‘Indians are the new oil, coal or gas’: Immigration agency founder says new H-1B fees are a loss for America, Fox’s Laura Ingraham reacts – The

As the controversy over the $100,000 H-1B visa fee since September 21, 2025 is still ongoing, the CEO of an India-based immigration agency recently commented that the visa fee is definitely a loss for America.

For a CBS News program on India’s IT sector and the H-1B, Xavier Fernandes, founder of immigration agency Y-Axis, said many tech executives are from India’s Hyderabad and the city is a breeding ground for technology. This kind of tech talent cannot be manufactured in the United States, he said. “Indians are the new oil, coal or gas, they are the brain power to run modern industries,” Fernandes said. “This kind of talent you can’t manufacture. It’s not something you can get locally.”Fernandes said many Indians will now stay and build India. CBS Report spoke to several technologists who expressed frustration and fear about H-1B fees. One of them was Rajesh Jacknali who worked for an American research company in Hyderabad for about 10 years and said his only goal was to one day get a chance to move to the US. “Our dream was to perform, give it 100%, and then maybe we’d get a chance to move to the States,” Jacknali told CBS’ Chanel Cowell.

Hamid Abdul, another technician, said he decided to move to Canada because the fees put an end to his American dream.

Fox News’ Laura Ingraham responded to the interview and commented on how the practice indulges in industrial-scale fraud and steals jobs and wages from American workers. It was Laura Ingraham who spoke out against President Donald Trump during an interview when the president said the United States needed to bring in talent from abroad.

Ingraham said the United States has a lot of talented people. “No, you don’t have… you don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn,” Trump said as he shut down Ingraham. Recent data from the Department of Labor shows that H-1B applications for big tech companies fell sharply late last year after the start of new visa fees. Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft – also among the largest visa sponsors – saw a decline in their approved applications compared to the previous year.

In Meta and Google, it decreased by almost half. Nvidia’s H-1B filings only rose from 369 in the first quarter of 2025 to 434 in the first quarter of 2026, in line with CEO Jensen Huang’s assertion that his company will continue to hire H-1Bs despite the new fees.

Who pays the new H-1B fee?

Companies that employ employees under the H-1B visa program who are not located in the United States and therefore must undergo consular processing must pay a fee of $100,000. Those who employ foreigners but are already in the United States on another visa will not have to pay the fee.