Article Summary

The Trump administration decided to exempt foreign students and other H-1B visa holders already in the US from a proposed $100,000 H-1B visa fee, a move beneficial for US companies hiring such talent. While US companies will benefit from hiring F1 student visa holders, the impact on Indian IT services companies is less significant as they have largely shifted to local hiring. Experts view the decision as a shift towards 'value-driven' visas, with limited overall impact on the majority of H-1B holders.

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This decision clarifies and mitigates the potential negative impact of a previously considered, much higher H-1B visa fee (up to $100,000) for a specific segment of the applicant pool. While the full $100,000 fee would still apply to H-1B petitions for talent transferred from abroad, this move effectively creates a two-tiered system that incentivizes hiring from the domestic pool of skilled foreign graduates.

The policy reinforces the US's strategic shift towards prioritizing "value-driven" skilled immigration. It further pushes Indian IT services companies to accelerate their existing trend of local hiring and investment in onshore talent, moving away from traditional offshore labor-arbitrage models, a trend also observed in other major skilled immigration destinations like Canada and the UK that prioritize domestic talent pools or offer pathways for in-country international graduates.