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Trump hits H-1B visas with $100,000 fee, targeting the program that launched Elon Musk and Instagram


President Trump signed a proclamation Friday requiring employers to pay a hefty $100,000 fee for new H-1B visa applications—an enormous jump from the current $215 lottery registration fee—targeting the very program that helped create some of Silicon Valley's biggest success stories.

H-1B visas allow U.S. companies to hire foreign workers in fields that that typically require technical expertise like IT, engineering, mathematics, or medicine. In the meantime, in its proclamation on Friday, the Trump administration went full bore on its criticism of the program, pointing to specific companies that approved thousands of H-1B workers while simultaneously laying off American employees. According to the White House fact sheet, one unnamed company received approval for 5,189 H-1B workers this fiscal year while cutting roughly 16,000 U.S. jobs.

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