Donald Trump has always known how to put a price on things. In his latest move, he has announced that new H-1B visa petitions will carry a fee of $100,000. For the tech firms who depend on these permits to import programmers and consultants, it’s a breathtaking sum. For the graduates who dream of Silicon Valley careers, it’s a reminder that access to the world’s most dynamic labour market is not a right but a privilege — one that can be rationed by queues, quotes, or, now, cash. We are witnessing a shift from an age of immigration abundance to one of scarcity.
It has provoked panic in California and jubilation among many immigration restrictionists, but it also forces a question on this side of the Atlantic. Immigration to Britain remains at historic highs. Ministers fiddle endlessly with thresholds and requirements, yet public unease refuses to subside, and numbers remain well north of pre-Brexit levels. If America is reframing migration as a scarce commodity rationed by price, should Britain do the same?
The H-1B visa has been the principal gateway for skilled foreign workers into America since 1990. Since 2004, the number of H-1B applications has been capped at 85,000 a year. This has particularly benefitted Indian IT firms, who took 70 per cent of the places in recent years. Previously, the various fees attached to the visa totalled somewhere between $1,500 to $4,500, depending on whether the application had been expedited. As of this week, a new hire requires a $100,000 dollar cheque on top of salaries, legal fees and any relocation costs.
Trump’s H-1B fee, as political theatre, has already done its job. It has forced a debate
This is not just red meat for the MAGA base. It is also a signal: America’s labour market is valuable, and if companies want to use foreign workers to fill domestic roles, they must pay handsomely for the privilege. The revenue could be substantial, the deterrent effect obvious. Whether it survives the courts or proves politically sustainable is another matter.
Critics to the H-1B programme argue that Trump’s move exposes what has long been true — the system allows firms to swap out higher-paid domestic workers for cheaper foreign staff. According to the Heritage Foundation, every occupation associated with IT and software development saw H-1B visa holders earning significantly less than their US counterparts. For computer programmers, the median H-1B salary was 17.4 per cent below the industry median, highlighting that lower costs for firms are real, but they come from undercutting, not from a surge in productivity or innovation.
Indeed, the much-touted “innovation edge” of H-1B labour has failed to materialise in measurable terms. A 2014 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper found no link between H-1B admissions and an increase in patents filed. Instead, the quantifiable impact was labour market displacement, 1.5 American workers crowded out for every H-1B admitted. Trump’s fee does not resolve this distortion, but it at least recognises that access to cheaper labour carries a value that ought to be priced.
Britain is already dabbling in the same game. The Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS), introduced in 2015 and ratcheted up repeatedly since, now costs £1,035 per adult per year. It is explicitly designed to offset NHS costs for migrants. Dependents pay too, even children. On top of visa application fees, which themselves can run into the thousands, this can be a considerable financial hurdle. Yet these charges are presented as mere housekeeping; America meanwhile is attempting to use their fee as a strategic lever.
There are three broad models for this kind of financial immigration restrictionism. First, the Trump tariff: set a flat fee and then let the market decide. The upside is clarity and deterrence. The downside is collateral damage. Small businesses and start-ups may find themselves priced out, with large incumbents such as Amazon and Microsoft able to foot the bill easily enough. Talented individuals without corporate sponsors are simply excluded.
Second, the cost-reflective surcharge. This is the British approach with the IHS: calculate the average public-service burden of a migrant (or their dependents) and set the fee accordingly. This is defensible on fairness grounds but lacks bite. Few believe the IHS deters migration; it doesn’t even pay for the average healthcare cost per annum per person of about £3,800, and is often absorbed into relocation packages or personal debt. This is partly a result of poor data collection, making it incredibly difficult to estimate the actual costs and set an appropriate pricing.
Third, the market auction. Economists from across the spectrum have proposed auctioning a fixed pool of work permits to employers. Employers would reveal how much they value the right to hire a migrant or how much migrants value the right to work, ensuring visas flow to the most productive uses. Over a decade ago Britain’s Migration Advisory Committee even proposed auctioning off 100 top-tier, investor visas with sealed bids and a minimum reserve price of £2.5 million, to raise revenue. Despite it looking like a money raiser, the idea was eventually quietly dropped.
Would Britain benefit from Trump-style visa fees, especially at a similar price? If the goal is simply to reduce numbers, the effect may be more muted than expected. Before the Skilled Worker salary threshold was raised in April 2024 from £38,700 to £41,700, applications had averaged around 6,000 per month, but then fell only gradually post-change, with 3,400 applications in August 2025. This suggests that demand is relatively inelastic: many skilled workers and employers adapt rather than exit entirely.
Although reducing immigration is imperative, the UK’s work visa regime is relatively small. “Main applicant” work visas accounted for just 16.4 per cent of all visas issued between January 2021 and December 2024. Even so, our services-heavy economy likely cannot afford a sharp reduction in skilled labour that a Trump-style fee would cause.
But the principle, that access has value and should be priced, is sound. A better approach for Britain could be to sharpen the tools we already have. Broaden the IHS to capture the true cost of schooling, healthcare and other public provisions.
Temporary carve-outs for “critical” roles should be tightly constrained. The UK’s experience with the Shortage Occupation List (SOL) shows that exemptions can proliferate under business lobbying, and even its replacement, the Immigration Salary List (ISL), is already seeing creeping carve-outs. Any such exemptions should therefore be limited and gradually phased out to make sectors more resilient and encourage higher wages, rather than becoming a permanent escape hatch.
In truth, Britain’s visa system has already drifted into industrial policy. By propping up sectors such as social care and the NHS with migrant labour, the state is both suppressing wages and creating dependence. This reliance can help contain costs in the short term — arguably necessary given declining public sector productivity — but it also has downsides.
In healthcare, for example, non-UK doctors are statistically 2.5 times more likely to be involved in malpractice, hundreds of fraudulent nurses have been detected, and multi-lingual workplaces can generate transaction costs that reduce efficiency. The longer such dependence persists, the more brittle the system becomes. Any serious reform must aim not just to price migration fairly, but also to reduce reliance on imported workers while raising productivity and resilience across sectors.
One option is piloting a limited auction. Imagine a capped pool of “category-based” visas for non-shortage roles, auctioned annually. Prices would reveal which sectors are genuinely desperate for overseas staff, and which are simply accustomed to importing cheap labour. The hospitality sector is an obvious one. As of July 2025, most core hospitality roles are no longer eligible for the UK Skilled Worker visa. Many would suggest this is appropriate, however, migrants represent an astonishing 63 per cent of the sector’s workforce in London and 28 per cent of the sector’s workforce when the whole of the UK is considered.
An insurance visa system could complement this approach. By setting premiums to cover likely costs, it would ensure that lower-paid workers do not become net beneficiaries. The fiscal burden would shift from taxpayers to migrants and their sponsors, making even below-median earners fiscally neutral.
Critics will say that pricing migration privileges the wealthy. This is partly true. Yet the current system already does so. Only those with corporate sponsorship or substantial means can navigate certain visas on offer. At least a transparent price tag ties costs to the public interest. The British labour market must serve the long-term needs of the British economy.
Trump’s H-1B fee, as political theatre, has already done its job. It has forced a debate about whether migration should be rationed by queues, quotas or cash. Britain, with migration still running far too high, cannot ignore that debate. A calibrated policy — higher surcharges for dependents, premium fees for non-shortage jobs, exemptions where the need is greatest, and perhaps a limited auction pilot — would deliver fairness without self-harm.
The principle is simple. Access to Britain’s opportunities is valuable. Those who want them should pay, and pay in a way that disciplines demand, reveals genuine shortages, and makes the cost visible.
