Employment-based visas fee hike disadvantages Indian tech workers

A pre-registration fee for employment-based visas will increase from $10 to $200, to help defray operating costs of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (the government agency that processes these visas). The hardest hit migrants will be the employers of Indian tech workers, as explained in this story, who hold 300,000 or 74% of H-1B visas. In addition to the pre-registration, employers will face increased fees for the vissas themselves, with H-1B visas application fees increasing from $460 to $780 and L-1 visas will change from $460 to $1,385. 

Although an increase from $10 to $215 may appear dramatic at first glance, the $10 fee was established simply to cover a small portion of the costs of the program, as opposed to no fee at all,” USCIS said.

MHC