The United States of America President Donald Trump has signed a new executive order that has imposed a $100,000 [Sh13 million] annual fee on the H-1B visa for skilled workers. This new order shall take effect starting on September 21, 2025.

“The severe harms that the large-scale abuse of this program has inflicted on our economic and national security demands an immediate response,” said President Trump.

“I therefore find that the unrestricted entry into the United States of certain foreign workers would be detrimental to the interests of the United States because such entry would harm American workers, including by undercutting their wages.”

He also cited lack of well-paying jobs for new graduates as one of the reasons why heavier fees must be imposed on companies looking to bring foreign workers to the United States.

“The abuse of this visa program has made it even more challenging for college graduates trying to find IT jobs, allowing employers to hire foreign workers at a significant discount to American workers,” said President Trump.

Additionally, according to the United States Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, companies will have to pay the fee for each applicant they want to take to the U.S for work under this visa program. They will pay for this fee annually for six years.

“The company needs to decide… is the person valuable enough to have a $100,000-a-year payment to the government, or they should head home, and they should go hire an American,” he said.

“If you’re going to train somebody, you’re going to train one of the recent graduates from one of the great universities across our land. Train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs.”

The United States has been capping the number of skilled worker visas it issues per year at 85,000. 65,000 of these visas are reserved for temporary foreign workers in specialized fields, while 20,000 are set aside for workers with advanced degrees.

In the previous year, U.S multinational businesses Amazon, Tata, Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google have been the biggest beneficiaries of the visa program. In the first six months of 2025, Amazon had more than 10,000 H-1B visas approved. while Microsoft had over 5,000 approved visas while Meta Platforms had more than 5,000 visas as well.