Price of admission

On 19 September 2025, Donald Trump signed two documents within hours of each other. One created a “Gold Card” visa for foreigners willing to hand the Commerce Department $1m, or $2m if a company does the giving on their behalf.^{2The White HouseThe Gold Card19 Sept 2025} The other set a price of one-tenth that for a new foreign engineer: $100,000, payable before an employer may file for an H-1B worker abroad.^{1The White HouseRestriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers19 Sept 2025} Rarely has an administration put a price list on the front door so promptly.

The mechanics are blunt. From 12:01am on 21 September, entry on an H-1B visa is restricted unless the petition is accompanied by the payment, which the State Department must verify before approving anything.^{1The White HouseRestriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers19 Sept 2025} The measure lapses after 12 months unless extended.^{1The White HouseRestriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers19 Sept 2025} The fee falls on new applications,^{3TechCrunchTrump hits H-1B visas with $100,000 fee, targeting the program that launched Elon Musk and Instagram20 Sept 2025} so the bill lands on the firms planning next year’s hiring.

The stated rationale is that the programme “has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers,” and that “it is therefore necessary to impose higher costs on companies seeking to use the H-1B program.”^{1The White HouseRestriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers19 Sept 2025} We have some sympathy with the first half. The H-1B is capped by statute and allocated by lottery.^{1The White HouseRestriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers19 Sept 2025} A lottery rewards whoever files the most tickets, which is how outsourcing firms with thousands of cheap, interchangeable applications came to crowd a scheme meant for scarce talent. Anyone who finds that sensible has not read the rules, or has a consultancy.

But the remedy is a poor one. A flat fee is a tax on the wrong variable. At $100,000 it is a rounding error for a firm paying a machine-learning researcher several times that, and a prohibitive sum for a start-up hiring its first engineer or a hospital hiring a physician. If every one of the 85,000 capped slots went to a new hire, the bill would be $8.5bn a year, collected from the employers least able to shrug it off. The fee will cull the bottom of the market, as intended, but it will also cull the small and the new, which were not on the charge sheet.

There is also the awkward matter of the Gold Card. A rich foreigner may buy permanence for $1m; a talented one must pay a tenth of that merely to be considered, before a lottery has even been drawn.^{1The White HouseRestriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers19 Sept 2025,2The White HouseThe Gold Card19 Sept 2025} That is a coherent view of the national interest only if one thinks wealth, rather than skill, is what America is short of. The proclamation does let the Secretary of Homeland Security exempt individuals, whole firms or entire industries when hiring them is in the national interest.^{1The White HouseRestriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers19 Sept 2025} Discretion of that kind is a handy lever. It is also a handy invitation to lobby, and large employers know the way to Washington.

The strongest defence of the fee is that Congress will not act. The cap has barely moved in decades, the lottery is widely thought to be gamed, and a president who waits for legislation on immigration will wait a long time. A price, the argument goes, is at least a market signal, and markets are what we usually favour. That is fair as far as it goes. But a signal is only as good as what it measures. Charging every employer the same for a visa says nothing about whether the worker is underpaid, which is the actual abuse.

There is a better instrument, and the administration could try it without a new fee. Rank the lottery by wage level, so that the highest-paid offers get first call on the scarce slots and the lowest-paid find it hard to be filed at all. Outsourcers would pay more or go elsewhere; start-ups would pay what they pay today. It pursues the same aim with a fraction of the collateral damage. It also raises no money, which may explain why it was not on the desk on 19 September.

The administration has found a way to make employers pay for the right to hire. It has not yet found a way to make them pay for the right reasons.