In nine months, the United States has restricted almost every route for new migrants. Britain has drawn a different line, restricting unskilled and irregular migration while moving fast to keep the door open for the world’s best engineers, scientists and founders.
On 21 September 2025, the United States imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa petitions filed from outside the country. Eight months later, the consequences are visible in the data.
According to a Department of Homeland Security court filing, new external H-1B applications fell 87 per cent in the first five months under the new fee. While layoffs and softer tech hiring play a part, immigration policy has been a major factor in the sharp decline at Big Tech. Amazon’s H-1B filings dropped 34 per cent year on year in fiscal 2026’s first quarter. Meta’s and Google’s each fell by roughly half. Global job-seeker interest in US roles, tracked by Indeed, is down 29 per cent from its August 2023 peak. Across the Atlantic, the British government has been moving the other way.
The H-1B fee is not the only US restriction. Over the same nine months, the United States has suspended its refugee admissions programme, ended Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands legally in the country, cancelled humanitarian parole pathways, and tightened student visa enforcement. Net migration turned negative in 2025, the first time in more than half a century. The tightening is broad.
Within that picture, one group is hit hardest. Indian nationals received 71 per cent of all H-1B visas in fiscal year 2024, holding 283,397 of 399,395 approvals. Around 300,000 of them sit in an Employment-Based Second Preference green card backlog where the April 2026 Visa Bulletin set the Final Action Date on 15 July 2014. The annual allocation is roughly 2,800 visas. Independent projections put the realistic wait at close to a century for some applicants.
A Y & J Solicitors, a London-based UK immigration law firm, has been taking enquiries from US-based applicants since October. Most applicants are senior engineers and researchers, mostly Indian, mostly tied to one employer, increasingly aware that their time in the United States has a ceiling.
“What I’m hearing from clients in San Francisco and Seattle isn’t panic. It’s arithmetic,” says Yash Dubal, the firm’s CEO and director. “They’ve worked out that another decade of conditional residency in the US is no longer the better deal. They want a route that does not depend on whether their employer renews their petition.”
Britain’s side of the picture is not a simple open door. The Labour government has tightened too. Overseas recruitment of care workers ended in July 2025. The Skilled Worker salary threshold rose to £41,700. The government has proposed extending settlement for general routes from five years to ten. The difference is that the UK has drawn a sharp line.
Applicants outside sponsored, skilled, family or protection routes face a harder path into Britain than three years ago. Applicants with proven exceptional ability now face the easiest route the country has ever offered.
That route is the UK Global Talent Visa. Launched in 2020, it offers settlement after three years for applicants endorsed under Exceptional Talent, and five years for Exceptional Promise. It requires no employer sponsor, no salary threshold, and no Immigration Skills Charge. The difficult test comes earlier, at endorsement. Applicants must first secure backing from bodies such as the Royal Society, the British Academy, UKRI or Arts Council England, depending on the field.
Digital technology applicants have been endorsed by the Home Office directly since August 2025. Once endorsement is secured, the visa-stage approval rate stood at 99.2 per cent across 2024 and 2025. The application fee sits at £766, separate from the Immigration Health Surcharge.
The British government is now actively expanding this route. Chancellor Rachel Reeves committed publicly in September 2025 to making it easier to access. A Global Talent Taskforce, reporting directly to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, sits inside Downing Street and the Treasury. A £54 million Global Talent Fund is operational. According to the Financial Times, ministers are considering cutting visa costs to zero for graduates of the world’s top universities.
“Britain has spent a decade building this route,” Dubal says. “It now has nine, perhaps twelve months to use it. Talent does not wait politely while a government debates a fee.”
For Indian H-1B holders, the calculation has tipped. For US universities and research institutions, which depend heavily on foreign post-doctoral talent, the implications are still larger. For UK founders and CTOs, the practical question now is how to absorb people the US system has spent a decade trying to attract. Canada, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates have all moved on similar terms in the past twelve months. None of them will be patient.
What happens next depends on how quickly Whitehall translates its taskforce into operational changes that applicants can act on. The route exists. The political will exists. The people Britain most wants to attract already know it. The United States created uncertainty. Britain built a route. The talent has started choosing.
A Y & J Solicitors is a London-based UK immigration law firm recognised in the Legal 500 and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
