More than 30 people applied for a laboratory technician position at West River Health Services in Hettinger, North Dakota, a town of 1,000 people in the rural southwestern part of the state.
Since they are not US citizens, each of them will need a visa.
West River and other companies paid up to $5,000 to sponsor each H-1B visa for such workers.
The nonprofit hospital will now have to pay $100,000 if it wants to hire one of the new candidates, all of whom are from the Philippines or Nigeria. Or he could spend the money on a lawyer to petition the government for an exemption from the new fee.
H-1B visas are designed for highly skilled foreign workers in areas such as chronically understaffed rural health care systems where it is difficult to find enough American workers.
In September, President Donald Trump increased the visa fee to $100,000 for workers living outside the United States. It does not apply to foreign workers or students who were already in the US on a visa.
His statement targets the tech world's use of H-1B workers, but the new fee applies to all areas.
“The health care industry wasn't even considered. They would be collateral damage, to such an extreme degree that it clearly hadn't been thought of at all,” said Eram Alam, an assistant professor at Harvard whose new book studies the history of foreign doctors in the USA
Federal guidance states H-1B applicants will only receive a fee waiver in “extremely rare circumstances.”
American Hospital Associationtwo national rural health organizationsAnd more than 50 medical societies asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to provide categorical exemptions for the healthcare industry. The groups argue that the new cost will disproportionately harm rural communities that already struggle to afford and employ enough service providers.
DHS officials referred inquiries to the White House, which did not respond to questions about individual waiver deadlines or the possibility of tax exemptions for the health care industry.
Instead, White House spokesman Taylor Rogers issued a statement defending the new tariff, saying it would “put American workers first.”
