By Business Desk,Mohammad Haris,News18

Copyright news18

Industry veteran Mohandas Pai, former CFO of Infosys, on Saturday said the $100,000 fee for H-1B visas is very high and is likely to discourage companies from filing fresh applications for these visas. He added that it will lead to offshoring in the coming months.
Pai added that the impact will be “limited” for now, as it only affects new applications, and existing H-1B visas are “safe”.
Meanwhile, Pai pointed out that the impact will be “limited” for now, as it only affects new applications, and existing H-1B visas are “safe”.
Speaking to news agency PTI, Pai said, “It has got limited application, because… it doesn’t apply to all the H-1B visas which are already there. So, there could be only impact for anybody applying in future, new applications will come down. Nobody’s going to pay $100,000, that is very true.”
He argued that as such H-1B wages are “not cheap”.
“People pay more than $100,000 as salaries, they’re not cheap. If they pay their staff $100,000 they charge their clients $150,000-160,000 so all this idea of sending cheap, low-skilled people, that doesn’t hold water,” Pai said.
Going forward, companies are likely to increase offshoring.
“Now what will happen is everybody will work to increase offshoring…because it doesn’t make sense, first, you don’t get talent, second the costs are too high they’ll increase offshore. That will happen over the next maybe six months to one year. So we have to wait and see what happens but right now, for 3-6 months it will not have any big impact,” he said.
Pai has, in the past, maintained that Indian IT firms’ dependence on H-1B visas has significantly decreased over a period of time, highlighting that data indicates many leading American tech companies are in fact among the top applicants for these visas.
Dismissing the notion that companies use H-1B visas to send cheap labour to the US, Pai pointed out that the average salary paid by the top 20 H-1B employers exceeds $100,000, and criticised what he termed as misplaced “rhetoric carrying on”.
An IT industry expert, who did not wish to be named, told PTI that the fresh approvals for Indian tech companies range from 8,000-12,000 every year. The impact is not just on Indian companies but also on global tech giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft who account for significant H-1B numbers to get “the best talent” to the US. Fee of $100,000 is way too high.
A look at the USCIS website shows that for fiscal year 2025 (data as on June 30, 2025), Amazon topped the list of H-1B visa approvals at 10,044.
In that list of top ten beneficiaries, TCS (5,505) is at the second spot followed by Microsoft Corp (5,189), Meta (5,123), Apple (4,202), Google (4,181), Cognizant (2,493), JP Morgan Chase (2,440), Walmart (2,390) and Deloitte Consulting (2,353). The top 20 list includes Infosys (2,004), LTIMindtree (1,807), and HCL America (1,728).
An industry expert noted said that the latest move by the US would slow down innovation in the US.
Congress has set a mandated cap of 65,000 H-1B visas with 20,000 additional H-1B visas for professionals who have obtained a master’s degree or higher from an accredited US institution.
According to USCIS website, the H-1B programme allows employers in the United States to temporarily employ foreign workers in occupations that require the theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialised knowledge and a bachelor’s degree or higher in the specific specialty, or its equivalent.
In a move that could adversely impact Indian professionals on visas in the US, President Donald Trump on Friday signed a proclamation that will raise the fee for H1-B visas to a staggering $100,000 annually, the latest in the administration’s efforts to crack down on immigration.
Until now, H-1B visas have carried various administrative fees totalling around $1,500.
The proclamation said that the number of foreign STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) workers in the United States has more than doubled between 2000 and 2019, increasing from 1.2 million to almost 2.5 million, while overall STEM employment has only increased 44.5 per cent during that time. Among computer and math occupations, the foreign share of the workforce grew from 17.7 per cent in 2000 to 26.1 per cent in 2019. The key facilitator for this influx of foreign STEM labour has been the abuse of the H-1B visa, it said.