White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified {that a} new $100,000 visa payment ‘applies only to new visas, not renewals [or] current holders.’
The White Home on Sept. 20 clarified {that a} plan to cost a $100,000 payment for H-1B visa candidates will apply solely to new visas after an govt proclamation on Sept. 19 prompted confusion for a lot of present H-1B visa holders.
“This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one time fee that applies only to the petition [for a visa]. … This applies only to new visas, not renewals, and not current holders,” White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in a Sept. 20 submit on X.
Leavitt additionally clarified that H-1B holders who’re presently outdoors the USA gained’t be charged $100,000 to reenter.
The submit sought to assuage a few of the largest considerations that had been expressed following President Donald Trump’s presidential proclamation on Sept. 19.
Trump introduced the six-figure payment for brand new candidates to the high-skilled labor H-1B visa program. He additionally introduced a proposal for a brand new $1 million “gold card” visa as a pathway to citizenship.
Within the proclamation, Trump wrote that the H-1B program was supposed to convey employees in on a brief foundation “to perform additive, high-skilled functions” however has been “deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”
H-1B visas have drawn growing consideration, notably within the tech and pc science business, through which tech giants comparable to Google, Apple, Fb, and others have relied closely on visas. Critics—together with the administration—say the system has been abused to the detriment of American employees.
A White Home reality sheet on the presidential proclamation states that U.S. firms are “laying off their American technology workers and seemingly replacing them with H-1B workers.”
The actual fact sheet notes that the substantial rise in H-1B employees in tech-based fields, stating that these employees made up 32 p.c of the IT business in 2003, whereas lately, that determine has exceeded 65 p.c.
In accordance with the White Home, just lately graduated pc science majors face an unemployment fee of 6.1 p.c, and pc engineering graduates have an unemployment fee of seven.5 p.c—greater than double the unemployment fee confronted by current graduates in biology or artwork historical past.
The proclamation will seemingly face challenges in courtroom. If it survives authorized challenges, the proclamation’s phrases would go into impact in the course of the subsequent lottery for H-1B employees.
The payment is a big improve from the present software payment of $215, and Trump stated it might return this system to its “additive, high-skilled” focus.
The White Home additionally acknowledged that the proclamation permits for “case-by-case exemptions if in the national interest,” on the discretion of the homeland safety secretary.
On Sept. 19, Trump additionally signed an govt order to permit rich foreigners to pay a seven-figure sum in trade for entry to an expedited immigration course of.
The manager order states that to obtain entry to the method, a person should make “an unrestricted gift to the Department of Commerce,” which is permitted beneath present regulation.
It units the speed at $1 million for a person petitioning for a visa on their very own behalf or $2 million for a person being sponsored by an organization or related entity.
Trump offered the “gold card” proposal to Congress in his first coverage deal with on March 5.
On the time, he proposed a $5 million payment to obtain such a card.
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