Sonu Aggarwal is one of countless entrepreneurs and tech leaders who grew up abroad and immigrated to the U.S. to launch startups and work at American companies like Microsoft.
Aggarwal, this week named the new president of TiE Seattle, said he’s worried about the impact of the new $100,000 H-1B visa fee introduced last week by President Donald Trump.
“It feels very, very disruptive,” Aggarwal said.
H-1B work visas allow companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers in “specialty occupations” such as software engineering. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai are among those who have used the visa to move to the U.S.
The White House argues the H-1B program has been exploited by outsourcing firms that replace U.S. workers with lower-paid foreign labor.
Currently, companies pay several thousand dollars in government fees and legal costs per H-1B application. Adding a $100,000 surcharge per worker would be unprecedented.
The new fee could especially affect the Seattle tech industry. Amazon (10,044) and Microsoft (5,189) rank No. 1 and No. 3, respectively, for H-1B visa approvals issued to employees this year.
The Seattle area also has one of the largest Asian Indian populations in the U.S. More than 40% of foreign-born IT workers in the Seattle area hail from India, the Seattle Times reported in 2018.
Aggarwal, who grew up in India, was a founding member of TiE Seattle, which launched in 2000 as a network with roots in the South Asian community to support and promote entrepreneurship in the Seattle-area startup ecosystem.
TiE Seattle members have collectively created more than $16 billion in market value through the startups they founded, according to the organization.
The new H-1B fee could especially hurt smaller startups that want to hire great talent but have limited runway and cash.
Startups need predictability, Aggarwal said. Drastic changes to the H-1B work visa process can create roadblocks and discourage founders from taking risks.
“That entrepreneurial spirit, that energy — it’s like a flame you want to keep growing and keep feeding,” he said. “Such things have a way of almost snuffing out the flame.”
After growing up in India and graduating from MIT, Aggarwal founded three startups — including Seattle-area enterprise communications startup Unify Square, which was acquired by Unisys for more than $152 million in 2021.
Aggarwal said if there wasn’t a “long-term predictable business environment,” he wouldn’t have decided to pursue entrepreneurship and launch his startup (Flash Communications) that was eventually acquired by Microsoft. “I would have just continued working at some corporation out of school,” he said.
Aggarwal, who is working on a stealthy new AI startup, said TiE Seattle will continue supporting entrepreneurs navigating shifting visa policies, while also expanding its reach beyond its roots to serve the broader startup community.
He said he’s looking forward to infusing more entrepreneurial spirit into the Seattle ecosystem.
“We have an opportunity … to have people take more risks, dream bigger, to really leverage all that we have going for us in the ecosystem to create lots of value,” he said.
Aggarwal replaces Prashant Mishra, who led TiE Seattle for the past two years.
TiE Seattle is a branch of the global nonprofit TiE, which counts 15,000 members around the world.
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