Amid concerns surrounding the Donald Trump administration’s introduction of a staggering US$100,000 application fee for employers seeking to hire foreign professionals through the H-1B visa programme, an immigration lawyer believes the move could ‘backfire’ on the US while luring Jamaica’s skilled workforce to other countries.

Attorney Dayle Blair noted that countries such as Canada and China, for example, are ramping up efforts to attract global talent in fields like information technology, engineering, healthcare, and education.

“China came up last week and said they’re going to have a K-Visa. In order to combat this, the Chinese are going to come up with a K-visa, and they’re going to do the same thing that the US was doing,” Blair said.

“So, the US, on the surface, might appear to be a strong programme, but it could backfire. The US could lose talent that they can’t easily replace,” Blair continued. “Canada is looking at them right next door, and Canada will accept those engineers and IT people and even the teachers.”

Immigration attorney Dayle Blair

The Chinese government on October 1, 2025, launched the K-Visa, a sponsor-free visa category designed to attract professionals in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). However, the visa fee and the requirements for the programme have not yet been announced.

Blair said remote work may also offer an alternative for US employers but raised concerns surrounding data security and client permissions.

“US companies might do more outsourcing to foreign companies. With the advent of the internet, you can work pretty much anywhere in the world. However, one downside is that companies are often afraid to send their information overseas because once it goes overseas, they don’t have any control of it,” Blair said, adding “They don’t know what might be happening with it, and in order for you to send work overseas, clients have to give you permission when you’re specifically working with their data.”

Effective September 21, 2025, US employers seeking to hire new applicants under the H-1B specialised programme are required to pay a fee of US$100,000, a whopping 20-fold increase from the previous US$5,000 application cost.

According to the US Department of Labour, the H-1B visa allows US employers to temporarily hire foreign workers in specialised fields such as science, medicine, education, healthcare, biotechnology, and business, or as fashion models of distinguished ability. To qualify, applicants must hold at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent in the specific speciality.

Current US law caps the number of H-1B visas at 65,000 per year, with an additional 20,000 reserved for applicants with advanced US degrees. Citizens of India, China, the Philippines and Canada have received the most H-1B visas, in that order, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services figures.

Indians account for just over 70 per cent of the approximately 65,000 H1-B visas issued by the US each year.

Jamaicans represent a small fraction of those figures, with 478 H-1B visas issued last fiscal year to citizens of the island, many of whom work in the healthcare and education industries as nurses, teachers and university lecturers.

The sharp increase in application fee comes at a time when the US government is pushing for companies to hire more local talent. But Blair believes these measures could have a stifling effect on US businesses.

“Foreigners generally have a lot to contribute to the US, so this visa, the $100,000 fee, it will have a stifling effect on US innovation and US businesses in that it is restricting the talent coming into the US, and those talents that normally come into the US, the US generally doesn’t have to pay anything for their education,” Blair said.

“A lot of these people are trained overseas, so that cost is someone else’s cost. These people work at 50 per cent of what a US person in a comparable position would be getting. So, the US, in the long run, it may be bad for the US in that they might lose out to other countries, the talent pool,” he added.

Immigration Attorney Nadine Atkinson-Flowers

Similarly, immigration attorney Nadine Atkinson-Flowers noted that while larger companies may be able to foot the bill to hire overseas workers, smaller companies may not be able to do so.

“With this fee now, obviously an employer is going to have to weigh, can I afford $100,000? Some larger employers obviously will be able to do so. But a smaller employer who, up until this announcement, was able to hire one, two, or however many persons in this category, they may not be able to do that anymore,” Atkinson-Flowers said.

She explained that the announcement of the fee increase sparked concerns among employers in the United States.

“When it just occurred, persons were extremely worried that if they were outside of the United States, they would [not] be able to come back in without paying this $100,000. It came out on a Friday evening, and people were frantic throughout the weekend, trying to find out whether they would need to pay the $100,000 before returning to the United States.

“Some organisations were urging their employees to come back to the states before the [September 21] deadline, and lots of persons made significant efforts to get back. The government put out an advisory to say it would not affect persons who already had H-1B visas. But by then, lots of persons had spent a significant amount of money trying to get back,” she explained.

Jamaicans are also being urged to be vigilant of scams, which she said often becomes common during periods of immigration uncertainty.

“I always suggest to people to keep your ear to the ground. You have to look at credible sources… This time of uncertainty is when people get scammed the most. So from time to time, you see it in our newspapers that persons are before our local courts in Jamaica because people promised that they can assist them to get employment in the US, take their money, then disappear,” Atkinson-Flowers said.

“So I urge persons to find good information, credible internet sources such as the government’s website, credible attorneys, and make good decisions and don’t just part with your money easily because whenever there is uncertainty in immigration, these things occur with more frequency,” she added.