What I’m not clear on - how many of these H1B hires are subject to the EO that jacked up the fee to $100k per person? Assuming even just 100 of them were, that’s still ten million USD (assuming I didn’t visualize the zeroes in my head wrong…), and a really large fee to justify to the board if you’re otherwise paying “roughly the same” in salary. Productivity is going to basically break even anyway after a few years.

This is why I’m wondering: did the EO get blocked, paused for judicial review or something? Is it even in effect?

No intention to make this political, I’m legitimately curious about the status of the law and its actual applicability here. Supposed to be such a steep fine they literally couldn’t afford to do this - not with them already going cash flow negative to build out AI datacenters. So either it’s not applying (why?) or somehow they’re justifying one HUGE fee and somebody is floating them one astronomical loan - which again, why? Where’s the profit in taking that big a risk? Seems absolutely unhinged!

We’re missing something here. Or, at least, I am.

Very few, probably. It only applies to consular processing, and only brand new petitions. And that’s ignoring the likelihood that all of this might get struck down by a court (on appeal) at some point given the administration’s propensity for breaking the law. EOs aren’t law on their own.

Remember that there was a "one-time fee" exception for "favored clients" (read: friends of Trump), who could pay a single lump-sum of something like $1 million, and then apply for unlimited H-1B's at the old fee structure.

Trump's EO is crafted to hurt only Indian IT companies like Infosys, Wipro etc. American companies are more or less excluded from the EO.