Leadership1 publisher3 min readPublished
H-1B uncertainty makes skilled foreign staff wary of promotions and moves
Skilled foreign workers are putting off homes and job moves amid the contested $100,000 H-1B fee, according to Business Insider interviews. For managers, a promotion or transfer that needs an amended petition can look like risk to the employee holding the visa.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
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What happened
- The administration announced the $100,000 fee in September 2025, applying it to certain new H-1B petitions for workers who are outside the US.
- Switching employers requires the new employer to file an H-1B petition, and a title or location change at the same company may require an amended one.
- An H-1B holder who loses a job typically has up to 60 days to find a new employer willing to file a petition, or risks losing status.
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Why it matters
- decision Offering an H-1B holder a promotion or a move to another city now asks that person to reopen their petition, so managers are weighing a raise against the employee's tolerance for status risk.
- cost Workers who hold still to protect their status give up pay growth; on ADP's general-workforce medians the gap is about 2.6 points a year, and the employee carries it.
- exposure A layoff decision sets an immigration deadline for each H-1B holder affected, so the timing of notice lands directly on that person's legal status.
- constraint Letting authorization lapse and re-sponsoring from abroad now meets a $100,000 fee on certain petitions, closing a fallback that workers like Reddy had counted on.
"It's hard, you know, obviously you can't plan," Madhur Mehta told Business Insider, adding, "unless we are both very clear on what our visa status is." [3] Mehta is 35 and a program manager at Amazon, and he has already been selected for an H-1B [1]. He and his fiancee, both from India, looked at buying a house last year and could not commit. She has one attempt left at the H-1B lottery before her work authorization expires [2].
The board-deck version is short: visa uncertainty means flight risk, so plan for attrition among foreign staff. It is incomplete because the employer tie can hold people in place. "The employer tie affects everything," said Nicole Gunara, a principal attorney at the immigration law firm Manifest Law. "The timeline and risk profile for changing jobs are completely different from a US citizen." [13] Business Insider reports that the petition paperwork can make some workers cautious about a promotion, a new company or a move to another city [11].
A skeptic would say the caution is overstated, and there is evidence for that view. David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, pointed to USCIS data showing tens of thousands of job change petitions every year [14]. Gunara draws the same distinction. "The employer tie does not prevent switching; it adds steps and costs to switching," she said [15]. The record supports friction. Business Insider's reporting rests on interviews with more than 20 people [5], so how many skilled foreign workers are holding back, and by how much, we do not know yet.
The friction has a price, and the worker pays it. ADP Research's July medians put job-switchers 2.6 percentage points ahead of people who stayed put on year-over-year pay growth [1]. Those figures describe US job-switchers in general [12], so they indicate what staying put tends to cost across the workforce.
The fee adds a second layer of doubt, and it has been tied up in court [4]. For Shreya Mishra Reddy, who joined Visa in 2023, it closed the route she had planned: leave the US when her student work authorization expired in January 2026 and apply for H-1B jobs from overseas [7]. "I knew it was no longer a realistic option for me," she said [8]. She moved to Toronto, where her husband lives. "I only planned for the best-case scenario," she said. "It didn't happen, and it ended up costing me a lot." [9]
The administration defends the policy on labor-market grounds. A White House spokesperson said its agenda is designed to prioritize American workers, and a USCIS spokesperson said the goal is for employment-based visa programs to "supplement, not supplant American workers." [6] A State Department spokesperson said the proposed fees are designed to address "abuse of the program." [6]
This quarter's choices set up next quarter's consequences for these employees. A promotion approved in the next review cycle may bring an amended petition with it [10]. I'd expect an employee who knows the filing and its timeline in advance to weigh that offer differently from one who finds out later. Headcount cuts are harsher, because a role eliminated this quarter hands an H-1B holder a job search on a 60-day clock [16]. Ohio State eliminated Luciana Pereyra's H-1B role, in marketing at its College of Nursing, in January. She had spent eight years in the US, first on a tennis scholarship [17].
What to watch
- A court ruling on the $100,000 fee would settle whether sponsoring certain workers from abroad carries that cost.
- USCIS figures on job-change and amended petitions over the coming year would show whether the caution described in these interviews appears at scale.