U.S. President Donald Trump's sudden proclamation last weekend imposing a 100,000-U.S.-dollar fee on new H-1B visa applications has generated intense debate across the technology sector in the country.

H-1B is one of the most common work visas in the United States. It is issued to skilled foreign workers typically for a duration of three years, which may be extended for a maximum of six years.

Silicon Valley companies are the program's biggest users, according to data collected by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on employers who had the most H-1B visas approved every year. In fiscal year 2025, the top companies sponsoring new H-1B visas include Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google.

Mixed reactions were reported across Silicon Valley. While leading corporations there hailed the change as a refinement of America's talent pipeline, startups and service firms warned of crippling fallout. Meanwhile, immigrant workers reported immediate hardship, and analysts predicted that Indians would suffer the greatest loss of opportunity.

Under the new rule that took effect on Sunday, companies must pay 100,000 dollars per H-1B petition, a steep increase over the previous 1,500-dollar charge. The White House insisted the policy targets program abuse and reserves visas for only the highest-value roles.

Netflix co-founder and chairman Reed Hastings on Sunday called the change "a great solution." "It will mean H1-B is used just for very high-value jobs, which will mean no lottery needed, and more certainty for those jobs," he wrote in a post on social platform X.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Monday said: "Immigration is really important to our company and is really important to our nation's future, and I'm glad to see President Trump making the moves he's making."

OpenAI chief Sam Altman, who was interviewed by the CNBC news channel with Huang together on Monday, said: "We need to get the smartest people in the country, and streamlining that process and also sort of aligning financial incentives seems good to me."

By contrast, startup founders and their investors sounded the alarm. Selin Kocalar, chief operating officer of the AI compliance startup Delve, worried about the financial challenges startups face, noting that "as a startup, financial resources are always limited."

"So you can't go out and spend a bunch of money or have that kind of luxury that you'd see at a bigger company," she was quoted as saying by The New York Times on Tuesday.

Desmond Lim, CEO and co-founder of human resources, payroll and hiring platform Workstream, told CNBC Tuesday that the fee would be too high to justify for early-stage companies like his, complicating recruitment strategies.

He said all of his San Francisco-based startup's H1-B applications were rejected over the past year, which was "very disappointing" as he tried to secure some top engineering talent.

Some venture capitalists warned that startups may have no choice but to move jobs to other countries, such as Canada, rather than shoulder the prohibitive cost -- a shift that could undercut U.S. innovation and investment.

Y Combinator partner Garry Tan criticized the new H-1B visa fee policy as "kneecapping startups" and "a massive gift to every overseas tech hub," predicting Singapore, London and Toronto will compete to lure talent barred from entering the United States.

In 2019, the USCIS estimated that there were over 580,000 H-1B visa holders in the United States.

India's giant information-technology service sector stands to bear the heaviest brunt. U.S. government data showed that Indians received 71 percent of H-1B approvals in fiscal year 2024. Industry observers suggested that escalating visa fees may force service firms such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro to reconsider their U.S. operations or pass costs on to U.S. customers, potentially raising project prices and straining longstanding client relationships.

The international response has been swift. Canadian media and immigration consultants have noted an uptick in interest in the country's Global Talent Stream program, with some speculating that more highly skilled foreign workers may be attracted to Canada in search of friendlier immigration rules.

"While President Trump announced late last week that it will make it harder to bring talent to the U.S., we want to make it easier to bring talent to the UK," UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said Tuesday.

Some Indian media outlets have discussed the possibility of a partial "reverse brain drain," with professionals considering opportunities at home or in local technology firms.