In the days following the announcement of a $100,000 upfront fee on every new H-1B visa petition, leaders in the tech industry and specialists alike vented their concerns on social media. For years, tech companies have relied on the visa to staff their highly skilled engineering roles. Predictions of a complete collapse of the industry or major offshoring initiatives dominated the commentary.
However, after weeks of conversations with enterprise technology leaders and executives, we see a consensus: The way things have always been done will have to change.
Despite a lawsuit from a coalition of large unions attempting to rescind the new order, the change took effect on Sept. 21. Some tech companies will evaluate their workforce models to trim their budgets, while others will examine their operating models and extend automation where possible. However, forward-looking tech companies will take a different approach. They’ll see this as an opportunity to strengthen their resilience by forging strong outsourcing partnerships that will keep them competitive regardless of the changes in immigration laws.
Navigating the new visa reality
The leaders we’ve spoken with are all wrestling with the same questions as they try to figure out the best way to continue operations. Visa sponsorship, once considered routine, has become a front-line variable in delivery strategy. Among them:
- What happens to our budget?
Many long-term contracts were written assuming the costs for H-1B visas would remain the same. With the heavy increase in fees, the costs add up quickly for a highly specialized engineering team. - Where will we find talent?
This is a question for the digitally mature and those just starting their digital transformation. Especially vulnerable are industries in mid-transformation, such as banking, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing. Some wholly onshore US-based organizations are now reviewing first-generation outsourcing or offshoring agreements, which can feel like uncharted waters. - What will our contracts look like?
Technology providers that rely heavily on H-1B talent are considering rewriting agreements to account for the cost increase. In many cases, either clients or the providers are preparing to absorb the brunt of the cost to keep projects on schedule. Clearly, this is not sustainable in any meaningful way.
Unveiling an organizational dependency
Policymakers have raised the costs and tightened oversight of the H-1B program, driven by concerns that parts of the system were being abused, particularly by firms that relied heavily on bringing in large numbers of overseas specialists. Many organizations dispute this characterization, noting the program’s importance in filling critical skill gaps. What’s undeniable, however, is that some companies structured their operating models around consistent access to H-1B talent. That reliance is now difficult to unwind.
Instead of practicing agile methods and planning for future changes, they took the luxury of hiring technology specialists, designing entire operating models around the H-1B opportunity. Not an easy task to unpick.
Top 10 H1-B visa recipients in FY 2025
Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Now, these same companies must change the way they view talent. Because the H-1B sometimes became a crutch for poor organizational structures, the policy shift revealed a dependency on the visas for solving organizational woes, and now it’s forcing companies to confront an issue they’ve been avoiding.
Who wins, who loses?
As the changes ripple across the tech industry, a divide is already forming between the winners and the losers.
The winners
Organizations that began diversifying early will succeed. These companies have blended distribution teams from extension partnerships, have piloted Global Capability Centers (GCCs), and have scaled automation for redundant and time-consuming tasks that do not require highly skilled labor. For these organizations, the new fee for H-1B visas is a disruption, but nothing more. Their entire organizations are not dependent on talent from the visas.
The (potential) losers
Meanwhile, many organizations have their operating model anchored in visa lotteries and offshore augmentation models. They are still waiting for policy winds to change, hoping that their digital programs do not stall as their contracts and culture undergo a significant metamorphosis.
In a recent roundtable discussion, one CIO put it this way: “The real risk isn’t the $100k fee. It’s continuing to plan like the next shock isn’t coming.”
However, all is not lost. With a strong vision around what an AI-enabled global operating model looks like and committed execution, there is the potential for rapid transformation and successful modernization.
A Blueprint for the aftermath
It’s not too late for tech companies that are heavily invested in visa lotteries to make a change. Enterprises that want to thrive in the aftermath of the H-1B fee increase have four options for success.
- Rewire operating models for resilience
- Diversify delivery footprints across onshore, nearshore, and offshore partnerships
- Structure work so assignments can be reorganized with minimal disruption
- Embed risk management into all practices, including delivery
- Build GCCs and nearshoring networks
- GCCs in India, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia are maturing into skilled hubs with product owners, R&D teams, and strong
- Nearshore hubs in Latin America and Canada bring agility to structured teams and provide collaborative, high-interaction work close to home
- Double down on AI
- Retain and upskill key people as a competitive advantage
- Pivot labor model to leverage new technologies, including generative and agentic AI
- Blend the three options: Provides both depth and responsiveness, creating a talent model resilient to policy shifts
- Boost productivity with modern technology and automation
- Scale AI-assisted coding, automated testing, and observability platforms
- Deploy low-code systems to reduce repetitive back-office workloads
- Use cloud-native data and delivery pipelines to shrink maintenance burdens
Most enterprises know what must change. In the future, they must have flexible operating models, talent strategies that don’t hinge on visa lotteries, and automation that empowers every engineer, in addition to agentic support and holistic AI transformation. Despite that, the more difficult question is, how do you start this? How do you succeed with this? And how do you make the changes last? The answer: work with Intellias.
Intellias has mid-size advantage
As a mid-size global technology company and services partner, Intellias was made for moments like this. We help enterprises keep their projects on target and products on point, without a scramble.
We work by your side to:
- Deploy skilled teams rapidly in Eastern Europe and Latin America, bypassing old barriers and aligning with real project needs
- Accelerate stand-up of new locations on behalf of clients, as we have done recently in Cairo and Ingolstadt
- Deliver with agility and personalized attention that the giant software engineering companies can’t match, and the niche players can’t scale
- Engineer seamless collaboration by making time-zone overlap, daily standups, and a unified quality promise non-negotiable
- Co-create new workforce models where AI and automation are embedded and compliance doesn’t kill creativity
Move beyond visa lotteries and expensive talent models: Intellias is your solution to the H-1B visa fee. Contact us to keep your business moving forward.
