You have 1 article left to read this month before you need to register a free LeadDev.com account.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Google, Meta, and Apple have advised visa holders against future international travel, as major changes to the scheme are announced.
US president Donald Trump has announced plans to alter the H-1B visa, which has been a key mechanism for bringing foreign engineers, scientists, and other specialized workers into the United States for 35 years.
The visa is carefully rationed, with qualifying applicants selected at random, and available only to “highly skilled” workers in “speciality occupations”. Tech roles account for around two-thirds of H-1B visas granted every year. Around 5,000 visas from Indian applicants are approved a year, while 2,800 are from China.
The main change is a price hike for the visa from a maximum of $4,500 to $100,000, which is being justified by the US administration because of supposed “abuse” of the scheme.
Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, said at a press briefing that if foreign workers were so valuable, companies would be willing to stomach the price increase. If not, they should look closer to home. “Hire Americans and make sure the people coming in are the top, top people,” he said. “Stop the nonsense.”
Your inbox, upgraded.
Receive weekly engineering insights to level up your leadership approach.
Tech’s response to the change
“It’s been surprising to see the decision around H-1B visas and the uncertainty it brings,” says Michael Stothard, an early-stage investor at Firstminute Capital. That uncertainty is because the communication around the implementation of the changes has been confused.
Google, which has more than 5,300 H-1B visa holders in its employ, sent out an “urgent update” message to staff saying H-1B visa holders currently abroad should return to the US immediately, while “strongly” advising against future international travel. Meta and Apple employ similar numbers and sent out similar messages.
The caution – and rush to exercise it – in the advice provided by big tech firms to their foreign employees suggests that there’s an element of panic among those who utilize H-1B visas the most. “It’s hard to know where the US implementation will land as it’s clearly evolving,” says Dom Hallas, executive director of the Startup Coalition, an industry body.
“The way big tech companies have been advising employees suggests they’re acting out of an abundance of caution, which highlights the information vacuum they’re operating in,” says Stothard. Not everyone has been opposed to it. Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, posted on X that it could benefit US-based workers in the tech sector.
More like this
“By design, it could have a big impact on non-US engineers, which could benefit businesses looking to grow outside the US as they suddenly become more competitive to international talent if it becomes too costly for US firms to hire non-US talent,” says Stothard. There’s also the sentiment element here: international engineers may feel less eager to apply for US jobs if they think the environment towards them from the top of the tree is hostile.
What does it mean for companies elsewhere?
Whatever the impact on the United States and its ability to hire will, of course, have global effects on the international talent market, and the negative outcome for the United States could benefit businesses elsewhere.
The H-1B fallout has a silver lining for European companies. “It’s a massive net positive,” says Markus Villig, co-founder of Bolt, the Estonian ride sharing company. “There’s so much talent, especially coming from markets like India and China. “They’re choosing where to go, and I think Europe is in a unique position now.”
October 15-17, 2025
Only 4 days left to save up to $325
Ragnar Sass, co-founder of defence tech venture capital Darkstar and co-founder of Pipedrive believes that the changes will be a boon for European companies – and could even see US companies starting to open “development centres in Europe because they need to tap this market”, which would allow them to hire staff from Europe without incurring the large costs. A similar situation could occur in India.
“From a wider perspective, I think it’s fair to say that it has made a tonne of high-end talent reflect on where they are and if the US is going to work for them,” says Hallas. That means “they are potentially more open to moves than they were before,” he adds.
