Business leaders and economists are warning that the Trump administration’s new $100,000 fee on H-1B visas could hurt America’s innovation engine.
Investor Kevin O’Leary and economist Stephen Moore told FOX Business on Monday the move risks driving top global talent — the engineers and entrepreneurs who helped build Silicon Valley’s trillion-dollar giants — to other countries, undermining U.S. competitiveness and future job creation.
"My response to that, I think it's a bad idea on the H-1Bs. We need more of them, not fewer of them," Moore said on "Varney & Co." "The more H-1B visas we hand out, the more jobs we create in the United States."
"I think what this does is hurt innovation long-term. I agree that it's going to push these really talented people into other countries," O’Leary said.
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On Friday, the Trump administration announced it will implement a $100,000 fee for new H-1B work visa applications. The fee does not apply to renewals or existing visa holders and will begin in 2026, according to Reuters.
The administration said the goal is to reduce what it sees as exploitation of the program and prioritize higher-value jobs.
"President Trump promised to put American workers first, and this commonsense action does just that by discouraging companies from spamming the system and driving down American wages. It also gives certainty to American businesses who actually want to bring high-skilled workers to our great country but have been trampled on by abuses of the system," White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Fox News Digital.
"The text of the Proclamation is very clear and it is unfortunate that uninformed reporters and corporate lawyers attempt to sow chaos and confusion," she continued. "Americans have another reason to celebrate unprecedented action by President Trump to protect Americans from cheap, foreign labor."
About 400,000 H-1B visas were approved in 2024, according to the Pew Research Center. India was the top country of birth for visa holders, making up 73%, while China ranked second with 12%.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services requires H-1B applicants to have at least a bachelor’s degree and apply for "specialty occupations." Many H-1B holders work in the tech sector, with a significant presence in software, systems engineering, academia and health sciences.
"We are attracting the best and the brightest people from all over the world to places like Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas, and Boston, Massachusetts," Moore noted. "Did you know… that three of our Magnificent Seven companies… the CEOs came in on an H-1B visa? So think about how many hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs have been created by people like Elon Musk."
Although Musk did not use the H-1B process, he moved from South Africa to Canada before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania in the U.S., ultimately building companies like Tesla and SpaceX that have created hundreds of thousands of jobs.
"Apple, Oracle, Google all started in a garage. They could not have afforded to do this. And all of those companies took advantage of talent they couldn't find in the United States as they grew," O’Leary said.
Following the announcement, internal emails from Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon reviewed by Reuters advised H-1B employees to remain in the U.S. until further notice.
"Charging a fee to come in the United States, I mean, maybe an auction system might make a lot of sense, and we could raise some money from that," Moore said. "There was a parallel proposal by Trump that was announced last week, which I like a lot, which are these golden visas… you pay a million dollars, you get a visa, you agree to come to the United States, start a business, employ a certain number of Americans. That's a great idea."
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"So, Mr. President, I like that idea," Moore continued. "I'm not wild about charging people more for the H-1B visas."
O’Leary offered his own proposal: "My attitude about this is, if we educate you at MIT or at Harvard, any school, we should give you... a free ticket to stay here, get married, form a company and build American businesses here. Why train them and kick them out? And if they're available, let's take them all and not charge a $100,000. We should give them a $100,000 to come here."
