WASHINGTON — Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi is warning that a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas could backfire on the U.S. economy by encouraging companies to move high-skilled work overseas instead of hiring foreign professionals in the United States.
“You can either onshore the talent or offshore the work,” Krishnamoorthi said during an episode of the “Spill the Tea” interview series. “These companies are not going to just sit by and not do the work.”
The Illinois Democrat made the remarks while discussing obstacles in the legal immigration system and the potential impact of the new fee. Indian nationals accounted for 71 percent of H-1B visas issued in fiscal 2024, making the policy particularly significant for Indian professionals and the Indian-American community.
Krishnamoorthi argued that U.S. competitiveness depends on continuing to attract highly skilled workers from around the world.
“Our competitiveness depends on attracting the very best talent on earth. Whether it’s people from India or China or Sweden. It doesn’t matter,” he said.
He characterized the $100,000 charge as effectively a tax on workers filling some of the most specialized positions in the American economy.
Krishnamoorthi said many H-1B professionals have later founded or helped build companies that employ large numbers of Americans, and warned that making it more difficult for them to enter or remain in the country could undermine that economic contribution.
“When you put this, what I call it a tax, $100,000 tax on this group of people who, by the way, fill some of the most kind of exquisite techno-technical roles in our economy… you’re basically pushing these people away in the first instance, and then probably getting people here to rethink whether they should stay,” he said.
The policy could also change how U.S. companies organize their operations, he said.
“I fear that increasingly companies here are gonna offshore the work,” Krishnamoorthi said.
He called for broader reforms to legal immigration and said policies that make it harder for employers to recruit skilled workers risk becoming self-inflicted economic setbacks.
“Especially in this really competitive economic landscape, we’ve got to fix our legal immigration system and we’ve got to stop, you know, these own goals, so to speak, on H1B and, you know, other legal pathways that people have used to enrich our economy,” he said.
Krishnamoorthi also used the interview to criticize President Donald Trump over rising hostility toward Asian and Indian communities.
Asked what he believed was fueling anti-Asian and anti-Indian sentiment, Krishnamoorthi replied, “It rhymes with Donald Trump.”
He accused Trump of exploiting fears about people perceived as outsiders and blaming minority communities for broader economic problems.
“And I think that that has now metastasized over 10 years into almost like a normalization of hate,” he said.
The H-1B program allows U.S. employers to hire foreign professionals for specialty occupations requiring advanced or specialized knowledge. Technology and consulting companies have historically been among the largest users of the program.
Krishnamoorthi has represented Illinois’ 8th Congressional District since 2017. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Princeton University and a law degree from Harvard Law School. (Source: IANS)