The H-1B visa just got a whole helluvalot more expensive: During the pre-weekend Friday news dump, President Donald Trump made some major announcements about our system for skilled immigration. "We're going to take that money and we're going to be reducing taxes and we're going to be reducing debt." But at the same time, a new annual fee of $100,000 will be levied on each H-1B visa applicant going forward, which will serve as a big deterrent. Some number of the roughly 500,000 people currently in the U.S. with H-1Bs—high-skill visas used by tech workers, medical workers, and other professionals working in the fields they received degrees in—would have been dissuaded from coming here had the new system been in place. Previously the h-1B fee was <$5,000.