The $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee: What It Means for US Business and Offshoring
- Jude Mahony
- Sep 21
- 4 min read
The New Cost of the H-1B Visa in 2025
The US government has dramatically changed the game for skilled migration.
As of September 19, 2025, President Trump signed a proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B applications (AP News).
This is not a minor tweak; it’s a sledgehammer approach. Until now, H-1B filing fees were inconvenient but manageable. In April 2024, for example, USCIS lifted the base petition fee from $460 to about $780 (Fragomen). Painful, yes but still within the realm of normal business overheads.
A six-figure charge for each new hire, however, fundamentally changes employer behaviour. And while this new fee doesn’t apply to existing H-1B renewals (Reuters), it does apply to all new applicants. That means the next generation of skilled migrants — the engineers, analysts, and researchers U.S. companies were counting on — just became prohibitively expensive.
How Companies Will Respond
Increased Offshoring
Let’s be clear: businesses won’t stop needing highly skilled workers. What they will do is weigh their options differently. If the cost of bringing someone to the US suddenly rises by $100k before you’ve even negotiated salary, then moving the work to where the talent already lives looks like common sense.
Expect to see:
More offshoring to established markets like India, Eastern Europe, and the Philippines.
Regional hubs and nearshoring, where US companies balance timezone convenience with cost reduction.
A shift toward remote-first models, where location is secondary to capability.
This isn’t theory. We’ve seen it play out before. When costs or barriers rise in one geography, the work follows the path of least resistance and that usually means offshore.
Domestic Training – The Catch
Policymakers often argue that employers should “just hire Americans and train them.” On paper, that sounds like a win–win. But let’s be pragmatic: if the domestic talent was available and trainable in the timeframes businesses need, the H-1B system wouldn’t exist in the first place.
The reality:
The skills gap is structural. You can’t create a quantum computing engineer or an AI researcher in six months.
Pipelines are long. Even with major investment in STEMM, you’re talking years before graduates are job-ready.
Competition is brutal. Every business wants the same scarce talent. That inflates wages and worsens turnover.
Could domestic training help? Absolutely, particularly for adjacent or entry-level roles. But in the short term, it’s like trying to fill a dam with a bucket. The scale of demand far outstrips the speed at which domestic programs can deliver.
That’s why I expect companies to view domestic training as a parallel strategy — important for long-term resilience, but not a substitute for offshore or migrant talent in the next three to five years.
Industries Hardest Hit
Industry | Why It’s Vulnerable |
Technology / IT Services | Already heavily reliant on H-1B workers for cloud, software, and AI roles. Expect costs to spike or delivery to move offshore faster. |
Financial Services | Quantitative modelling and risk analysis often depend on international specialists. Offshore outsourcing these functions may become more attractive. |
Engineering & R&D | Whether it’s robotics, chip design, or advanced integration, many of these roles simply don’t exist in sufficient numbers domestically in the US. |
Healthcare & Biotech | While clinical roles are tied to local licensing, R&D and computational analysis can be shifted offshore. |
Startups / SMEs | Perhaps the hardest hit. Large tech firms may swallow the cost, but smaller businesses won’t have that luxury. For them, offshoring may be the only realistic path. |
Global Ripple Effects
Although this is a US policy, the ripple effects will be felt globally and particularly here in Australia. Our economy already relies heavily on offshore service delivery and skilled migration to fill critical gaps in technology, engineering, and healthcare. A $100,000 US H-1B fee changes the competitive landscape: on one hand, Australia could become a more attractive destination for skilled professionals who might previously have chosen the US; on the other, increased American demand for offshore capability is likely to drive up competition and costs across Asia-Pacific, directly affecting Australian employers who draw on the same talent pools.
👉 I’ll explore these dynamics further in a follow-up article: “What the US H-1B Visa Hike Means for Australia’s Workforce and Economy.”
The $100,000 H-1B fee is not just a number on a form. It’s a signal: the US government is doubling down on its immigration stance and push for domestic industry aiming to keep manufacturing, services, and innovation onshore, and to reduce reliance on foreign workers.
For businesses, this creates a stark choice:
Pay the premium,
Train domestically and wait, or
Move the work offshore.
Most will end up choosing some mix of the three, but offshoring is the lever that delivers results quickly and at scale.
From an Australian resourcing standpoint, this shift matters.
We’re already competing for the same offshore talent pools as US firms and when American demand rises, so do prices and retention pressures. At the same time, Australia may benefit from being seen as a more stable and affordable skilled migration destination compared to the US.
For employers here, the key will be balancing offshore partnerships, domestic upskilling, and migration pathways to stay competitive in a talent market that just got tighter.
If you’re navigating these changes, don’t just look at the fee in isolation — think about your workforce strategy holistically.
For Australian employers, the lesson is clear: changes in US immigration policy don’t stay in the US. They shift the dynamics of global labour markets, raising competition for the same offshore talent pools we rely on here.
Having worked with organisations across many industries, I know the challenge is balancing domestic capability with smart use of offshore and migration pathways. That balance is about to get harder. If you’d like practical insights and proven frameworks to help navigate these shifts, explore my Offshoring Book page or reach out: supporting Australian organisations to build sustainable workforce strategies is what I do every day.
Jude Mahony is a global workforce strategist and author, specialising in resourcing, offshoring models, and building sustainable workforce strategies for all organisations.
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