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Journalism of Courage
Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump announced his decision to impose a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visas, sending shockwaves across the tech industry. The fee revision, though applicable to new visas, could likely upend decades-old strategies of rotating talents into the US, according to analysts and economists. Amid the cloud of confusion that wafted over following the unprecedented announcement, several tech leaders seem to have embraced the new change.
Following the announcement, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman commented on President Trump’s decision. During an interview with CNBC’s Jon Fortt, Huang and Altman announced that Nvidia will be investing $100 billion in OpenAI. This comes at a time when OpenAI is eyeing establishing mammoth data centres worth hundreds of billions of dollars based on Nvidia’s AI processors.
Huang said that immigration is the foundation of the American Dream, adding that he wants all the brightest minds to come to the US. “We represent the American Dream. And so I think immigration is really important to our company and is really important to our nation’s future, and I’m glad to see President Trump making the moves he’s making,” Huang told CNBC.
On the other hand, the OpenAI chief shared his optimism for Trump’s changes. “We need to get the smartest people in the country, and streamlining that process and also sort of outlining financial incentives seems good to me,” Altman told the news outlet.
Trump announced that starting this Sunday, a $100,000 fee will be imposed for every new H-1B visa. This is a significant hike, as earlier the fee was just a few hundred dollars for filing. The H-1B programme has been helping American companies hire some of the most highly skilled and talented foreign professionals, especially from India and China. These professionals went on to assume plum roles in technology, research, and engineering fields.
With the new steep fee, the cost of employing foreign talent will go higher. This would also impact the $283-billion Indian IT services sector, which is among the top suppliers of H-1B workers. Indian companies such as TCS, Infosys, and Wipro rely on rotating engineers to US client sites. And the new higher visa costs will push these companies to rethink their onshore-offshore strategies. They will be forced to curb short-term employee transfers and may need to resort to local hiring of US citizens or green card holders.
Big tech, especially Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, are likely to feel the burn. Reportedly, some of these companies have asked their employees to return to the US at the earliest. Most importantly, these companies may need to expend more in recruitment or scale back their international hiring. This could likely slow innovation and increase project costs. In line with this, several analysts have predicted project delays, a talent crunch, and more pressure on US tech wages.
