Donald Trump just transformed America’s high-skill immigration system.

In a proclamation Friday, the president imposed a $100,000 fee on all new applications for H-1B visas (although the administration would retain the right to offer companies exemptions at will).

Such visas have long been controversial. The H-1B program is meant to help American employers hire foreign workers with rare intellectual abilities. It aims to ensure that the US “knowledge economy” is not undermined by shortfalls of highly skilled labor.

Yet some companies have used the program to essentially replace US workers with immigrants — less because the latter boast exceptional skills than because they have lower wage expectations.

Trump’s $100,000 fee is ostensibly meant to fix this problem. In theory, employers won’t pay that hefty charge to hire a garden-variety foreign coder over an American one. Rather, a company would only be willing to foot that bill for extraordinary foreign talent.

If the president’s policy addresses legitimate complaints with the H-1B system, however, it does so in a needlessly costly manner. Trump’s exorbitant fee would undermine American scientific research, technological progress, and economic growth. And this would translate into lower wages for American workers in the long term.

H-1B visas, 101

• The H-1B visa is a temporary US work visa for people in “specialty occupations” — jobs that typically require at least a bachelor’s degree.

• Its aim is to help American employers hire foreign workers with advanced intellectual skills, when they are unable to find similarly capable laborers domestically.

• The number of annual H-1B visas is capped for private-sector employers at 85,000 (20,000 of those slots are reserved for workers who have attained a master’s degree or higher from a US institution of higher education). For many universities, nonprofits, and government research institutions, there is no cap.

• Demand for private-sector visas far outstrips supply. So eligible applicants are entered into a lottery and then chosen at random.

The problem with the H-1B visa program, briefly explained

The problems with H-1B visas mostly stem from how they’re allocated.

Demand for such visas far outstrips their supply: In 2023, 446,000 people sought an H-1B visa, but America only provides 85,000 of them each year (20,000 of which are reserved for........

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