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The $100,000 H-1B Fee Is a Hidden Tax—And the Wrong Fix

by Ram ben Ze’ev


The $100,000 H-1B Fee Is a Hidden Tax—And the Wrong Fix
The $100,000 H-1B Fee Is a Hidden Tax—And the Wrong Fix

The White House proposal to set an H-1B visa fee at $100,000 makes for a punchy headline but a poor policy. In nearly every case, the U.S.-based employer pays the visa costs—then passes those costs on. Companies do not pay taxes; customers do.


So this is not a penalty on corporations that rely on foreign labour. It is a surcharge on American families and small businesses buying their goods and services.


Here is the first principle that should guide this debate: either foreign labour via the H-1B programme benefits the U.S. economy or it does not. If it truly benefits America, why would any administration hamper it with an arbitrary six-figure levy that invites price rises, offshoring, and legal workarounds? If it does not benefit America—and from my perspective it does not—then why permit it at all? A muddled, headline-driven tax is the worst of both worlds: it keeps the pipeline open while raising consumer prices and entrenching the largest players.



From my perspective, the H-1B system harms the U.S. economy. It suppresses wages, displaces domestic workers, and channels power to labour-arbitrage intermediaries. It creates dependency: firms learn to staff through visa pipelines rather than develop local talent, apprenticeships, and university partnerships. It dilutes long-term capability by exporting know-how and normalising offshoring. It punishes smaller American firms that cannot compete with the scale and immigration compliance machinery of megacaps, further concentrating markets.


Now consider why a $100,000 fee misses the target. The largest employers of H-1B workers will not blink; they will capitalise costs and move on. The ones squeezed will be start-ups, scale-ups, hospitals, and SMEs—the very employers that create dispersed opportunity. The fee will cascade into higher prices, slower hiring, more contracting through outsourcers, and more offshoring. In short, it entrenches the current model while making Americans pay more at the till.


To see the point, look at who dominates H-1B usage today:


  1. Amazon.com Services LLC (10,044)

  2. Tata Consultancy Services (5,505)

  3. Microsoft Corporation (5,189)

  4. Meta Platforms (5,123)

  5. Apple Inc. (4,202)

  6. Google LLC (4,181)

  7. Cognizant Technology Solutions (3,581)

  8. HCL America Inc. (3,564)

  9. Infosys Limited (3,151)

  10. Ernst & Young LLP (2,777)


Do we seriously believe these firms will abandon their staffing model because of a fee? They will simply pass the cost on and carry on.



If the goal is to rebuild a domestic skills base and reduce reliance on foreign labour, there are cleaner, tougher, and more effective paths than a consumer-tax masquerading as immigration reform:


  1. Sunset and replace H-1B with a narrow, time-limited knowledge-transfer visa. Limit it strictly to short stints tied to training identified U.S. understudies. No renewals, no rolling body-shop placements, no displacement of any U.S. worker within a defined window.

  2. Impose a genuine labour-market test with transparency. Before any foreign hire, require public posting of the job, salary band, and skills; mandate independent verification that no qualified U.S. applicant was turned away. Make violations expensive, personal, and swift.

  3. Set a real wage floor. If any exception exists, require pay above the local 90th percentile for the role, with automatic audits. If a company claims a “shortage,” let it prove that claim with pay—it will hire domestically or abandon the fiction.

  4. Make visas worker-portable and punish coercion. If a foreign worker is employed, allow immediate portability to reduce employer monopsony power; ban non-competes and retaliatory threats. Enforce whistle-blower protections with bounties funded by fines.

  5. Reward training, not importing. Offer meaningful credits for accredited apprenticeships, community-college pipelines, and mid-career reskilling for citizens and permanent residents—credits contingent on retention and wage growth, not classroom hours.

  6. Block the body-shop model. Prohibit third-party placement of foreign workers into client sites as a business model. If a company says it needs a specialist, it should hire that person directly and prove the case; no labour-arbitrage middlemen.

  7. Align public procurement with domestic capability. Give preference in government contracts to firms that maintain strong domestic workforce ratios, invest in training, and adhere to non-displacement rules.


These steps would actually change the hiring calculus. They would make it easier—and cheaper—to build American skills than to import labour. They would tilt incentives towards long-term capability rather than short-term arbitrage. Most importantly, they would protect consumers from paying hidden taxes for policies that do not solve the problem.


The proposed $100,000 fee is not a reform; it is a revenue patch that preserves the status quo while shifting the bill to the public. If foreign labour truly benefits the U.S. economy, do not hamstring it with a performative tax. If it does not, have the courage to end the dependency and build the skills base at home. My view is clear: foreign labour via H-1B does not benefit America. End the scheme, rebuild domestic talent, and stop pretending that taxing consumers is a solution.



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