Presidential Order on H1B: Inverting MAGA and Hurting Everyone

Enough chaos has caused over the last weekend through a presidential proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applicants. I am plainly shocked at the entertainment of this idea itself, leave alone discussing it and passing it as a proclamation through a president. Come on, why would anyone do self-harm. Why would anyone shoot at your own foot. Why would anyone burn the house to save on electricity bill. Why would anyone think penny wise and pound foolish. Ignoring these basics and coming up with an ‘idea’ to impose hundred thousand dollars as a fee to discourage H1B applicants is unamerican at best. Sorry, this is not the America we knew. Ideating on this concept itself is a sin and a mistake, leave alone implementing it. That H1B is a liability for US and taking away the jobs and salary is the starting point to ideate along these lines. This premise, even if remotely true, is fundamentally wrong. Why do you build on top of that. This simply brings open the enmity you brew for H1B workers in US. Comeon, we love America and all Americans and gives more than 100% all the time. Brewing so much negativity for this bracket and coming up with these executive orders is least expected out of this country. Even if true, never entertain this premise on the incoming visitors coming to bless the land. Like the order, the idea and thought itself is refutable, repulsive and repugnant. It does no one, we can say no one - US, India and any other nation, any good.

I don’t write on something which is not bothering me. H1B doesn’t just bother me, it is my life of last 11 years. When I am in India in a small IT job, I got a call from employer in US asking if I am willing to file for H1B in February 2014. I just gave my certificates and forgot about it. Paid no fee to anyone. I wouldn’t be able to afford anyway. The kind employer filed H1B for me with required fee which was picked in lottery and informed me about it in December 2014. Because I didn’t paid any fee, it was affordable for me. Since I never knew about my selection till December, I decided to come as a student in the mean time. As a student, I couldn’t complete my masters in US due to finances and change of status from F1 to H1 came extremely good for me. It is like saving a sinking ship. My clueless life could have ended in 2014 or 2015 and US extended it for 11 more years through the H1 visa. H1 breath life into me in 2016, 2017 and 2022. Because I had a H1, I was able to transfer it to my present employer and come onsite with a job in 2022. In short, H1 is the best document I had in my entire life which allowed me into US and changed my life ever since. That a beggar on a street can come to US is because of H1. That US is so great to a beggar is because of H1. That US is what it is, is because of this model to encourage weak persons like me. I could afford to come to US and not any other country on multiple occasions because of this free H1. There is no 1 thousand, ten thousand or 100 thousand premium on it, for it could have check mated me. Australia or Canada or any other developed nation which require better financial standing is never an option for me and I couldn’t get a visa even when I tried. The gateway provided by the great H1 is the only door opened for my life in the last decade. Seeing it getting closed for many others like me makes me worry. You cannot simply dismantle the valuable lifeline you are giving to people who need it the most. This executive order is equal to trash in an otherwise great, golden country like America. Move ahead if you want to invert MAGA, destroy America as we knew it and obliterate American dream for the future. 

This is just my H1 story and there are more than million on H1 and there are million such stories emanated from this great land. Our collective wish is to continue this far into the future for as long as possible. Closing the gates from next year for the new applicants should be reversed right away, come what may. For the rest of the post, I continue with the arguments why US is hitting a big self-goal with this needless proclamation. 

I grew up in India looking at America not just as a country, but as an idea. For millions like me, the United States represented possibility — a place where talent mattered more than background, where hard work was rewarded, where the next chapter of one’s life could be written in bold strokes. The H-1B visa was not a ticket to riches; it was a bridge between that dream and reality. 

But now comes a proposal that feels like a punch in the gut: a $100,000 fee on every H-1B visa. For Indian dreamers like me — students working sleepless nights to ace exams, young professionals saving every rupee to pay for graduate school, families pooling resources for a shot at the American Dream — this fee is nothing less than a firewall, higher and colder than any physical border. It doesn’t just test our skills. It tests our bank accounts. And that is where many of us fall short. 

From this side of the ocean, America’s message suddenly feels clear: Don’t come unless you can pay ransom. 

Let’s pause for a moment and think about what $100,000 means in India. For most middle-class families, it’s more than a lifetime’s savings. It’s more than the price of a home, more than years of earnings. No matter how talented, how hardworking, or how determined, most young Indians would never be able to pay such a fee. 

That means the system is not filtering for the best and brightest. It’s filtering for the wealthiest. It’s shutting the door not on mediocrity, but on excellence that happens to be born in modest circumstances. And make no mistake — it’s not just Indian families who will pay the price. America will, too. 

When we flip the perspective to America’s side, the picture is even more striking. More than 700,000 H-1B professionals live and work in the U.S. today. They design chips in Silicon Valley, staff hospitals in rural Texas, write code for Wall Street banks, and push forward research in labs from Boston to Seattle. Collectively, H-1B households contribute $86 billion to U.S. GDP each year and pay more than $35 billion in taxes. 

They don’t drain the system. They fuel it. Every year, thousands of U.S. startups are founded by immigrants, many of them former H-1B holders. Think of Sundar Pichai at Google, Satya Nadella at Microsoft, Arvind Krishna at IBM — icons who once stood where today’s Indian students now stand, with nothing but hope, skill, and an H-1B stamp. Would they have made it to America if a $100,000 wall stood in their way? 

The pandemic made one thing brutally clear: America depends on immigrant healthcare workers. Thousands of H-1B doctors and nurses staffed ICUs, braved shortages, and saved lives in communities where American-trained doctors simply weren’t available. 

Now imagine hospitals, many already strapped for funds, being asked to pay $100,000 just to bring in a much-needed specialist. Many wouldn’t do it. Not because the doctor isn’t needed, but because the ransom is too high. The losers in that equation aren’t immigrants. They’re American patients — ordinary people waiting longer, suffering more, and sometimes losing their lives because a rule written in Washington priced out a doctor from Mumbai or a nurse from Chennai. 

For decades, America’s universities have been the envy of the world, attracting international students who bring not just tuition dollars but ideas, energy, and innovation. For many of these students, the H-1B pathway is the reason they choose the U.S. in the first place. 

Put a $100,000 price tag on that pathway, and the pipeline begins to dry up. Students will go to Canada, Australia, or Germany instead. America will still train some of the world’s brightest minds, but instead of staying to build their futures — and America’s — they’ll take their knowledge elsewhere. America pays to educate them, then hands the benefit to its rivals. 

One of the loudest arguments in favor of the fee is that H-1Bs are “cheap labor” undercutting Americans. But let’s be honest: that’s not true. By law, H-1B workers must be paid the prevailing wage. In reality, many earn salaries of $120,000 or more, especially in tech. They’re not bargain hires; they’re specialists in areas where demand is sky-high and supply is scarce — artificial intelligence, chip design, biotechnology, healthcare. 

If these workers don’t come to the U.S., companies won’t magically find local replacements. They’ll move jobs abroad. The work will still be done — in Bangalore, Toronto, or Berlin. America won’t keep the jobs. It will export them. 

Every barrier America builds is a door opened wider elsewhere. A $100,000 H-1B fee is like handing your rivals your playbook and saying: Here, you take the talent. We don’t want it. 

Yes, the government could collect billions if applicants or their employers paid $100,000 per visa. But let’s look beyond the next fiscal year. Each skilled immigrant contributes far more over a lifetime than that one-time fee could ever bring. Taxes, startups, patents, and jobs compound over decades. Blocking even half of them means trillions in lost GDP. 

It’s the ultimate case of penny wise, pound foolish. You don’t strangle your golden goose for the sake of one egg. 

A Question of Values 

Finally, let’s talk about the moral cost. For generations, America has sold itself to the world as a place where the best ideas win, where hard work beats privilege, where newcomers can build something bigger than themselves. It is the narrative that inspired millions of Indians — my parents’ generation and mine — to dream of crossing oceans. 

But what does it say when that promise comes with a $100,000 price tag? It says opportunity is for sale. It says the American Dream has been privatized. It says the gate is open not to the brightest, but to the wealthiest. And that, perhaps, is the deepest betrayal of all. 

This proposal is not protection. It is self-destruction. It won’t save American jobs; it will push them overseas. It won’t strengthen the economy; it will weaken it. It won’t keep America safe; it will make America vulnerable to being outpaced by rivals who welcome the very talent America rejects. 

The truth is simple: talent goes where it is welcomed, not where it is extorted. If America makes itself unwelcoming, the world will not wait. India, Canada, Europe, and China are ready. The future will simply be built elsewhere. 

As an Indian dreamer, I can tell you this: we come to America not just for ourselves, but because we believe in the idea of America. But if America chooses to put a $100,000 price on that belief, don’t be surprised when dreamers stop coming. And don’t be surprised when the dream itself starts slipping away. 

Because in the end, this isn’t just about immigrants losing America and American dream. It’s about America losing itself. Simply, when you stop a potential H1B from entering America, you are blocking a Taylor Swift-like concert from taking place which can lift whole communities, cities and economies altogether. When you realize these divine incomings, you will not put a price on the visa, you will pay in advance and roll out a red carpet. Let the nation witness these good tidings and not the unfortunate orders.