Trumps new visa policy inspires mostly sour response from tech firms

By Chris Prentice and Surbhi Misra

NEW YORK/BENGALURU (GWN) -U.S. President Donald Trump‘s new visa charges for international employees drew widespread condemnation from technology executives, entrepreneurs and traders across social media, with just a few outliers, as many noticed it as a major blow to a sector that contributed thousands and thousands to his re-election marketing campaign.

Technology executives and traders said the new charges may add thousands and thousands of {dollars} in prices for corporations and disproportionately damage startups, which might not be ready to afford visas as half of their strategy.

In a complicated set of bulletins starting late Friday, Trump and other White House officers said they’d charge firms $100,000 apiece for H1-B employee momentary employment visas, used by many tech majors, including Amazon.com, Microsoft and Meta Platforms.

Many criticized the transfer and the chaotic roll-out that required the White House to make clear the hefty charges could be charged just once, not yearly, and they’d not apply to present holders, including those who occurred to be abroad at the time of the announcement.

Meta, Microsoft and Amazon didn’t immediately reply to requests for remark.

Most executives at the tech giants, many of whom have cast close relationships with the Trump White House since his return to workplace, haven’t commented publicly on the proposal, which may drastically change their system of attracting expertise from nations such as India and China. But others weighed in.

“America’s edge has always been that we attract smart, ambitious people from everywhere,” said Esther Crawford, a former Twitter govt and investor who now works as director of product management at Meta, according to her LinkedIn profile.

“High-skilled immigrants don’t take from us, they build with us. Some of the best colleagues in my career have been H-1B holders chasing their own American dream.”

The Trump administration has cracked down on immigration on a quantity of ranges, including stepped-up border security and raids that have largely focused lower-skilled employees, many of whom are undocumented migrants.

Most not too long ago, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided a Georgia battery plant owned by South Korea’s Hyundai Motor that angered officers in Seoul, who have raised questions about the connection with the United States.

Economists at Berenberg warned that the proposed visa price hike may additional burden a U.S. labor market already weakened by the lingering results of Trump-era commerce insurance policies. While artificial intelligence could help alleviate some staffing shortages, analysts cautioned that rising prices may stress corporations and finally have an effect on their purchasers.

“By making it very expensive for companies to attract foreign talent, and by forcing some international students to leave the country after graduation, the brain drain will weigh heavily on productivity,” they wrote.

CHAOS AT AIRPORTS

The late Friday announcement induced chaos for vacationers, some of whom obtained off planes moderately than go abroad while others raced home on the advice of their corporations before the White House clarified the order.

“My heart goes out to all the families and individuals anxious over their futures following the abrupt and chaotic announcement of H-1B visa changes,” said Andrew Ng, founder of DeepLearningAI, in a post on LinkedIn. “America should be working to attract more skilled talent, not create uncertainty that turns them away.”

The change met with some assist from top executives, including IBM Vice Chairman Gary Cohn, who served as head of the White House National Economic Council in the first Trump administration. He told CBS News the new charges as a “good idea” that would help deliver in staff with high-value skillsets.

Netflix Chairman Reed Hastings shared a comparable view in a post on X, saying the upper price would imply visas could be used only for “very high value jobs” and present more certainty for those who have them.

But David Seidman, the top of platform security at fintech firm Plaid, predicted on LinkedIn that “at least one” of the Big Tech names would stop hiring for those jobs in the United States and construct out their footprint in India or Canada.

(Reporting by Chris Prentice in New York and Surbhi Misra in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)