Dimon says Trump’s new H-1B visa fee ‘caught everyone off guard’

JPMorgan is among the top 10 companies in the US sponsoring visas, with 2,440 employees who have H-1Bs

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said President Donald Trump’s new $100,000 fee on H-1B visas left companies including his struggling to quickly determine the potential impact.

“That caught everyone off guard,” Dimon said in a CNBC-TV18 interview. “And so we had a lot of phone calls over the weekend. What does it mean?”

Late last week, Trump signed a proclamation slapping a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions as a condition of entry to the US, sparking confusion and panic among both employers and workers. The lack of clarity around the new rules prompted technology firms including Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. — some of the biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B program — to initially warn employees against foreign travel.

The Trump administration later clarified that the fee would be imposed only on new petitions.

“For us, visas matter because we move people around globally — experts who get promoted to new jobs in different markets,” Dimon separately told the Times of India. “The challenge is that the US still needs to remain an attractive destination,” he said, adding that his grandparents were Greek immigrants.

JPMorgan is among the top 10 companies in the US sponsoring visas, with 2,440 employees who have H-1Bs, according to data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Dimon expects “some push-back” to the plan, he told CNBC-TV18. “I think all nations want real border control. It helps make a nation. But after that we should have, you know, good immigration.”