Last Friday, the Trump administration issued a new policy requiring skilled workers on H-1B visas to pay $100,000 to enter the United States. The announcement upended the travel plans of hundreds of workers across industries including technology, finance, healthcare, and more.
Companies like JPMorgan asked its foreign workers who were traveling outside the country to come back as firms grappled with which workers would be subject to the new rules.
Over what was a chaotic weekend for immigrant workers and immigration attorneys alike, the administration issued a series of clarifications on how and when the new rules would go into effect.
Boundless Immigration, a Seattle-based firm that provides consulting services to businesses and individuals, jumped into action to keep its clients informed. While much is still unclear, for now it seems the rules will only affect applicants for new H-1B visas after April 2026. Inc. spoke with Xiao Wang, the CEO of Boundless, about the new rules and what companies can expect.
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Can you explain how Boundless is interpreting the new policy, what happened on Friday, and how the situation developed over the weekend?
What happened on Friday was either a masterstroke of creating chaos, a policy that wasn’t thought through and was quickly adjusted due to public backlash, or maybe both.
So, starting Friday evening, the White House issued a proclamation about the need to reform the H-1B program and outlined a new policy requiring all H-1B holders to pay a $100,000 fee every year to remain employed under that status.
Immediately, there was a lot of confusion, questions and resistance—both from a legal perspective about what’s possible and from a practical perspective about how this would work and what it all means.
Over the weekend, the administration issued a series of clarifications. The policy shifted from affecting everyone starting Sunday, Sept. 21, to not really affecting anyone until the H-1B lottery season in the spring of 2026. In the meantime, there may be many more changes to the policy.
To summarize: It went from a policy requiring everyone to pay $100,000 per year to one that requires a one-time $100,000 fee for the initial application. It shifted from affecting everyone starting Sunday to affecting only new applicants for the 2026 lottery. It changed from applying to everyone, regardless of location, to applying only to those outside the U.S.
And there are still additional changes the government continues to address—like exemptions for medical professionals, whether dependents and spouses are affected, and more.
Even now, three days later, after multiple press conferences, releases and clarifications via social media and official White House accounts, there remain many ambiguities. It’s still unclear what will happen next for this group of people.
What was the situation like for the people possibly impacted by these rules over the weekend?
It was an immense amount of confusion and anxiety.
October 1 is when those who won the H-1B lottery this year are allowed to begin working. So, there was a whole group of new H-1B holders who weren’t sure if they could even start.
Then there were people currently on H-1B who were outside the country—whether visiting friends or family or traveling elsewhere—and weren’t sure if they’d be allowed back into the U.S. without paying this fee.
And there were company owners and job creators messaging me, asking, “Am I still able to employ these people? How can I afford this? What are the options?”
So, across the board—from individuals in all kinds of visa statuses to employers, managers, HR professionals and legal experts—there was widespread concern.
More importantly, there were still all these unanswered questions about what their future was going to look like.
How have you been advising Boundless clients—both employers and workers—in response to the announcement and the ambiguity around it?
I think the core principle is to overcommunicate, because every day something new comes up. And I think we don’t claim to know exactly what anything means. But what we try to do is clearly explain what has been released, what the implications are, and what is still outstanding.
For example, the first thing we told people was that, because it was unclear how the rules were defined, if people were outside the U.S. on Friday night or Saturday night, they should find every avenue possible to come back to the country. It wasn’t until Saturday that the administration somewhat clarified that, if you have a current valid visa, you can return to the country without having to pay the fee.
Second, even though it’s now been declared that H-1B holders can travel to and from the U.S., we generally recommend that H-1B holders remain in the U.S. for the foreseeable future so they are not at the whim of any potential policy changes while they’re abroad.
Second, we’ve been advising companies and individuals to start thinking about alternative pathways. Whether or not this particular rule gets challenged in court and struck down, the broader point is that the typical pathway from the H-1B program to a green card is under attack by this administration—it’s clearly in the crosshairs.
So, we want everyone to understand what their other options are. You can apply for [other work visas reserved for those who can prove they have ‘extraordinary abilities’ or whose skills require a waiver for ‘national interest’ such as] O-1s, EB-2 NIWs, EB-1s—there are all these categories, and they happen to be among the fastest-growing we’ve seen this year.
A lot of industries—like tech, healthcare, and higher education—rely on H-1B workers. How is this affecting both firms’ ability to attract talent and prospective immigrants’ desire to move to the United States?
I think that overall, when there’s such a high degree of uncertainty, there’s going to be a chilling effect in the medium term—for people wanting to come here to study, wanting to come here to work, and for companies willing to take a gamble on hiring a foreign employee who may end up not being eligible or may become exorbitantly expensive to retain due to constantly changing policies.
That said, there is an opportunity here to make the H-1B program work better for the U.S. The H-1B program has been unpopular on both sides of the aisle for a while because it’s not functioning as it was intended. It was created in 1998 to bolster American competitiveness in specialty occupations that require advanced degrees.
Over the following decades, members from both parties—Republicans and Democrats—have sponsored bills to reform the H-1B program to better meet the competitive and labor demands of the United States. But those reforms haven’t been enacted.
What’s happened instead is that we now have two different populations of H-1B holders.
The first group includes leaders in industry, especially those who came here for advanced degrees in fields like medicine, engineering and others—people who have been indoctrinated with American values, who have benefited from U.S. taxpayer investment in research institutions, and who wish to spend their lives and build their futures in America. This group is critical to maintaining America’s global competitiveness—in AI, in medicine, and in other key sectors with labor gaps.
The second population tends to be from India and works for large international IT consultancy firms—companies like Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant, etc.—that bring workers to the U.S. to serve client companies and typically send them back afterward.
For example, while Amazon was the top H-1B sponsor last year, the second-largest was [the outsourcing firm] Tata Consultancy Services.
So, I think there’s an opportunity to separate these two groups. The current state of the H-1B program doesn’t reflect its original intent—especially given that 70 percent of recipients are from India.
With some thoughtful changes, the program could focus on what business leaders are concerned about: how to retain top international students and industry leaders in the U.S. Right now, those individuals face real challenges. They must go through the lottery system, which last year had only an 18 percent success rate.
For companies, if it’s done right, it works. And these rules only apply to people outside the U.S. who aren’t qualified for other [visas] . What this policy shift does is level the playing field. It discourages mass importation of talent—as if importing people were the same as importing tennis rackets—and benefits those already in the country, even if they were born elsewhere.
So you see it as a move similar to the tariffs, then?
Exactly.
This is essentially a tariff designed against foreign companies. Now, if it’s implemented in the way I’m hoping it can be—though there are still a lot of details left to be worked out—it would mean that, if firms are bringing in talent from outside the country they need to either pay a fee that reflects the value of that talent or hire.
This shift, in my view, ultimately strengthens the value placed on high-level talent. It helps restore credibility to the H-1B program, which has long suffered from a perception problem. Many people see H-1Bs as lower-quality workers or associated with lower wages.
This change could refocus the visa on individuals who truly want to build their lives in America. And while there will likely be some unintended consequences, this moment presents an opportunity to use reform of the H-1B program as a lever to reshape what matters to the U.S. and what high-skilled immigration should look like for years to come.
If you were going to speak directly to policymakers or administration officials, what would you urge them to consider before enforcing these rules?
The two populations I think are critical to America’s long-term prosperity—and that could be either significantly helped or hurt by changes to these rules—are international students and startups or smaller companies across the country.
If policies are designed so that people who have studied here, have desirable skills, and have received job offers have a higher chance of winning the H-1B lottery and being able to stay in the country—and if employers have more confidence that when they hire someone, that person will actually be able to work for them—then this will have a strong positive influence. It will once again attract the best and brightest from around the world—those who believe in the American ideal and who have historically driven American innovation for hundreds of years.
That monopoly America has long held on attracting the world’s top students has helped sustain its leadership in many industries. That’s one constituency I hope any new policy will truly support—people who want to study, work, and build a life in America.
The second group is startups and smaller companies.
There’s ongoing discussion about increasing prevailing wage requirements and raising salary minimums for H-1B visas. And while that may sound reasonable on paper, those requirements are based solely on cash salary—not equity or other forms of compensation that startups often use. As a result, these changes overwhelmingly favor the largest tech companies, which can afford to meet those wage thresholds.
This, in turn, stifles innovation. Startups will no longer be able to hire or attract top talent willing to take lower salaries in exchange for equity upside. That kind of risk-taking, company-building mentality is foundational to the American economy.
If startups lose access to that talent, it will severely limit the innovation potential coming from new ideas.
I strongly encourage people not to make short-term, snap decisions based on whatever news came out the day before—especially when it comes to the long-term future of their lives. Let this play out a bit longer.
Second, it’s more important than ever to start thinking about how to take control of your immigration journey into your own hands. This applies to both companies and individuals.
The idea that there’s only one path—from H-1B to PERM to green card to citizenship—is not true. People can work on developing the right portfolio and accomplishments over time so they can apply for other options based on their own merits. And companies can gain more certainty about the individuals they want to hire.