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$100K Visa Fee Is Peanuts for Indentured Servitude

By Joe Guzzardi

President Donald Trump, on Sept. 19, issued his Proclamation entitled “Restrictions on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers” that imposes a $100,000, one-time fee for most new non-immigrant visa petitions filed after September 21 and restricts the ability of certain other H-1B visa holders to enter the U.S. The Proclamation applies only to petitions that have not yet been filed and not to aliens who already hold current, valid H-1B visas. Per the order, employers must now provide proof of payment when filing H-1B petitions, with enforcement overseen by the U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security. The administration’s goal is to end the visa’s abuse and thereby ensure that only the most highly skilled foreign workers are selected for entry while encouraging employers to prioritize Americans.

The industry’s immediate response to the Trump administration’s abrupt but forceful action was widespread confusion as some H-1B visa holders cancelled plans to re-enter or scheduled return flights to the U.S. before the proclamation’s Sept. 21 effective date. However, for the H-1B’s countless critics who have been crying foul since the Immigration Act of 1990 created the American job-killing visa, cautious optimism prevailed.

The fee has had the desired effect of dampening employer enthusiasm for cheaper foreign labor. Walmart, America’s largest private-sector employer with approximately 1.6 million workers on its domestic payroll — a total that includes about 2,400 H-1B visa holders — announced that it would temporarily suspend hiring new H-1Bs.

Four decades ago, Congress, craven employers, and pro-immigration expansionists sold the visa as a vital stopgap measure for companies that could not fill essential jobs with domestic workers. But their fairy-tale vision contrasted sharply with reality. Using the H-1B program to facilitate the offshoring of U.S. jobs and replace U.S. workers is the exact opposite of the program’s advertised purpose of helping employers fill temporary labor shortages with workers possessing skills that are in short supply domestically. If it were operating as intended, the program should, when necessary, bring in skilled workers to complement the U.S. labor force. While in some cases H-1B workers are skilled and benefit the U.S. economy, the data showed early in the program’s history that a large percentage of visas were used to undercut and replace U.S. workers to boost corporate profits.

Prospective IT employers were understandably shocked at the new $100,000 fee. Before the Proclamation, the H-1B petition fee could range from approximately $460 to about $4,460. But visa critics were pleased at the hike because for decades, independently published research reports from conservative and liberal think tanks proved that unscrupulous employers underpaid and overworked their H-1B labor force. Ten years ago, President Jimmy Carter’s labor secretary Ray Marshall called the H-1B “one of the best con jobs ever done on the American public and political systems. The supporters argue that we have a shortage of college-educated workers. Well, there’s no evidence of that in the numbers…” During the decade since Marshall scorned the H-1B, the only significant change is that IT employers have gone on a dramatic firing spree, dismissing older, experienced native-born professionals while the annual lottery has admitted 85,000 new workers year after year. Some employers are exempt from the annual 85,000 cap, including universities and their affiliated nonprofit entities, nonprofit research organizations, and government research organizations. Because of the corporate exceptions, the arriving H-1B total far exceeds 85,000.

Of the top H-1B employers, many visas went to outsourcing firms — about one quarter of the annual 85,000 allotment. In 2024, at least 95,000 workers at U.S.-based tech companies were laid off; layoffs hit a peak in 2023 when around 200,000 tech workers were fired. Today, the tech job market is horrible. Over 200 tech companies have laid off 91,000 employees, yet the visa lottery persists as if the market were tight.

The five domestic corporations with the most H-1Bs include Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Tata Computer Services, with J.P. Morgan narrowly missing the top tier. Most enjoyed excellent fiscal 2024 net earnings: Microsoft, $88 billion, a 22% increase over 2023; Meta, $62 billion, up 59% year-over-year; Amazon, $60 billion. All could easily afford $100,000. But now the question the corporate titans must answer is why pay $100,000 for a foreign-born employee when recent college graduates or fired, unemployed workers could be hired for $0.00 and without immigration procedural headaches. Well-paid, white-collar IT jobs should go to Americans, not Indians who comprise 73% of the total or Chinese nationals, 13%.

$100,000 is a bargain basement deal for employers. Since the visa is valid for three years and includes an automatic three-year renewal, the company will pay about $16,666 per year over a six-year term for an indentured worker. Instead of serving its original purpose, the H-1B visa is a vehicle that suppresses wages, erodes job security, and sidesteps fair employment practices. For years, as it has laid off hundreds of thousands of talented, experienced U.S. engineers, the tech industry has vigorously lobbied Congress, pleading that without its annual overseas worker allocation, their businesses would teeter on the brink of collapse. So, put up or shut up. If the H-1Bs are as imperative to corporate survival as its advocates claim, then the $100,000 is pocket change.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Halloween 1924 Was Baseball Barnstorming At Its Best

By Joe Guzzardi

On Halloween night, parents now must decide between the traditional activity—taking the youngsters trick-or-treating—or a newer option: watching the World Series, the fall classic that once ended in mid-September. World Series viewing is only practical for West Coast kids; the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Tyler Glasnow threw Game Three’s first pitch at 8:42 PM EDT. Fans know that if MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred could have his way, the league would play regular season games on Christmas Eve in Auckland, New Zealand. Picture Manfred’s fantasy: robots calling the plays at all four corners and players’ uniforms adorned from collar to cleat with advertisements—walking billboards.

Until Manfred realizes his dream, he’ll content himself with adding new teams to the existing leagues. With expansion and the diluted talent pool anticipated before the end of the decade, there could be a major reshuffling of existing leagues to address concerns over brutal travel schedules. Candidates for new franchises include Nashville, Salt Lake City, a possible return to Montreal, or the long shot: Mexico City. Manfred will need to mandate domed stadiums before awarding new franchises. Post-season weather delays are inevitable as games are played later and later in autumn.

Disgruntled fans yearning for true baseball should turn back the pages to relive the greatest Halloween baseball ever played. On October 31, 1924, three Hall of Famers—Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, and Sam “Wahoo” Crawford—played an exhibition game for the ages. Ruth won his only batting crown that year, hitting .378. He led the league with 46 home runs and drove in 121 runs. Highlighted by the Bambino’s cloud-busting 550-foot home run, with a second four-bagger added for good measure, Ruth, his otherworldly homer, and the game live on in legend in tiny Brea, California.

Johnson, the “Big Train,” was a local hero. His family moved from Humboldt, Kansas—Johnson’s birthplace—to Olinda, California, just east of Brea, a small oil boomtown. As a frolicking teenager, Johnson rode his black mare “Tar,” worked the rough-and-tumble oil fields, and began pitching for the Union Oil Wells, a company team where he forged his future as a MLB 417-game winner.

Just a few weeks after Johnson’s Senators won the 1924 World Series against the New York Giants, the 36-year-old “Big Train” faced off against Ruth, who toed the slab and pitched a complete-game 12-1 victory. The game, part of the Johnson-Ruth barnstorming tour, was played in brilliant Southern California sunshine. In honor of the big day, schools were closed, shops shuttered, Boy Scouts directed traffic, and fans from nearby towns rushed to see baseball played by the best. Though the evidence is lost to time, rumors persist that the Hall of Fame duo led the town’s first-ever Halloween parade. The Brea Bowl erected two thousand seats to accommodate the town’s 1,500 residents, but 15,000 showed up. Those without seats settled for gathering around primitive radio crystal sets. An Anaheim Bulletin headline—”All roads lead to Brea for Monster Athletic Contest”—summed up the pregame excitement. The Los Angeles Times dubbed it “the greatest deluxe sandlot game Southern California has ever seen.” After all, the Dodgers’ move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and the Giants’ shift from New York to San Francisco were more than three decades away.

But Johnson, just days after his triumphant seventh-game World Series win, disappointed his hometown rooters with his substandard pitching performance. With only a day’s rest from an exhibition in Oakland and hampered by semi-pro catcher “Bus” Callan’s limited experience, Johnson was shelled—eight runs on eight hits, including four home runs. Later in his life, Callan revealed a secret about Ruth and his homers. Early in the game, Johnson told his catcher that the fans wanted to see Ruth do what he does best—hit the ball out of sight. During Ruth’s first two at-bats, Johnson grooved fat pitches that, to the fans’ glee, the Sultan of Swat blasted.

After the game, Johnson and Ruth visited Hollywood, with Douglas Fairbanks giving the two a set tour of his latest movie, “The Thief of Bagdad.” The Brea exhibition was the last game of the barnstorming season, beating the November 1 deadline set by baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Ruth operated at full throttle on his swing west, playing to an estimated 125,000 fans in 15 cities. “He made 22 scheduled speeches, headed four parades, judged a boxing match, drove a golf ball 353 yards, visited eighteen hospitals and orphan asylums,” Marshall Smelser wrote in his 1975 biography, “The Life That Ruth Built.”

Postscript: When the Orange Freeway and the Brea Mall opened in the 1970s, the town turned into a magnet for shoppers and home buyers. Single-story houses now stand where the Brea Bowl once hosted Ruth and Johnson.

Compared to Ruth, Johnson is underappreciated. Consider this partial list of his records: nine consecutive 300+ innings pitched, 110 shutouts won, 35 1-0 shutouts, 65 shutouts lost, 12 seasons leading the league in shutouts, and highest batting average for a pitcher, .433.

Ruth and Johnson died too young. Johnson passed at age 59 from a brain tumor in 1946, and Ruth, aged 53, succumbed to cancer in 1948. Watch Johnson pitch to Ruth here.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research scholar. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com