Donald Trump on Friday signed a proclamation titled ‘Restriction on entry of certain nonimmigrant workers’ that introduced a jaw-dropping condition: petitions for H-1B visas will now need to be accompanied or supplemented with a fee of $100,000.
“The H-1B nonimmigrant visa programme was created to bring temporary workers into the United States to perform additive, high-skilled functions, but it has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labour,” Trump said in the proclamation.
Indian workers in the United States hold the most number of H-1B visas, which means the shockwaves have been felt most strongly in India.
It is already breaking the internet. Social media platforms are filled with memes, with users turning a policy decision into a moment of online commentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Trump, the IT industry, and everything else in between.
Here are a few examples, sans comment.