Unless the judicial gods intervene in a rapid fashion, the latest White House announcement regarding the H-1B visa is a harbinger of doom for aspiring Filipino workers.
Last week, the Trump administration issued a surprise proclamation levying an additional $100,000 fee for every new H-1B petition filed after 20 September 2025.
While initially announced as a recurring yearly obligation by employers for every H-1B petition filed (in addition to the regular filing fees, which currently run in the thousands of dollars), a clarification was subsequently issued that the fee would be a one-time charge for every sponsored H-1B worker.
Considering that an H-1B petition is usually valid for three years, it appears that employers would only be on the hook for payment once every three years per H-1B worker. Whether subsequent visa extensions or a change in employment terms would require additional payment remains a murky point at this time.
As explained in previous articles, an H-1B visa is a type of non-immigrant US visa reserved for foreign professional workers who will work in “specialty occupations.” To qualify, the job must require, at a minimum, a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent in a specific field of study.
Examples are teachers, accountants, engineers, physicians, lawyers, therapists, medical technologists, IT specialists, and the like. Although nursing is not typically considered an H-1B caliber occupation, there are certain highly specialized or managerial-level nursing positions that can qualify, such as OR Nurse, Charge Nurse, Case Manager and Nurse Director, among others.
For fiscal year 2024, seventy-one percent (71 percent) of H-1B workers in the US originated from India (283,397). About twelve percent (11.7 percent) came from China (46,680), while the Philippines (5,248), Canada (4,222), and South Korea (3,983) rounded out the top five countries actively exporting H-1B labor to the US.
Anecdotally and based on news reports, the majority of Filipino H-1B workers are employed in the education and healthcare sectors, such as teachers, nurses, therapists and medical technologists, followed by computer and information technology professionals, with a sprinkling of workers in the finance and engineering industries.
While 5,248 (1.3 percent) is a relatively miniscule number compared to India’s 283,397 (71 percent), it remains indisputably true that exporting thousands of professional workers annually to America where they are paid handsomely in US dollars has an immeasurably positive impact on the lives of tens of thousands of Filipino workers and their families, especially because most of these migrant workers ultimately become US citizens who help bring their relatives to the land of milk and honey.
Unfortunately, and like a proverbial punch in the gut, levying an additional $100,000 per worker on top of the regular sponsorship costs is a tall order for many a US employer — be it a public school in Arizona, a hospital in Florida, or an IT firm in Nebraska — thereby foreclosing whatever sponsorship opportunities there may be for a hardworking nurse, teacher, or computer programmer from the Philippines.
Not for a short-term job contract, anyway.
And yet inexplicably, very seldom does a US corporate giant like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Apple — bulk sponsors of H-1B visas that can afford to pay the six-figure fee — bother to hire Filipino workers for H-1B sponsorships.
They prefer Indians and Chinese over America’s brown brothers in Asia.
Bad optics all around.