Will anyone pay $100,000 H-1B visa fee? Here's what ex-Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai says

Infosys' former Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Mohandas Pai, on Saturday, 20 September 2025, said that Trump's move to impose a $100,000 annual fee on H-1B visa applicants is set to dampen companies' fresh visa applications and may accelerate offshoring in the upcoming months, reported the news agency PTI.

The industry veteran dismissed the chatter about firms using H-1B visas to send cheap labour to the US and said that the average salary paid by the top 20 H-1B employers exceeds $100,000. Mohandas Pai also criticised what he termed misplaced “rhetoric carrying on,” according to the agency report.

Pai also expects the impact of this H-1B visa fee hike to be “limited” for now, as it only affects new applications, and said that the existing H-1B visas are “safe.”

“It has got limited application, because...it doesn't apply to all the H-1B visas which are already there. So there could be only impact for anybody applying in future, new applications will come down. Nobody's going to pay USD 100,000, that is very true,” Mohandas Pai told the news agency.

Pai on H-1B salaries, offshoring

Mohandas Pai also argued that the salaries which are offered to H-1B employees are ‘not cheap.’

“People pay more than $100,000 as salaries; they're not cheap. If they pay their staff $100,000, they charge their clients $150,000-160,000, so all this idea of sending cheap, low-skilled people, that doesn't hold water,” said Pai, cited by the news agency.

The veteran also expects the companies to likely increase their offshoring operations if the cost of hiring workers in the nation is higher, or if there is a lack of talent in the country. Pai expects this to potentially happen over the next six months.

“Now what will happen is everybody will work to increase offshoring... because it doesn't make sense, first, you don't get talent, second, the costs are too high, they'll increase offshore. That will happen over the next maybe six months to one year. So we have to wait and see what happens, but right now, for 3-6 months, it will not have any big impact,” said Pai.

Why did Trump increase H-1B visa fees?

The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that gives official authorisation to high-skill foreign professionals who want to work in the United States for a US or a global company.

Mint reported earlier that US President Donald Trump announced on Friday, September 19, 2025, that the federal government has decided to impose a $100,000 annual fee on H-1B visas.

Trump reportedly aims to end practices where foreign workers “take jobs from hard-working Americans” and exploit the nation's economy without making meaningful contributions. With this change, the US government aims to make sure that the foreign workers provide a “significant benefit” to the nation's economy.