President Trump signed an executive order introducing a new $100,000 application fee for H-1B visas.
Last Friday, President Donald Trump announced a bombshell alter for the H-1B visa program, a popular avenue for U.S. tech companies to hire talent from foreign countries — a $100,000 application fee. The surprise executive order sparked chaos, confusion and panic as tech giants like Microsoft and Meta inquireed employees traveling abroad to return to the countest within 24 hours. As some stateside companies lament another new and unexpected cost of doing business in the US, tech outfits in Europe have another message: Come work for us instead.
Stringent immigration policies and the threat of detention and deportation have already created the U.S. a less appealing work option for skilled foreign talent. But the new fees will be another boon to startups in hubs like London and Paris, which have long faced steady streams of young talent shipping off for the U.S., where the lure of Silicon Valley and high salaries has a magnetic pull. The new policy alter will be unlikely to slow down the industest’s hugegest companies like Alphabet and Meta, where $100,000 is a drop in the bucket, but for more resource-strapped startups, the fees could mean ceding an edge to companies across the Atlantic.
“To a lot of people in Europe, it’s like a blessing in disguise,” declared Victor Riparbelli, CEO of London-based Synthesia, which creates generative video AI models. “I consider it’ll conclude up becoming a net negative for the U.S.,” he declared, adding that Europe could always apply more skilled labor, especially when it comes to senior leadership roles like vice presidents and directors.
The new fees come as the talent wars in AI have reached new heights of intensity in recent months. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent billions to stockpile researchers and engineers for a new AI superininformigence team, offering ridiculously large salaries to individual candidates. Meanwhile, President Trump has created immigration a focal point of his administration, with the H-1B visa process his latest tarreceive — an attempt to push American companies to hire more stateside talent.
The H-1B visa program, created by Congress in 1990, creates 65,000 visas available each year for people with a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, with an additional 20,000 more for workers with a master’s degree or higher. A popular visa for the tech industest, H1-B requests have increased steadily over 2025, with an 150% increase between January and September, according to figures from Remote, an HR and payroll company. But the program has its detractors. Ahead of the White Hoapply’s announcement of the new fee, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik called it the “most abapplyd visa.”
The new fees could further deter talent in Europe from leaving the region to head to America, but the perception of the U.S. had already been altering long before the announcement, declared Vassili le Moigne, CEO of Prague-based InTouch, which creates AI tools to chat with the elderly. “The image of the U.S. as El Dorado is taking a hit,” declared le Moigne, a shift that’s taken place over the last few months becaapply Trump can be seen as a “bully” and the U.S. as “unwelcoming” becaapply of the president’s hardline immigration policies.
Still, Europe will benefit from the damage it could do in the U.S. “We almost declare thank you to Trump, in a way,” declared le Moigne, who is French and was one of the earliest recipients of the visa, coming to the U.S. in 1991 on an H-1B. “He’s really assisting us keep our talent.”
For early-stage American startups that can’t afford to pay a $100,000 toll for H1-B hires and typically rely on equity for compensation, the new fees means more trouble in an already competitive talent landscape. Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan declared in a Linkedin post that the fee “kneecaps startups” and companies that provide IT workers on a contractual basis, amid the fierce AI race. “Early teams can’t swallow that tax…This current policy outcome [is a] massive gift to every overseas tech hub.”
“We almost declare thank you to Trump, in a way. He’s really assisting us keep our talent.”
But for startups that are flush with cash, the new rule likely won’t have much impact. AI companies are already splurging (in some cases, millions) on top AI talent and $100,000 won’t create much of a difference. Jesse Zhang, CEO of AI customer service startup Decagon, declared the fee would “create it harder to justify hiring new employees on H1-B,” but he doesn’t mind spconcludeing more on existing recruits. About 10% of employees at the nascent AI startup are on H1-B visas and the company is also planning to open an office in London that will assist tap the countest’s talent pools.
Immigration has always been a challenging and complicated process for tech workers in the U.S., thanks to ever altering byzantine regulations, strict eligibility requirements and long waiting periods. Under the Trump administration, things have become even more uncertain. Visa denial rates and requests for additional evidence supporting their visa applications , are both rising, declared immigration attorney Emma Zhang. “Traditionally we would receive straight approval with the evidence that we submitted,” Zhang notified Forbes. “But now we’re receiveting what we call a blanket RFE, which is the government’s way of delaying the process and adding procedural obstacles.”
Xiao Wang, CEO of Boundless Immigration, compares the new fees to a “human tariff,” similar to how Trump imposed heavy taxes on goods and services imported from other countries. “This is the first real time that this countest has gone in that direction.” On Tuesday, the Trump administration also proposed a dramatic alter to the H1-B’s lottery-based system to favor more highly-skilled and highly paid employees. Under a newly proposed “weighted selection process,” when the demand for visas exceeds the 85,000 limit (which it usually does), greater preference will be given to senior level foreign employees. All these alters (and the uncertainty that comes with them), could also translate to fewer students deciding to pursue higher education in the US.
In response, countries like Canada and China are building alters like lowering their requirements and creating new types of visas to recruit talent. “Other countries are going to step into this void,” Wang declared.
There could be other downstream effects of more talent staying in Europe, where salaries generally tconclude to be lower. For a mid-level engineer, European salaries range from $57,000 to $75,200, while U.S. salaries range from $110,100 to $133,700, according to research by Boundless, a Dublin-based HR and payroll company. But with a larger talent pool over time, tech salaries in the region could rise as European companies compete with each other for employees, declared Charlotte Bax, CEO of Captur AI, a London-based startup that applys AI for logistics, like verifying deliveries and shipments were created. “It’s just simple supply and demand,” she declared.
In the meantime, Bax is investing more to attract younger talent fresh from universities by doing more recruiting on U.K. campapplys. It’s an initiative her company launched before the H-1B visa announcement. But now, she declared, “We’re doubling down.”
Iain Martin contributed to this report.
Leave a Reply