The $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee: When Protecting Jobs Means Pricing Out Startups
In late September 2025, the Trump administration announced a dramatic hike in the fee employers must pay when filing new H-1B visa applications from a range of $2,000-$5,000 up to $100,000 per new application. The increased fee is being called a talent tariff by some startup founders and critics of the new policy generally. Tariffs are the sort of thing you impose on foreign steel, not foreign software engineers. Why is the government doing this?