Microsoft laid off 9,000 American engineers this summer – then applied for thousands of H-1B visas to replace them with cheaper foreign workers.
Now the Trump administration is making that swap cost $103,265 per hire.
JD Vance just made clear that Big Tech buying its way out of hiring Americans is about to get a lot more expensive.
The $103,265 Question Big Tech Cannot Answer
The Department of Homeland Security dropped a proposed rule Monday that would add $103,265 to the cost of every new H-1B cap-subject petition – on top of every other fee companies already pay.
This is not a processing tweak.
DHS calculated $8.77 billion in government-wide immigration costs – courts, fraud detection, national security vetting, deportation operations – and divided it across 85,000 annual H-1B slots.
The math said $103,264.57.
They rounded to the nearest five dollars.
https://twitter.com/MichaelARothman/status/2092201934145126415?s=20
Vance backed it immediately, posting: "If an American corporation needs workers, it should hire and train Americans."
The migration lobby had a meltdown.
Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us – the wealthy-investor lobbying group that has spent years greasing the H-1B pipeline – called the rule "VERY bad" within hours.
He warned it would "gut US ability to attract and retain world talent."
What he did not mention is that the talent his members have been attracting has been replacing American workers who already had the jobs.
The Criminal Enterprise Nobody Wanted to Name
The H-1B program currently keeps at least 730,000 migrants – plus 150,000 of their spouses – in jobs that would otherwise go to Americans.
That is not an accident.
Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D'Esposito went on the record with what investigators have found inside the program.
"This is not just fraud," D'Esposito told Breitbart News. "This is a criminal enterprise that stretches far beyond the borders of America."
He warned that when the investigation is complete, what will make Americans "most angry" is the direct connection between the managers selling American jobs and "transnational criminal organizations."
The mechanics run on a simple kickback structure.
Indian-run staffing companies – called body shops – import workers, often with fabricated credentials, then lease them to Fortune 500 companies through layers of subcontracts.
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The profits flow back through what insiders call the 80/20 rule – a kickback arrangement that enriches the managers and staffing chains while American workers are walked out the door.
Indian immigrant businessman Vivek Wadhwa, who supports the program, admitted this summer exactly how widespread the abuse is.
"You have people faking their resumes," Wadhwa said. "You have these body shops who bring people in, and it's cheap labor. So it's a fact. It happens – probably about 20 to 25 percent of the people who come in on H-1B visas fall in that category."
This is not a critic of the program talking.
This is a defender of it confirming roughly 30,000 fraudulent visa workers entering the United States every single year.
What Comes Next and Why This Time Is Different
The previous Trump H-1B fee – $100,000 per hire – was struck down by a federal judge in June who ruled that imposing visa taxes is Congress' job, not the executive branch's.
DHS structured this rule differently, codifying it at 8 CFR 106.2 as a fee for cost recovery – the same legal authority used for every other USCIS fee.
The Chamber of Commerce has already sued over the earlier fee, and litigation on this one is coming.
But the legal fight is almost beside the point now.
Every corporation filing an H-1B petition this week knows the $103,265 rule is in the public comment period – and that the Trump administration has the political will to make it stick.
Silicon Valley investor Chamath Palihapitiya, who is aligned with Vance, put it plainly in June: "You need to stop and tourniquet the bleeding, so that you can reestablish trust with the American population at large."
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Vance is the one holding the tourniquet.
He launched a formal fraud investigation through the Labor Department in July.
He is pointing to an inspector general who says the body shops connect to transnational criminal networks.
He is backing a fee so large it forces every corporation to run the math on whether the visa is worth it.
The H-1B program spent thirty years treating American engineers as an inconvenience to be quietly replaced.
Vance just made that inconvenience cost $103,265 a head.
Sources:
- Neil Munro, "JD Vance Backs $103,265 Fee for Every New H-1B Visa," Breitbart News, August 24, 2026.
- "DHS Proposes Additional H-1B Fee," U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, August 25, 2026.
- "DHS Proposes a $103,265 Fee on Every H-1B Cap Petition," Reddy Neumann Brown PC, August 25, 2026.
- "JD Vance Launches H-1B Visa Program Fraud Investigation," Breitbart News, July 9, 2026.
- "Labor Dept. IG Launches Probe on Criminals' Big Business Through H-1B Program," RedState, August 7, 2026.