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Shashi Tharoor says H-1B visa fee hike driven by US domestic politics: 'Trump trying to gain...'
Tharoor said Trump is trying to gain support of the anti-immigration base, adding that the decision was taken to appease Trump's MAGA supporters.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said that US President Donald Trump's move to impose $100,000 fee on H-1B visa petitions is about America's domestic politics. He said that Trump is trying to gain support of the anti-immigration base, adding that the decision was taken to appease Trump's MAGA supporters.
"Again, the motives are principally driven by domestic politics. Trump believes, and the people around him have told him, that the easy H-1B has meant that a lot of Americans who deserve a higher salary from the same companies are being bypassed by Indians who will accept a lower salary," Tharoor told ANI.
Tharoor linked the move to the overall political climate in the US. "Today, the dominant political forces of the so-called MAGA movement are very openly anti-immigrants, and particularly visible immigrants, people of a different colour who can be spotted as not of the white ethnic mainstream," he said.
Tharoor further added that while Trump supporters see Indian professionals as undercutting American workers, they work for a lesser salary than the average American.
"An Indian techie who comes and works for sixty thousand dollars a year is taking away, according to Trump's supporters, jobs from an American who would not work for less than eighty-five or ninety thousand dollars a year," he said.
He said the decision to impose such a huge fee on visa petitions was meant to make low- and mid-level jobs "unviable." "So only the high-end, really desirable, irreplaceable top people who are worth it for a company to spend a hundred thousand dollars, only they will come," he said.
Trump administration's decision to impose $100,000 fee is a worrisome move for Indian community in the US who makeup for over 70% of H1b visa-holders. As Trump signed the proclamation, he said that H1B visa was being “abused” and that it posed a threat to the national security.
With effect from September 21, 2025, new applicants of the H1B visa need to pay a one-time annual fee of $100,000.
