The U.S. Donald Trump administration sharply raised the H-1B visa fee, known as a "specialty occupation visa," to $100,000 per person per year (about 140 million won), roughly 100 times the current level.
On the 19th (local time), President Trump signed a proclamation in the Oval Office to overhaul the H-1B visa program.
The H-1B visa applies to professional jobs in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), with the number issued by lottery capped at 85,000 per year. A basic three-year stay is allowed, extensions are possible, and applicants can also apply for permanent residency.
The current application fee for this visa is $1,000, and it is being raised dramatically to $100,000. Moreover, this amount is per person per year, and the holder must pay the same fee each year of the stay to renew.
Howard Lutnick, the commerce minister who joined the proclamation signing, said, "At renewal or at the start, a company has to decide whether this person is worth paying the government $100,000."
The minister added, "The key is that it's annual. It applies for up to six years, and you pay $100,000 per year," noting, "If the person is very valuable to the company and to the United States, fine; if not, the person goes back to their home country, and the company will hire an American."
He said, "This is the core of immigration policy. Hire Americans, and make sure those coming in are the best," adding, "We must end the foolish practice of letting anyone enter this country on visas issued for free," before stressing, "The president's position is very clear: admit only those who are valuable to America."
The minister said, "Big Tech or other large corporations have been training foreign workers. Now they must pay the government $100,000 and also pay salaries," adding, "If you are going to train someone, you should train talent who recently graduated from one of America's great universities—that is, Americans."
President Trump also said, "In some cases, corporations will have to pay a lot of money for H-1B visas." Trump was said to believe that H-1B visas take jobs away from Americans. The logic is that corporations, using H-1B visas with a high share of Chinese and Indian nationals, bring in foreign workers at low expense, encroaching on American jobs.
Bloomberg, regarding the administration's move, noted, "It coincides with a series of fee hikes for work authorization, asylum applications and humanitarian protections set out in the president's tax bill," adding, "The aim is to secure funding for new detention facilities, hiring immigration enforcement agents and expanding border wall construction."
Amid discussions between Korea and the United States on improving visa rules so that specialized technical personnel of Korean investor corporations can work stably in the United States following the recent detention of about 300 Korean nationals at a Korean corporation construction site in Georgia, attention is on the impact of this move that raises the bar for H-1B visas. Among solutions to visa issues between the two countries, there is speculation that a medium- to long-term option will include promoting U.S. legislation to secure a Korean quota for H-1B visas that allow employment in the United States.