Trump’s H-1B visa fee sparks chaos and confusion among Chinese talents in the U.S.

Anger and confusion gripped Chinese professionals in the U.S. after White House leader Donald Trump slapped hefty fees on new work visas, deepening anxiety among those seeking to build careers stateside.

Last Friday, the Trump administration said that it would ask companies to pay $100,000 for new H-1B visa applicants. A slew of tech firms and banks including Microsoft, JPMorgan and Amazon responded to the announcements by advising employees holding the H-1B visas to stay in the country.

The White House has now clarified that the new rule only applies to new H-1B applicants, not to current visa holders or to those seeking to renew their permits.

While the U.S. government may cash in on a windfall from the visa fee hike in the near term, the new policy will almost certainly deter Chinese students from pursuing a degree or career in the U.S., said Xinbo Wu, director of Fudan University’s Center for American Studies in Shanghai.

India was the largest beneficiary of H-1B visas last year, accounting for 71% of approved visa holders, with China as a distant second at 11.7%, according to the U.S. homeland security data.

The most common industry among employers of H-1B workers last year was the professional, scientific and technical services sector, within which the largest segment of beneficiaries involved those providing computer programming services.

Shortly after Trump’s announcement of the executive order, many Chinese people took to a social media app Xiaohongshu to share their experiences of having to rush back to the U.S. after hearing the news or receiving recommendations from their employers.

Many people had to cut short their vacation plans or canceled their trips altogether, fearing that they may not be allowed back once the new rules took effect.

A woman with the user name “Emily in New York” said on the app that she had boarded a United Airlines flight from New York to Paris last Friday, and that the plane was taxiing on the runway when she received the news of the new order. After negotiating with the crewmembers, she said she managed to get off the plane.

She canceled her trip, planning to scrap her travel altogether before rebooking again once she realized the new rule didn’t affect current visa holders.

“It was 48 hours of helplessness and frustration,” she said, “moments like this showed how the chaos in the world can upend individual lives at any time,” according to a CNBC translation.

CNBC could not independently verify her report.

The announcement marked the Trump administration’s most aggressive step yet to curb immigration, particularly targeting talent inflows from China. Earlier this year, the Trump administration threatened to revoke the visas of Chinese students amid a tit-for-tat with Beijing, before reversing the restrictions as tensions eased.

The number of Chinese students in the U.S. dropped to about 277,000 in 2024, however, from a high of around 373,000 in 2019 amid growing tension between the world’s two biggest economies, heightened U.S. government scrutiny of Chinese students, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

More students are considering alternative destinations like Hong Kong and Singapore for higher education, said Sam Lin, founder of education agency Fujian Visionary Education, with a growing number switching gears and revisiting taking China’s national exam to enter local universities.

“Trump’s erratic policies have made students and parents more cautious and anxious when planning their studies, but many have also realized his threats often sound more dramatic than they actually are,” Lin said. “These steps may not be intended to be carried out on the scale that the administration suggested.”

Questions linger over how the new visa fee rules will be implemented.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Friday said that companies would have to pay $100,000 per year for H-1B work visa holders, but White House Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt later noted in a Saturday post on X that this was amount was not an annual fee, but a one-time payment that would be applied to each petition.

On Saturday, a White House official clarified that the order applied only to new applicants and not to holders of existing visas or to those seeking permit renewals.

“For those waiting for their first H-1B to be filed, the new fee creates a steep and immediate barrier,” said Akshat Divatia, an immigration attorney at Seattle-based law firm Harris Sliwoski, noting that any petition submitted after the effective deadline of midnight EST on Sept. 21 will incur the surcharge.

“For companies, the rule is not a retroactive tax on current H-1B employees but an up-front hiring cost for new cap-subject hires,” he said, adding that the $100,000 fee forces businesses to rethink “whether each new hire is worth such a steep up-front investment.”

“For large multinationals, that might mean shifting more work offshore or limiting U.S. sponsorship to only the most senior or specialized roles. For startups and mid-sized firms, many of whom already stretch to cover legal and filing fees, the price tag may take H-1B hiring off the table altogether,” said Divatia.

The latest measures also direct the U.S. authorities to raise the prevailing wage levels to “upskill” the program and reshape the lottery system by prioritizing high-paid, high-skilled roles over entry-level positions — pushing employers to use the H-1B program for a “narrow band of elite, high-compensation jobs,” said Divatia.

The latest statement sent shockwaves through some of the largest American tech and finance companies over the weekend.

Amazon employed the largest number of H-1B visa holders — more than 14,000 as of the end of June. Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google had over 4,000 such visas each, coming in among the top 10 recipients of H-1B permits for the fiscal year 2025.

In an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” program, IBM Vice Chairman Gary Cohn, who served as National Economic Council director during Trump’s first term, said that the panic had dissipated over the weekend. He praised the move for ensuring higher-skilled talents in the U.S. and ultimately good for the economy.

“It caused a panic over the weekend because people weren’t sure what was going on with the existing H-1B visas. It’s been cleaned up over the weekend so at this point there’s not a panic in the system,” he said.

“Ultimately we’re going to bring high skilled people in the United States. It’s going to help grow our economy, and that’s good for all of us.”

— CNBC’s Yun Li contributed to this report.