Donald Trump backstabs Silicon Valley, but apparently he has ‘zero legal authority’ to charge $100K H-1B Visa fee – We Got This Covered

The Donald Trump administration has issued a new mandate concerning the H1-B visa that will require companies hiring through that visa category to pay $100,000 to sponsor each employee. Reports trickling in from the tech industry and legal community are already crying foul.

One of the most unprecedented sequences of events about the second Trump administration is that he somehow ended up winning over Silicon Valley. California in general was one of the most anti-Trump regions of the country, and tech in particular has always been progressive. It was quite a shock when Elon Musk put his financial weight behind Trump — but rather quickly, he was perhaps the first example to show that Trump will eventually fall out with members from that particular industry.

Trump signed a new executive order that will apparently enforce that every company bringing in foreign workers will have to pay $100,000 per employee. According to Reuters, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said, “If you’re going to train somebody, you’re going to train one of the recent graduates from one of the great universities across our land. Train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs.”

Reports came out saying that Microsoft and JP Morgan did not waste any time in warning their employees who are on H1-B visas. The two informed their employees through email that if they’re in the US and planning to leave the country soon, they should halt their plans until further notice. The two companies apparently even asked employees on H1-B visas not currently in the country to fly back in by Saturday Sep. 20, midnight.

Elon Musk has been on record defending H1-B visas, earlier claiming that they help the US fill talent gaps and keep the tech industry competitive globally. Surprisingly, Trump was also among the people who defended the visa earlier, and the president had previously stated that he would make changes that would improve H1-B visa holders’ path to citizenship because he wants “to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.”

H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship. We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2019

An immigration law expert commented about the new executive order on X. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said, “The only authority Congress has ever given the executive branch here is to charge fees to recover the cost of processing the application.” This new Executive Order might join other Trump-era executive orders that were challenged or completely struck down in court, such as his efforts to end DACA or issue travel bans without following the correct legal parameters.

We haven’t seen the text of this yet, but to be clear, the president has literally zero legal authority to impose a $100,000 fee on visas. The only authority Congress has ever given the executive branch here is to charge fees to recover the cost of processing the application. https://t.co/8E4JIGymZB

— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) September 19, 2025

The members of the tech industry are also concerned about what the H1-B being dismantled would mean for the US tech sector. There are very robust tech industries in China, Europe, and even India — which, if the US isn’t careful, it might lose out to if they continue pushing away talent that these tech titans clearly consider the best in the world.

Trump’s promise to his base was that he would ensure mass immigration restrictions. He fearmongered that the Joe Biden administration let in criminals and now — it’s increasingly clear that that was just amplification so that his base would look away as he got rid of any non-US born resident.