News Desk: Billionaire Silicon Valley investor Michael Moritz has sharply criticised President Donald Trump’s new policy imposing a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications, warning it will damage America’s technology sector and drive innovation overseas.
The policy, announced Friday through a presidential proclamation, raises fees from the current $2,000–$5,000 range and alters the lottery system to prioritise higher-paid workers. The administration argued the program has been “deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers.”
In a Financial Times column, Moritz — an early backer of Google, PayPal, LinkedIn, and YouTube — called the move “a caper that will backfire,” reflecting “the fragile grasp the president and his acolytes have about why the US tech sector has worked so well.”
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Moritz argued that companies hire H-1B workers not to cut costs but to fill skill shortages. He stressed that foreign engineers, particularly from India, Turkey, and Eastern Europe, are “every bit as well qualified” as their American counterparts, and that much of their work can be done remotely. If companies shift operations abroad, he warned, America will lose not only talent but also the next generation of immigrant entrepreneurs.
The H-1B program admits 85,000 skilled foreign workers annually, 71% from India. The new fee has sparked panic among tech firms, with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google advising employees to return to the US before the deadline.
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While Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings welcomed the policy, calling it a way to reserve visas for “high-value jobs,” most industry leaders and the Indian government condemned it. Moritz urged expansion of the program, suggesting the US should offer automatic citizenship to foreign STEM PhDs and pointing to immigrant leaders like Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai as proof of its success.
