MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
More than half a million people working in the United States are here on H-1B visas. They are designed to help employers hire highly skilled foreign workers like software engineers, but now President Trump is upending that program. He issued a proclamation on Friday, adding a $100,000 fee for companies to apply for each new visa. NPR business correspondent Maria Aspan has been covering this, and she's with us now. Good morning, Maria.
MARIA ASPAN, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So there was a lot of confusion and anxiety over the weekend about what this actually means in practice. So what can you tell us?
ASPAN: So President Trump signed this proclamation on Friday, saying that as of early Sunday, there would be this new $100,000 fee for these workers to enter the country, at which point employers and workers both started to panic. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the United States on H-1Bs. And a lot of them work for big tech companies or other huge corporations, including Amazon, Microsoft and JPMorgan Chase. And those companies all sent notes to employees in the hours after the order was signed. They said, if you're on an H-1B visa, stay in the United States. Or if you're out of the country, scramble and try to get home immediately before midnight going into Sunday. Then, on Saturday, the White House clarified that this big new fee would only apply to new visas, and it said that anyone currently on an H-1B would still be able to travel in and out of the country. But by then, obviously, there was plenty of panic and confusion.
MARTIN: You know, President Trump has been taking a lot of actions to restrict immigration. It's always been a signature issue of his since he became a - since he ran for office the first time. Why focus on the H-1B program now? And, you know, remembering that, you know, his wife, Melania Trump, benefited from the H-1B visa program. That's well-established.
ASPAN: So Trump says companies have been abusing and deliberately exploiting this program to replace American workers with lower-paid foreign workers. And the thing is, a lot of progressives and Democrats agree with him - people like Bernie Sanders and California Congressman Ro Khanna. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute, which is a left-leaning nonprofit, has found in a study that most H-1B employers do underpay migrant workers. Ron Hira co-authored that study. I talked to him this weekend. And he's now a professor of political science at Howard University.
RON HIRA: There's huge problems. And in a lot of ways, this effort is in the right direction, and it's long overdue.
ASPAN: But for now, this does still create a lot of chaos and uncertainty for hundreds of thousands of people, and also for the employers who rely on H-1Bs.
MARTIN: What kinds of employers rely on the H-1B program?
ASPAN: Well, a lot of different kinds of employers, as you pointed out, but it is dominated by big tech companies. This year, Amazon has sponsored the highest number of workers on H-1B visas. Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Google - they're all in the top 10. And in fact, some of their CEOs have also personally used the H-1B program. And you may remember, Michel, all of these companies donated to Trump's inauguration fund in January, and many of their CEOs or founders went back to the White House just this month for a tech dinner that Trump hosted. But now Trump is still adding this humongous fee to a program they heavily rely on. There is some language in the order that implies that Trump's administration can make exceptions for certain individuals or companies. But the fact is that the tech industry has tried very hard to court Trump, and as this case shows, it hasn't always necessarily helped them.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Maria Aspan. Maria, thank you.
ASPAN: Thank you.
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