmigrant-workers/