By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas in the United States that goes into effect on Sunday will be levied per petition and will not be applied to existing visa holders re-entering the country, the White House said on Saturday.
"This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition," White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X on Saturday.
A petition is a request by a company to bring a skilled worker from another country into the United States.
FEE ONLY FOR NEW H-1B VISAS
Leavitt said that current H-1B visa holders who are currently outside of the country will not be charged $100,000 to re-enter the United States.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Friday said the fee would be paid annually but added that details were "still being considered." The White House clarification on Saturday represented a walkback from Lutnick's statement.
Some companies including Microsoft, JPMorgan, and Amazon had responded to the Friday announcement by advising employees holding H-1B visas to remain in the United States, according to internal emails reviewed by Reuters. A Goldman Sachs internal memo seen by Reuters on Saturday urged employees with such visas to exercise caution on international travel.
Leavitt said on X that H-1B visa holders can leave and re-enter the country as they normally would and that the new fee would only apply in the next H-1B lottery round and not to current visa holders or renewals.
The White House said the fee was being imposed to level the playing field for American workers which it said are being "replaced with lower-paid foreign labor."
The proclamation imposing the new fee on H-1B visa applications, which was signed by President Donald Trump on Friday, could disrupt the global operations of Indian technology services companies that deploy skilled professionals to the United States, Indian IT industry body Nasscom said early on Saturday.
In a fact sheet distributed on Saturday, the White House said it would allow an H-1B visa application without the $100,000 fee on a case-by-case basis "if in the national interest."
The fact sheet said that the share of IT workers with H-1B visas had risen from 32% in FY 2003 to over 65% in recent years.
Trump's proclamation requires the Departments of Labor and Homeland Security to issue joint guidance for verification, enforcement, audits, and penalties, and directs the Labor Secretary to start a rulemaking process to "revise the prevailing wage levels for the H-1B program" and "to prioritize high-skilled, high-paid H-1B workers."
TECH WORKER PANIC
Friday's announcement sparked concerns among employees across swaths of corporate America.
On the popular Chinese social media app Rednote, many H-1B holders shared stories of rushing back to the U.S. — some just hours after landing abroad, as they feared being subject to the new $100,000 fee.
The White House said Trump's move was designed to address threats to U.S. national security.
"President Trump is imposing higher costs on companies seeking to use the H-1B program in order to address the abuse of the program, stop the undercutting of wages, and protect our national security," it said.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington; Additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Rajveer Singh Pardesi in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler, Marguerita Choy, Andrea Ricci and Michael Perry)
