By David Allan Carnes
Would Elon Musk get a U.S. visa today? Probably not. A proposed $100,000 surcharge on H-1B visas could make it impossible for the next generation of innovators to build their dreams in America. Once a symbol of opportunity, the visa is fast becoming a luxury—turning the U.S. from a magnet for global talent into a gated economy.
If Musk applied for a U.S. visa today, he probably wouldn’t make it past immigration.
In 1995, he arrived from South Africa on a student visa, scraped through the University of Pennsylvania, and built his first company, Zip2, while on a H-1B. Back then, the United States still behaved as though talent was an asset, not a taxable commodity.
Under the newly proposed $100,000 H-1B surcharge, that early-stage dream would have died on the launchpad. No bootstrapped startup could afford to pay six figures just to keep a single foreign-born founder in status. The message to the next Elon Musk is clear: innovate elsewhere.
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That’s the paradox of modern immigration policy. The system designed to attract the world’s best minds is now structured to repel them. We’ve taken the visa once synonymous with innovation and turned it into a luxury.
Consider the math. The H-1B cap is already exhausted within days each year, with demand far exceeding supply. Employers enter a lottery, not a merit-based selection process. Now add a $100,000 premium on top of already steep legal and filing fees, and you’ve created a paywall for genius. It’s the bureaucratic equivalent of saying, “We support innovation—as long as it’s pre-funded by venture capital.”
Yet some of the greatest American success stories began as unproven ideas on borrowed money. Musk, Sergey Brin, Satya Nadella, and countless others came not with capital, but with capability. According to the National Foundation for American Policy, 45 percent of U.S. Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Those firms collectively generate trillions in annual revenue and employ tens of millions of Americans.
Supporters of the surcharge argue it would deter abuse and force large outsourcing firms to hire more domestic workers. That concern isn’t unfounded—but there’s a better fix than punishing the innovators who actually create jobs. Tiered fees based on company size, a separate founder visa, or streamlined pathways for STEM graduates would protect U.S. workers while keeping the door open to high-impact entrepreneurs.
That’s the irony: the economic nationalism meant to “protect” American jobs could end up exporting them. When you make it impossible for innovators to plant roots here, they don’t disappear—they just build somewhere else. Canada, the UK, and Australia have already rolled out dedicated startup-visa programs with minimal red tape and maximum clarity. The global competition for talent is real, and the United States is pricing itself out of the market.
The H-1B was never perfect, but it worked because it reflected confidence—America’s belief that if you bring in smart, ambitious people and give them a shot, they’ll repay that opportunity many times over. That belief built Silicon Valley. It built Tesla’s gigafactories. It built hundreds of thousands of high-skill jobs for U.S. workers.
Replace that confidence with fear and taxation, and you don’t just lose visas—you lose velocity. The next generation of innovators will still change the world; the only question is where.
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If the H-1B surcharge had existed in 1995, Zip2 might have been incorporated in Toronto or Bangalore instead of Palo Alto. The factories in Nevada and Texas might have been built somewhere else. Tens of thousands of American paychecks might not exist.
America didn’t build its economy by taxing talent. It built it by betting on it. The surest way to secure our future isn’t to close our doors, but to keep them open wide enough for the next Elon Musk to walk through.
Because somewhere out there, right now, another broke engineer with a laptop and an idea is wondering where in the world to launch.
(David Allan Carnes is a legal writer and consultant who helps immigration lawyers and business leaders communicate policy, opportunity, and risk in plain English. He also advises immigration lawyers on using LinkedIn to grow visibility and attract corporate clients.)