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New $103,265 H-1B fee
The Trump administration, through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, released a proposed regulation to codify a $103,265 fee for H-1B visas, after a federal judge in June blocked a prior six-figure charge.
“would make a fee of $103,265 permanent”
Reuters said the proposed rule would make the $103,265 fee permanent and that it would be posted in the Federal Register on Monday, with the temporary $100,000 fee increase set to expire in September.
The Bloomberg Law News report said the new fee would be added to all petitions for H-1B workers subject to an annual statutory cap, including those with master’s degrees, and would apply to individuals hired within the US through regulation after a court blocked a more limited six-figure charge on workers from outside the country.
Bloomberg Law News also reported that the H-1B program is limited to 85,000 visa slots each year by a statutory cap, including 20,000 reserved for advance degree holders, and that DHS projects fee payments for each cap-subject worker would generate $8.8 billion annually.
In the Reuters account, the fee would not apply to visas granted to foreign citizens already in the United States on student visas, or to renewals of current visas, and the H-1B program allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers with training in specialty fields with 65,000 visas annually plus another 20,000 for advanced degrees.
Court fights and exemptions
Reuters said a federal judge in June ruled the earlier fee was illegal and blocked the Trump administration from collecting it, and that a Boston-based appeals court is reviewing that decision while another court considers whether a judge properly rejected a challenge by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Bloomberg Law News reported that a federal judge in Boston vacated the entry fee, finding it imposed an unlawful tax without delegation from Congress, and that the Trump administration appealed but its emergency bid to block the ruling was denied last month by the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
The Bloomberg Law News report said the new proposal would spare some employers, stating that those employers would be spared under the new proposal, while the Reuters report described that the fee would not apply to visas granted to foreign citizens already in the United States on student visas or to renewals.
Reuters also said the fee would not apply to renewals of current visas and that it could be finalized by the end of the year, while Bloomberg Law News said the payment would be made on top of any other fee mandates for H-1B workers, including the proclamation if it’s revived by the courts.
In the Reuters account, the Trump administration invoked the president's power under immigration law to restrict entry, and the fee is being challenged by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Democratic-led states, and a coalition of unions and employers.
Who pays and what it funds
Bloomberg Law News said the agency weighed hiking fees for all immigration applications and petitions but determined that would burden individuals and petitions not connected to employment in the US, and it described the fee as intended to recover federal costs across DHS and other departments.
““The proposed H‑1B fee is intended to recover the costs incurred across the federal government”
The Bloomberg Law News report quoted USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler saying, “The proposed H‑1B fee is intended to recover the costs incurred across the federal government to adjudicate, vet, and support lawful immigration programs that otherwise must be funded by taxpayers,” and it said USCIS and the Executive Office for Immigration Review would be allocated two-thirds of revenue generated by the fee.
Reuters described the H-1B program’s scale and reliance, saying it offers 65,000 visas annually with another 20,000 for workers with advanced degrees, and it noted that those visas typically came with fees between $2,000 and $5,000 before Trump's order.
The Washington Post reported that the proposed regulation says revenue from the fee would be used to run the legal immigration system, including funding for federal immigration courts and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and it quoted the regulation’s contention that the new fee would make employers “less likely to hire an H-1B worker over a qualified and highly-skilled American.”
Reuters added that about 70 employers had paid the $100,000 fee on a total of 85 visa applications as of late February, and it said employers last year registered for about 344,000 H-1B visas, down more than 25% from 2024 and fewer than half of the 794,000 visas sought in 2023.