President Trump signed two executive orders Friday aimed at raising billions of dollars through high visa fees for companies seeking to hire high-skilled foreign workers and for wealthy foreigners.
One of the orders creates a new visa category for people willing to pay $1 million to enter the U.S., or whose employers are willing to pay the U.S. $2 million to sponsor them. While signing the order in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump dubbed the new visa the "Trump Gold Card."
"This program will raise more than $100 billion, which we'll use for cutting taxes and paying down debt," Trump said. "They're going to spend a lot of money to come in."
A senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity later told reporters that the administration is also working on a so-called 'Platinum Card" to replace an existing investor visa. "Congress will have to approve it," the official said. The 'Platinum Card' will cost $5 million. It will allow foreigners to spend up to 270 days in the U.S. without being subject to U.S. taxes on non-U.S. income.
The second executive order Trump signed Friday was a proclamation that aims to implement a new $100,000 fee for high-skilled workers to enter the country through the H1-B visa program, a dramatic overhaul that the White House said is aimed at curbing abuse of the program and protecting American workers.
"We need great workers. And this pretty much ensures that this is what's going to happen," Trump said.
The H1-B visa program is for highly-educated, high-skilled workers like software engineers or medical professionals. American companies seeking to hire a foreigner on an H1-B visa must first attest that they haven't been able to find American workers with similar skills and that the foreigner will earn a salary similar to what an American worker would earn.
Congress allows 85,000 H1-B visas to be issued through a lottery each year, and government data show that the largest number of those workers are sponsored by large tech firms like Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple.
But the Trump administration has said the program is rife with abuse, and that despite the rules many companies use H1-B visas to hire foreigners for less than what they would pay Americans. A 2020 study by the Economic Policy Institute found that most H1-B employers do pay migrant workers less than market rate salaries.
During the signing ceremony on Friday, Trump and his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said the $100,000 fee, due each year for each worker, will disincentivize that.
"Either the person is very valuable to the company and America," Lutnick said, "or they're going to depart and the company is going to hire an American." He added that no longer will companies be able to put trainee workers on H1-Bs. "If you're going to train people you are going to train an American," Lutnick told reporters.
Current government fees for H1-B visas are trivial. It costs companies $215 to register for the lottery, along with several filing fees.
The H1-B program has long divided conservatives. Some, like former Trump adviser and tech mogul Elon Musk, have argued that the US does not produce enough highly skilled engineers to satisfy the tech industry's demand. Others, like the far-right pundits Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer, have criticized the program as harmful for American workers.
Trump's orders come as his administration has moved to implement a series of higher fees on things like asylum applications and work permits, which are aimed at raising revenue to fund new immigration agents, detention centers, and other immigration enforcement initiatives.
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