Trump’s H-1B visa fee isn’t just about immigration, it’s about fealty

Donald Trump has never made his distaste for immigrants a secret. It’s been a cornerstone of his political movement since he descended that escalator on June 16th, 2015 and started hurling racist vitriol in the general direction of Mexico and Mexican Americans. On the surface, his assault on the H-1B visa program seems like part of the White House’s ongoing campaign to reduce the number of immigrants in the country. It might have that effect, but the biggest goal for Trump may not be forcing companies to hire more Americans or cutting down on the number of workers from India moving to the US. It’s giving the government more leverage over his perceived enemies, particularly the world of tech.

The restriction imposed pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry, if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines, in the Secretary’s discretion, that the hiring of such aliens to be employed as H-1B specialty occupation workers is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.

In short, it seems like the Secretary of Homeland Security can exempt any person, company, or even an entire industry from the travel restrictions and the $100,000 at their (or more likely, the president’s) discretion. It’s this carveout that betrays a major purpose of the proclamation.

The tech industry and Donald Trump were long at odds with each other, even if the president has largely brought it to heel in his second term. The White House has already made a big show of making tech CEOs trip over themselves to see who can fawn the hardest over Trump or wow him with the gaudiest gift. Now, it can wring further concessions and flattery out of the likes of Satya Nadella, lest he have to choose between dropping half-a-billion dollars on visa fees or replacing over 5,000 highly-skilled employees.

Companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon aren’t the only major beneficiaries of the H-1B program. The financial industry, including companies like JP Morgan Chase and Deloitte, each have over 2,000 H-1B workers on their payroll according to federal data. It wouldn’t come as a surprise if the Secretary of Homeland Security decided to grant JP Morgan a waiver after it, say, suddenly granted a loan to the Trump Organization or made a substantial donation to his MAGA super PAC. He used similar tactics to squeeze pro-bono legal work out of law firms.

Colleges and universities also make extensive use of the H-1B program to attract top talent for professorships, especially for nursing and medical programs. Harvard, which the president has tussled with quite publicly in 2025 has roughly 280 H-1B workers on its books, and Columbia University has over 200 as well. Now the White House can threaten their foreign born professors and researchers as well as their funding.

This is the tariff mess all over again. Trump dangled the threat of a 100 percent tariff on chips, only to grant exemptions to companies that gave him a PR win by pledging even small investments in manufacturing in the US. And for all the White House’s talk about national security concerns surrounding Nvidia’s AI chips, a little kickback for the government is apparently enough to make those concerns disappear.

And the loophole undercuts potential benefits for anyone who does believe H-1B restrictions will help American workers — because as soon as Trump gets what he wants from an industry, he can simply exempt it.

Just like the tariffs, and just like everything else the Trump administration does, the new visa restrictions are transactional tools. If they happen to reduce the number of jobs going to foreign workers, the president can tout it as a win. But if the patterns of the past year hold, he’ll likely take far more satisfaction in universities and tech companies humbling themselves in exchange for a pass.