Most companies have spent years building a reliable path to scarce technical talent. They recruit the best students from American universities and, if they’re international students, sponsor the best performers for H-1B visas.
That entire path now includes substantial risk. The Trump administration recently said that it would impose an additional $103,265 fee on certain H-1B visas. At the same time, a separate proposal covering Optional Practical Training, or OPT, has reached White House review. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that officials were considering a $100,000 OPT fee.
Neither proposal is a final rule just yet. But together they send a clear signal to leaders who depend on foreign graduates in their talent pipelines: your strategy can no longer assume you’ll get the best talent affordably or predictably.
One Pipeline with Two Expensive Tollgates
OPT allows many foreign graduates to work in the United States for one year, or up to three years for qualifying STEM graduates. Companies often use that period to evaluate young hires before sponsoring them for H-1B status.
Consider what happens if new costs appear at both stages. Companies would have a six-figure barrier to accessing the best new talent. And you could face another $103,265 charge to file a cap-subject H-1B petition if you wanted to keep the all-star employee. The exact OPT proposal has not been made public, including who would pay, but the risk is there.
This also creates and have and have-not problem for business leaders. Leading magacap companies with deep pockets can afford the new costs. Medium sized and smaller businesses might not.
More than an HR Issue
Why does all this matter?
International students represent 80 percent of full-time graduate students in computer and information sciences and 75 percent in electrical and computer engineering. If these students return to their countries of origin after obtaining great education in the U.S., the country may become less competitive in the long-term.
Immigrants have also founded or cofounded 59 percent of America’s billion-dollar startups. Many of these founded their companies after gaining experience working in a company after college.
Leaders usually treat immigration policy as a legal or HR issue. In fact, they should view this as supply-chain risk. If one policy decision can make your primary source of critical skills unaffordable, you have a single point of failure.
In my work with Fortune 1000 leadership teams, most of my clients can name their largest customers, operational vulnerabilities, and financial risks. Few can identify the ten people whose departure would set the business back a year. Critical talent rarely receives attention.
Build a Talent System You Control
Some companies are already reducing their exposure. JPMorgan Chase plans to build a two-million-square-foot capability center in Mumbai for about 30,000 employees. It is putting engineering capacity where much of the talent already lives.
IBM developed another option. Through its new collar approach, it removed bachelor’s degree requirements from many roles and created paid apprenticeships to develop technical workers inside the company.
Here’s how you can gain more control whether you rely on international talent or not:
- Map your talent concentration. Identify critical roles that depend on one school, visa program, geography, or recruiting channel.
- Develop a second source. Build internal academies, apprenticeships, and skills-first hiring for the roles you repeatedly need to fill.
- Put work closer to talent. Decide which capabilities truly need to sit in the United States and which can be built in another geography without weakening the business.
This week, choose your three most important technical or leadership roles and ask where the next qualified person would come from. If every answer leads back to the same channel, you’ve identified the risk.
The companies that stay competitive will be the ones that treat talent as a capability to develop, diversify, and protect over time.
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