Members of the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA Local 9009 held an emergency rally on September 22, protesting the Trump administration’s new $100,000 application fee for new H-1B visas. The new fees, which took effect by proclamation on September 21, are a one-time charge for new applicants and do not apply to those with existing visas or those seeking renewals.
The new $100,000 application fee will hit technology-oriented companies, which sponsor and employ thousands of H-1B visa holders every year, the hardest. Major companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon may be able to absorb the costs, but smaller and mid-sized businesses in healthcare, engineering, and information technology may struggle to handle the potential costs of hiring new staff so frequently.
So far, the only concession the White House has made to business owners is to let them know that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has the discretion to approve fee waivers for workers deemed vital to national interests. Companies could respond to the new fees in various ways: by allowing more work to be done remotely and shifting it offshore, or by limiting their H-1B visa sponsorships to only employees in the most senior roles.
All of these potential reactions are creating uncertainty for H-1B workers.
“If there are problems with the visa program, there should be a real and thoughtful process to reform it, not just suddenly disrupt hundreds of thousands of people’s lives and jobs into chaos,” said Parul Koul, president of AWU-CWA Local 9009 and a software engineer at Google. “These policies are playing games, and these decisions are made without any say from us.”
Koul added that the union was formed to fight for tech workers in moments just like this. “This is exactly that kind of moment. We can’t let these policies that would fundamentally change the direction of our lives be imposed on us without a say or be renegotiated in backroom deals. This is why we, as Google workers, are here today to call on Google to use its immense power to take a meaningful stand for H-1B workers and all other workers… We deserve dignity, respect, and for our contributions to be valued. Taking a stand is what our union, which has been fighting for tech workers, is all about.”
Alphabet Workers Union-CWA, a union open to all Alphabet company employees and contractors, is calling on Google to support its immigrant workforce.
Broader attacks on workers’ rights
Tim Traversy, a software engineer at Google and fellow union member, warned that the H-1B fee could be part of a larger strategy. “History shows us that attacks on vulnerable groups are always just the tip of the spear,” he said. “Already we’ve seen a series of anti-worker moves from the Trump administration… When they announce these decisions, they’re testing us to see how much we’re going to put up with.”
Traversy urged fellow workers not to be passive. “Now is not the time to keep our heads down and hope for the best. We must reject these divisive strategies totally and choose to fight for job security for all. Our employer, Google, has a choice to make—will they stand with the immigrant workers that helped build this company?”
The White House has defended the new H-1B visa application fee, stating it is intended to level the playing field for U.S. workers, who it said are being “replaced with lower-paid foreign labor.” These claims that H-1B workers are underpaid, and that their hiring leads to the underemployment of U.S. workers, were supported by a 2021 report from the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute (EPI) think tank.
“[T]he abuses of the program have been many,” EPI’s report found, “include[ing] vastly underpaying workers, laying off U.S. workers and replacing them with much lower-paid H-1B workers, forcing U.S. workers to train their H-1B replacements as a condition of receiving severance and unemployment insurance, and cheating the H-1B lottery to acquire additional visas.”
As a tech worker, at a Silicon Valley company, I welcome this fee.
For too long companies have used the H-1b as a way to Outsource entire departments to other countries. And the only illegal H-1b requirement “Indian Passport”.
You can see the pattern, mass layoff, expansion in India, backfilling with H-1b workers.
These jobs are never advertised, they don’t ask “Will you take a pay cut?”.
It is illegal to base employment based upon whether or not you have an “Indian Passport”. Companies still hire heavily out of the “India” R&D offices, because a person with an “Indian Passport” can move easily back & forth from the US.
A better plan is to make every job an openly advertised competition for the job. Then after 4yrs, give the worker a Green Card without country limits.
These companies are not advocating for this, because of the hassle of replacing Indian liaisons with locals, then obtaining visas for locals to go to India.
This 100k fee, will put a stop to the discriminatory hiring, which violates US Labor laws.
It will actually make more of the H-1b visas available to non-Outsourcing, tech originating startups in the US.
As a tech worker, I welcome the change. As will several hundred other tech workers that were laid off and then replaced with workers from the India lab.
Any tech worker will understand that the current system uses a random chance lottery, which mathematically cannot get the best & brightest workers. We need the best in the US, because what we have only encourages Outsourcing, primarily to India.
Companies will not waste time with only a 1-in-3 chance of getting a great candidate to the US. Instead, they keep any great engineers in the overseas office. And then bring over mediocre liaison engineers on H-1b, to move entire departments overseas.
If you really care about jobs in the US and you understand the current mathematics of the idiotic H-1b lottery, you know the 100k fee and the change to pay level ranking will fix almost all of this.
And you will be for all the changes.