Courts may also scrutinize the expansive new fees.
The H-1B $100,000 application fee in particular is at risk of being struck down as “excessive,” said Becky Fu von Trapp, an immigration lawyer in Stowe, Vermont. That’s because federal law allows agencies to charge enough to recoup reasonable costs, and most work visa applications currently cost about $5,000. Even the most complex ones, for certain investment visas, usually run less than $10,000 in total.
The move could also incentivize technology firms and other companies reliant on foreign workers to set up offices outside the US in order to avoid the application fee and associated hassles.
“Companies will reassess the need of who they really need to bring to US and who can be based in Canada or Singapore, where they still have good technology infrastructure and can work remotely,” she said.
The move may also have a chilling effect on international students seeking admission to US universities, since many of them hope to find jobs through the H-1B process upon graduation, she said.
Congress will also weigh in, Lutnick said, noting that lawmakers must also approve the planned platinum card program. He predicted that could happen later this year.
That’s easier said than done.
Republicans only narrowly control the House and the Senate. Immigration has been a particularly challenging issue to legislate for the GOP in years past, sparking clashes between the pro-business wing of the party that wants more high-skilled immigrants to come in, and another group far more skeptical of immigration as a whole who’ve sought to limit new arrivals no matter where they come from.
What’s more, Democrats are broadly furious about the president’s stepped-up immigration enforcement including aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in major US cities. As such, they have little incentive to cooperate without demanding wholesale reversals to the president’s existing immigration policies, which he almost surely wouldn’t accept.
