When President Donald Trump announced the $100,000 fee for H-1Bs last September, Indian techie Abhishek Abhyankar was in India for his wedding. At that time, it was not immediately clear who will have to pay the fee and Abhyankar recalled that his friends panicked and urged him to book the first flight to Seattle and attend his reception virtually from the US. Abhyankar refused and later he and his wife, who is also an H-1B visa holder, did not face any issues coming back to the US, but neither of them forgot the incident, and it served as a reminder of how conditional their status is in the US. "That created a lot of panic and uncertainty."
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