New Delhi, Sep 20 (UNI) Indian IT firms faced a major jolt as U.S. President Donald Trump yesterday signed an order requiring a fee of USD 100,000 per year for companies seeking to sponsor H-1B working visas.
The current H-1B visa fee varies between USD 1,700 and USD 4,500. This also depends on size of employer.
This development showed early signs of investor anxiety on NASDAQ where Indian IT stocks witnessed bearish move throughout the trading session. Shares of Cognizant witnessed a fall of about 4.73 pc. Moreover, shares of Accenture and Infosys also witnessed a fall.
Yesterday, Donald Trump signed a proclamation titled “Restriction on entry of certain non-immigrant workers,” stating that misuse of the H-1B visa is a “national security threat.”
Explaining the rationale behind the decision, the proclamation noted, “Information Technology (IT) firms in particular manipulated the H-1B system, significantly harming American workers in computer-related fields. The shares of IT workers in the H-1B visa program grew from 32 pc in Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 to an average of 65 pc in the last five years. In addition, some of the most prolific H-1B employers are now consistently IT outsourcing companies.”
“ Using these H 1B-reliant IT outsourcing companies provides significant savings for employers: one study of tech workers showed a 36pc discount for H-1B “entry-level” positions as compared to full-time traditional workers. To take advantage of artificially low labor costs incentivized by the program, companies close their IT divisions, fire their American staff, and outsource IT jobs to lower-paid foreign workers,” it added.
The proclamation points directly to a growing reliance on foreign talent by major technology players, underscoring the administration’s belief that the system has been overused by outsourcing firms.
According to figures released by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (June 2025), Amazon had 10,044 workers using H-1B visas, and Tata Consultancy Services had 5,505.
Other top beneficiaries include Microsoft (5,189), Meta (5,123), Apple (4,202) and Google (4,181).
US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agency that administers the country’s immigration and naturalization system, handling processes such as approving applications for immigration benefits and processing naturalization petitions.
These numbers highlight how deeply embedded the H-1B program is in the operations of both U.S. and Indian technology companies.
