Last Friday, the Trump administration unveiled a dramatic overhaul of a key work visa program,
announcing a huge increase in cost for the H-1B visa.
What this proclamation will do is raise the fee that companies pay to sponsor H-1B applicants to $100,000.
The H-1B program allows U.S. companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers.
And the administration says the goal of this change is to open up more jobs for American citizens.
We need workers.
We need workers.
We need great workers.
And this pretty much ensures that that's what's going to happen.
The announcement was unexpected, and right away it caused a lot of chaos and confusion.
The proclamation the president put out late Friday said that this new policy would take effect at 12.01 a.m.
Eastern time Sunday, and that's the message that's sent a lot of people scrambling.
That's our colleague Amrith Ramkumar.
So you basically had a little more than 24 hours to get back to the U.S. if you were somewhere else.
Immediately,
there were concerns that H-1B visa holders traveling abroad would have to pay a huge fee to reenter the U.S. and some lawyers started encouraging people to come back to the states.
If you're traveling abroad and you're on an H-1B visa, you better come back ASAP.
This is urgent, time-sensitive.
If you have a brother, a sister, a best friend,
they need to book their flights now and come back immediately.