Startup leaders warn new $100K H-1B visa fee will hurt U.S. entrepreneurship and innovation

by Taylor Soper on Sep 20, 2025 at 12:19 pm September 20, 2025 at 12:22 pm (Photo by iStrfry , Marcus on Unsplash) Longtime entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are sounding the alarm over President Trump’s new H-1B fee that would impact tech companies and the workers they hire from abroad. Trump announced an executive order Friday outlining the $100,000 fee for H-1B work visas, which allow companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers in “specialty occupations” such as software engineering, data science, and other STEM fields. By imposing the new fee, the Trump administration says it aims to curb abuse of the H-1B program while reserving visas for only the “best of the best.” Currently, companies pay several thousand dollars in government fees and legal costs per H-1B application. Adding a $100,000 surcharge per worker would be unprecedented. “Now we’re making H-1B sponsorship prohibitively expensive, cities outside the U.S., like Toronto, Vancouver, and London will pick up the talent,” Manny Medina, co-founder of Seattle startup Outreach, wrote on LinkedIn. Medina, who is working on a new startup, recently relocated to London. “To my founder friends stuck in visa limbo: London’s doors are open,” he wrote in his post. Larger companies
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