OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
8:38 AM – Saturday, September 20, 2025
President Donald Trump has signed a proclamation that will require a $100,000 annual visa fee for skilled foreign workers.
The proclamation, signed on Friday, explains that the H-1B program was intended to temporarily supplement “highly skilled workers who are unavailable in the United States” with foreign labor, particularly in the tech industry, but has been exploited to replace American workers with “lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.” The new restriction is due to concerns over the U.S. economy and national security.
“The high numbers of relatively low-wage workers in the H-1B program undercut the integrity of the program and are detrimental to American workers’ wages and labor opportunities, especially at the entry level,” said the proclamation document.
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The H-1B program offers $65,000 visas each year to employers bringing temporary foreign workers into specialized fields. Nearly all visas are to be paid by employers, and they are approved for a period of three to six years.
The restriction will be effective on Sunday, September 21st, and will expire in one year, pending any extensions.
“We need workers, we need great workers and this pretty much ensure that that’s going to happen,” Trump said.
The new proclamation should protect Americans in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.
“The number of foreign STEM workers in the United States has more than doubled between 2000 and 2019, increasing from 1.2 million to almost 2.5 million, while overall STEM employment has only increased 44.5 percent during that time,” the proclamation reads. “Among computer and math occupations, the foreign share of the workforce grew from 17.7 percent in 2000 to 26.1 percent in 2019. And the key facilitator for this influx of foreign STEM labor has been the abuse of the H-1B visa.”
Information technology (IT) firms are a large culprit of manipulating the H-1B system, harming Americans in computer-related fields, according to the document.
“The share of IT workers in the H-1B program grew from 32 percent in Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 to an average of over 65 percent in the last 5 fiscal years,” it reads.
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said the fee will encourage companies to hire Americans instead of training foreign workers.
“If you’re going to train people, you’re going to train Americans.” Lutnick told reporters on a conference call. “If you have a very sophisticated engineer and you want to bring them in … then you can pay $100,000 a year for your H-1B visa.”
“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. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs, that’s our policy here,” Lutnick said. “All of the big companies are on board. We’ve spoken to them about the gold card and this.”
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