The US government’s decision to increase the H-1B visa fee to $100,000 caused widespread panic and chaos forcing companies to call back the employees, while many Indian techies and others were left in a state of dilemma over their next step. Perhaps the White House (WH) gauged the same and hence, released a fact-sheet explaining in detail the reasoning behind its order.
It said the number of H-1B visa workers, which comprise a workforce of specialised people, has increased multifold in the US in the past 22 years. Sharing the data, the White House said the share of IT workers with H-1B visas has risen from 32% in FY 2003 to over 65% in recent years. It highlighted that unemployment among recent computer science graduates in the US increased from 6.1% to 7.5%, while the companies kept hiring H-1B visa holders, which is “more than double the rates for biology or art history majors. The number of foreign STEM workers in the United States has more than doubled between 2000 and 2019, while overall STEM employment only increased 44.5% during that time.”
American companies replacing American workers: WH
The White House said, sharing the numbers, that American companies are employing more H-1B visa workers while laying off the American workforce at the same time. It said that a certain company approved for 5,189 H-1B workers in FY 2025, while it laid off roughly 16,000 US employees this year.
“Another company was approved for 1,698 H-1B workers in FY 2025, yet announced it was laying off 2,400 U.S. workers in Oregon in July,” it added. Similarly, the statement said, a third company reduced its US workforce by 27,000 since 2022 while it received 25,075 H-1B approvals.
“Yet another company reportedly cut 1,000 American jobs in February despite receiving 1,137 H-1B approvals for FY 2025,” it said.
It added that American IT workers “have even been reportedly forced to train their foreign replacements under nondisclosure agreements”.
The US government said the H-1B program is creating “disincentives for future American workers to choose STEM careers, which threatens our 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 added.
Trump’s ‘Americans first’ dream
The White House stated that people of the United States voted for President Donald Trump in a resounding mandate to “put American workers first, and he has worked every day to deliver on that commitment”.
It added that Trump has aggressively and successfully negotiated new trade deals to bring manufacturing jobs back home and attract new investments to the US, and added that the tariffs are being used as a strategic tool to “rebuild American manufacturing, secure our supply chains, and protect U.S. national security.”
It said that since Trump has taken charge of the Oval Office ” all employment gains have gone to American-born workers—unlike last year during the same period under President Biden, when all employment gains went to foreign-born workers.”