Big Tech shares steady after Trump visa fees crackdown

LONDON, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Shares in large-cap U.S. technology companies were steady in Frankfurt trading on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump introduced new visa fees as part of his crackdown on immigration.

The Trump administration said on Friday it would ask companies to pay $100,000 per year for H-1B working visas, prompting some big tech companies and banks to warn employees to stay in the U.S. or quickly return.

Companies including Microsoft MSFT.O, Amazon AMZN.O, Alphabet GOOGL.O and Goldman Sachs GS.N were among those that sent urgent emails to their employees with travel advisories.

Shares of the so-called Magnificent 7 group of largest companies by market capitalisation, which includes Apple AAPL.O, Nvidia NVDA.O, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms META.O and Tesla TSLA.O, were trading down 0.2% to up 1.1% in Frankfurt.

In the first half of 2025, Amazon and its cloud-computing unit AWS had received approval for more than 12,000 H-1B visas, while Microsoft and Meta Platforms had over 5,000 H-1B visa approvals each.

Under the current system, entering the lottery for the visa requires a small fee and, if approved, subsequent fees could amount to several thousand dollars.