Imagine being told the chance to work in America is not only a lottery but now comes with a $100,000 price tag.

In this special edition of Immigration Weekly, Rosanna Berardi cuts through the noise around the H-1B visa shake-up, breaking down how the program actually works, why it matters to American businesses, and what’s really behind the latest executive order. If you’re tired of the headlines and want the real story, this episode tells it straight.

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Transcript

Everyone’s talking about U.S. immigration law, but nobody really knows how it works. I’m Rosanna Berardi. I’m the daughter of an immigrant, a former immigration inspector at the border, university professor, and founder and managing partner of Berardi Immigration Law.

I’ve done nothing but U.S. immigration law for over 30 years, and it’s time to stop the misinformation on all sides. I’m going to tell you how it all works, the inside story. This is Immigration Weekly with Rosanna Berardi.

The H-1B Fire Drill

Well, welcome back to a special edition of Immigration Weekly with yours truly, Rosanna Berardi. Whoo, H-1B fire drill. What does this mean?

What’s happening? Oh, my God. You guys, this administration is famous, infamous, I would argue, for dropping big news at 5 p.m. on Fridays. It’s what they do. I saw that there was a White House executive order press conference scheduled, and I thought to myself, oh, no, please don’t make this be about immigration. But alas, it was.

If you’ve seen the news, heard the news, looked at the news, you’ve heard about this H-1B visa and charging people $100,000, $100,000 picked out of the thin air. What’s going on? So this is a special edition of the podcast, so you can know what the heck is happening.

Understanding the H-1B Program

How does it work? Are we really going to do this? Is this a good idea?

Why are we doing this? Yada, yada, yada, sis boomba. Okay, back to the beginning.

H-1B, it’s one of the many type of work permit categories under the Immigration and Nationality Act. It’s been there forever. It allows individuals from around the globe who hold a bachelor’s degree and are coming to work in a job in the United States that requires a bachelor degree to live and work in the United States.

It’s a temporary category. This means it’s limited to three years and then another extension of three years for a maximum total of six years. This is not a green card.

This is not citizenship. This is a work permit that has a beginning and an end. It’s reserved for professionals.

You have to work in a professional level position as a journalist, as a software developer, as the CEO of a company. We have tons and tons of H-1B clients that do everything across the board. Are there millions of them?

No. The controversy about the H-1B is the fact that the government, Congress, those folks, have put a cap on the number allowed in the U.S. each year. What does that cap mean?

That means only 85,000 people per year can secure H-1B status. Well, how do you get it? You get it through a lottery.

Literally. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has a lottery every spring. They get about 400,000 applications for 85,000 spots.

This is tough stuff, people. Clients pay a lot of money for their chance in the lottery. It’s usually about a 30 percent chance of winning.

There’s a lot of technicalities on the H-1B. This is a program that ensures that foreign workers are being paid what American workers are being paid and not taken advantage of. Companies that hire H-1B workers, holy man, do they have to jump through a ton of hoops with their State Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the U.S. Department of State. This is not an easy peasy, oh, I just want an H-1B. Here’s some money. Give me one.

No. This is hell. I’m an employer.

I’ve had a law firm for 20 years. I employ 20 individuals. I would rather do anything than apply for an H-1B.

It is expensive. The government filing fees are about $5,000. Add legal fees on top of that.

It’s restrictive. You only have a 30 percent chance of winning the lottery. And even when you do in March of that year, you can’t use it until October.

I always joke with my clients, I have the worst product in the world to sell, and that’s the H-1B. So yada, yada, yada, the Trump administration comes out gangbusters on a Friday night saying, we’re shutting this down. This is killing America.

Immigration, Jobs, and Big Tech

American employers like Amazon, Google, Meta, all the tech bros are hiring foreigners because they’re cheaper than Americans. Is that true? Not really sure.

Lots of conflicting data. I would argue it is not true, mostly. They are saying that this program is abused.

Maybe there’s abuse in every immigration category, but the government charges every H-1B applicant a fee for anti-fraud. This fee funds the government and allows the government to investigate fraudulent employers, people doing bad things. There are bad actors in everything.

I will contend all day long that the H-1B category is a great category. Yes, it’s expensive. It’s expensive.

Most employers would not do this unless they had to. It’s a great category. Why?

It supplements the American workforce. Well, Rosanna, why do we have to have all these people in the U.S. stealing American jobs? Seriously?

If that’s what you think, then I want you to pause for a minute and think about the fact that we have the Immigration and Nationality Act, originally from 1952, amended in the 90s, last touched 1996, that contains a dozen visa classifications to allow people to live and work in the United States. If you don’t want the H-1B program, then you don’t want immigration to the United States. You want this to be solely all-American country.

Ouch. Ouch. You know all the tech bros that own Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Tesla, Google.

Guess what? All the big companies, they were founded by immigrants. They’re immigrants doing amazing things.

We are a nation of immigrants. We used to say we were a nation that was the melting pot. We want people to come from all over the world and contribute.

Give us your best and your brightest. Have them do amazing things, patents, science, medicine. Imagine your local hospital without a foreign national physician.

It would be worse than it currently is. This is ludicrous, madness, mind-numbing. We do not want an American-only workforce.

Politics, Conspiracies, and Global Tensions

This is a terrible idea, people. If you don’t like the H-1B program, then you are anti-immigration. Think about that.

That’s not being said. So, I digress. Why did this happen?

Well, there’s a couple things. Call me a conspiracy theorist. I don’t know.

I think these two things can be related. Number one, beginning of September, huge meeting at the White House with all of the big tech companies, tech players. They all sat down.

Bill Gates, Elon wasn’t there, Mark Zuckerberg. They all sat down with President Trump and committed to making America first in AI with all kinds of conversation, all kinds of promises. That happened at the beginning of September.

I would argue the industry leaders in that room that were talking to the Trump administration about AI are also really big users of the H-1B program. I’m not sure. Did they agree to this?

Did they say, well, hey, was there some kind of backdoor agreement or negotiation? There’s no way that the biggest tech companies in America sat down with President Trump at the beginning of September, and then two weeks later, the Trump administration says, oh, tech companies that use all these H-1Bs, sorry, do something else. That’s one of my theories.

The other theory, tensions between the US and India, a little bit rocky right now. What does that matter? Well, 75% of H-1B workers are Indian nationals, citizens born in India.

US and India, things are a little rough right now. Why? Tariffs.

The administration’s levied lots and lots of tariffs. The administration doesn’t like some of the things India’s doing with Russia. The Indian stock market tanked this morning based on this proposal of $100,000 feet.

Is this related? Maybe. True to form, poorly thought out.

The executive order doesn’t make any sense. It had all immigration lawyers in a scramble. Thankfully, late Saturday night, the government clarified some issues that this only applies to new applications.

What Happens Next

That means if you’re in the US right now as an H-1B, or you have an H-1B, this doesn’t matter. But hey, if you’re a company that uses H-1Bs regularly to supplement your workforce, this could be a game changer. Now, the $100,000 filing fee.

A president can’t do this through an executive order, and he knows that. He knows that. How do you do this?

There’s some rules called the Administrative Procedures Act. That’s when, if the government wants to raise fees, they have to go through this whole scheme of, why do you want to raise it? What’s the percentage?

What do we think? Then it goes out to the Federal Register for public comments. Then once that’s finalized, it takes into effect.

This is what normally happens. This didn’t happen with the President Trump executive order on H-1Bs. Will this $100,000 filing fee go into effect?

Unlikely. This will probably go through many layers of litigation. What a waste of everybody’s time and money.

I’m sorry. Call me biased. America without immigration would be a really different place.

We would be up the creek without the contributions of H-1B workers. Many of the other categories, the O-1, the T-N, the P-1, we have a robust immigration law that allows foreign work in the U.S. That’s what makes us great. You guys, stop.

Yes, America, wake up. We need to get our act together. Education system’s not working.

We’re being outpaced by the world. But we’re bringing in the best and brightest to help us fill in labor gaps in medicine, in tech, in science. Trust me.

I’ve represented thousands and thousands of H-1Bs over 30 years. These are people you want in the United States. You want them here making contributions.

They are rule followers, law-abiding, taxpayers. They buy homes. They support public schools.

They contribute to the U.S. economy. This America-only labor force, bad idea. This is a hot topic.

Thank you for joining me on our special episode of Immigration Weekly with Rosanna Berardi. Be sure to share this. There’s a lot of noise and a lot of bad info out there.

And subscribe so you never miss a message. Until next week, have a great day. This was Immigration Weekly with Rosanna Berardi.

Thanks for joining. Be sure to connect with me, Rosanna Berardi, on LinkedIn or go to our law firm at berardiimmigrationlaw.com. And if you don’t want to miss the latest and greatest, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and share this with your friends.

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