Microsoft memo advises H1B employees to return immediately if currently abroad
123 comments
·September 20, 2025dang
Related ongoing thread:
Visa holders on vacation have 15 hours to return to US or pay $100k fee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312877 - Sept 2025 (218 comments)
Also recent and related:
Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305845 - Sept 2025 (1675 comments)
The H-1B Visa Program and Its Impact on the U.S. Economy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45309740 - Sept 2025 (51 comments)
seneca
Here's the email from MS, supposedly: https://x.com/onestpress/status/1969444099317981563
wrs
Note that the fee can be waived at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security. So, just like the tariffs, one purpose of this change is to give companies the opportunity to come to the White House and ask what favors they can do in exchange for a waiver.
onlyrealcuzzo
I'm interested to see how >26% of the country thinks it's a good idea for the president to pick winners and losers, and how that doesn't seem like the planned economy of the Soviet Union that failed disastrously.
yibg
That 26% don’t see this as overreach, they see it as putting the corrupt radical left | greedy corporations | immigrants in their place.
slg
The rate the Trump administration is losing plausible deniability has been accelerating over recent months/weeks/days. The MAGA diehards flying Trump flags aren't going to change their ways because they are true believers in "putting the corrupt radical left | greedy corporations | immigrants in their place". But what about all the techno-libertarians that populate HN? Can you genuinely say this type of loophole that allows naked corruption is good? Do you agree with the FCC threatening to take away broadcast licenses for jokes? When does the water get too hot for all us frogs?
mapontosevenths
This.
Their arbitrary nature is designed to consolidate executive branch authority that can be welded as a weapon against corporations that might consider supporting his opposition in the future.
It's a classic fascist ploy, and is further proof that executive orders should be banned. In America we do not have kings who rule by decree, or at least we should not..
dragonwriter
Banning executive orders is nonsense; you can’t have an executive branch with a head and prohibit the head from giving direction to the rest of the executive branch.
Executive orders that violate, or direct the violation of, existing law are illegal (or, at least, without legal effect) to the extent they do that, but whether or not a particular order meets that description is frequently a matter of dispute, which can end up in litigation.
WarOnPrivacy
> Executive orders that violate, or direct the violation of, existing law are illegal
But now we run into the question of What is illegality without ethical-centric courts?
BoredPositron
The US worked pretty well without them before?
8note
i for one dont think that congress can delegate something like how big a fee can be for the executive to decide on its own.
andrewinardeer
If executive orders get banned, should presidential pardons as well? This instrument can also be used for leverage.
linohh
Yes.
ed
The fee applies only to new applicants, per https://www.axios.com/2025/09/20/trump-h-1b-immigration-visa...
general1465
So people are trying to get back to USA while half of Europe has crippled airports thank to cyberattack. Really sucks to have H1B and be outside of USA right now.
LogicArsenal
This will only encourage more technical jobs to move offshore. We already lost most of our manufacturing capacity to offshore factories. Policies like this will encourage more IT, engineering and research jobs to permanently move to lower cost countries. Why pay 100k to bring the best talent to the US when you can just move the whole team offshore?
bwestergard
"creating panic among many - particularly Indian passengers - who even chose to leave the aircraft"
Are they are getting off the aircraft because they believe the "fee" will be required of their employment imminently, and that their employer will not pay it, and this will lead to their visa getting cancelled before they could return to the United States?
toast0
IMHO, it seems like there's a good chance of confusion and delay when reentering the US in the middle of this kind of change. It would be better to avoid that, if possible. And in the case that your visa does get canceled, it would be easier to fight that from in the US, and if necessary, to wind down your US household from inside the US as well. Everything gets a lot harder if you have to do it from outside the country.
hypeatei
> it would be easier to fight that from in the US
Would it? Aren't ICE agents showing up to court hearings and deporting people?
toast0
At least you could meet with your lawyers in person, during mutual daylight.
Do you even have standing to sue from abroad about a visa revoked capriciously?
rwmj
It's all relative.
flurdy
It seems for the moment they will only check for this new fee on entry at the borders. If the fee has been not paid entry will be denied from tonight.
Hence, if you stay in the country nothing will change. And they can wait until this gets played out in the courts, media, congress etc.
4ndrewl
Or that, like the de minimus situation wrt post, there just is no process in place to pay the fee and you're left in a legal limbo, or worse.
null
bananapub
It doesn’t seem very unclear - the president made up a policy it isn’t possible to comply with, since there is no way to actually pay the massive bribe, in addition to probably being illegal, but nonetheless CBP may start refusing entry to people in hours.
apwell23
why do you say its a bribe? where is actual money going?
mothballed
To the state coffers where it is money laundered to friends of the political class via favored private enterprises that win contracts for things like building border walls, keeping databases on US citizens, or running detention facilities.
linohh
Like many cleptocrats, DJT seems to think that money received by the federal government is somehow his. However I don't think bribe is the appropriate term, it's more of a shakedown.
null
IG_Semmelweiss
I assume immigration fees are solely the purview of the executive, is that correct ?
I also would think that if this fee is applied to some countries and not others, it would pass muster since its the same as with tariffs - they don't need to be universal (or uniform).
I am not clear on the mechanics of this though. Is the fee is annual, one-time or renewal; but i suppose this will be cleared up once the EO is released if it hasn't already ?
vkou
Law requires these fees to be ~essentially the cost of processing.
So that EO is almost certainly illegal, and will be litigated.
LetsGetTechnicl
Just causing chaos and confusion for no reason. Not that it matters, but can he even do this without Congress? One of the most frustrating things is witnessing all the things this admin has done that a normal admin wouldn't be able to do within "rules and norms" like we couldn't even get student loan cancellation under Biden.
barkerja
Does it matter when you have a Congress that does not care what he does?
doug_durham
This isn't law so aren't we a few hours from this being put on injunction? This is just abusive to people who are doing great work and following the rules.
dragonwriter
> This isn't law so aren't we a few hours from this being put on injunction?
That’s possible; it is also possible that it isn’t. And it is possible that even if it is, we are a few days or weeks away from an appeals court retroactively invalidating the injunction and allowing cancellations of visas based on failure to return when the injunction was in effect, or else “only” with immediate effect when the injunction is lifted.
If you are an employer who wants to keep your H-1B employees, you probably don’t want to gamble unnecessarily with this, you want the employees to act in a way which minimizes your risk.
teraflop
Trump has been doing many lawless things that the courts might theoretically put a stop to, but I'm not sure this is one of them. The text of 8 USC 1182(f) seems pretty straightforward:
> Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
It's a stupidly broad law, but Congress passed it, and now they're too dysfunctional to do anything about it. So I guess we're stuck with it.
farseer
The big question mark is if this fee would apply to hundreds of thousands of existing H1B visa holders when they need an extension/renewal?
pjdemers
It will never last. There is a 0% chance even one company or person will ever pay this fee. Only an act of congress can change visa requirements, and it will never come up for a full floor vote. Ever. So it will be in legal limbo, and therefore can be ignored.
silverquiet
Only congress can enact tariffs, but we're all paying them anyway.
_diyar
I think it's not quite tree due to the Reciprocal Tariff Act. Depends on how you define reciprocal of course.
kg
This is why the new 100k policy allows the government the discretion to exempt their friends from the fee. Want H1Bs? Bend the knee.
llm_nerd
>There is a 0% chance even one company or person will ever pay this fee
All through Trump's second term, and before, people have said things precisely like this. And here we are. At some point we realize that people just make such confident pronouncements because they think it bends reality towards their hopes.
>Only an act of congress can change visa requirements
It isn't a visa requirement. It's a processing fee. As of midnight no H1B will be considered without the fee. It is very real, and it is absolutely going into effect. Now places like Microsoft are panicking in the information gap currently, but the admin has clarified that it only applies to new H1B applicants.
As to the legal limbo, not only won't there be one, the Supreme Court has rubber stamped just about everything this admin has done.
The guy has both houses of congress, the courts, the DOJ, the full apparatus of government...at this point I find it simply amazing that people still dismiss the reality that he basically does whatever he wants.
yibg
Has the administration officially confirmed this applies to new applicants only? All the reporting I’ve seen on this are from unnamed officials.
llm_nerd
https://www.moneycontrol.com/world/us-official-clarifies-100...
The specific quote can be found in a number of media sources-
"Those who are visiting or leaving the country, or visiting India, they don't need to rush back before Sunday or pay the $100,000 fee. $100,000 is only for new and not current existing holders"
EDIT: Weirdly the parent edited in the "unnamed official" bit after I made my comment, then replied as if I'm illiterate.
Regardless, if "unnamed officials" are being cited by every major media source, it's obvious policy, especially given how vague and uncertain so many details of this are.
https://xcancel.com/onestpress/status/1969374699038675364