NRI PULSE STAFF REPORT
WASHINGTON, DC, August 24, 2026: The Trump administration is making a new attempt to impose a six-figure cost on employers hiring H-1B workers, proposing a $103,265 fee for cap-subject H-1B petitions after a federal court blocked President Donald Trump’s earlier $100,000 charge.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Monday that it is proposing the new fee through the formal federal rulemaking process. The proposal is scheduled to be formally published in the Federal Register on Tuesday and will be open for public comment for 30 days. It is not yet a final rule and the new fee is not currently in effect.
Under the proposal, employers would pay the $103,265 fee when filing an H-1B petition subject to the annual cap, including petitions for beneficiaries eligible for the U.S. advanced-degree exemption. The amount would be in addition to other applicable H-1B filing fees.
The move follows a significant legal setback for the administration over a similar policy.
Trump imposed a $100,000 payment requirement in September 2025 through a presidential proclamation targeting certain new H-1B workers. But in June, U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin in Massachusetts struck down the fee, finding that the administration had exceeded its authority. The administration appealed, but the First Circuit Court of Appeals in July declined to allow the fee to remain in effect while the appeal proceeds.
The administration is now pursuing a different legal route, seeking to establish the $103,265 charge through the regulatory process rather than relying solely on a presidential proclamation.
DHS says the money would be used to recover costs across the federal government associated with administering the legal immigration system, including visa adjudication, fraud detection and national security screening, immigration courts, consular processing, labor enforcement and technology systems.
The department estimates that the fee could generate approximately $8.8 billion annually, based on 85,000 cap-subject H-1B petitions each year.
The H-1B program allows U.S. employers to hire foreign professionals in specialty occupations, including technology, engineering, medicine and other highly skilled fields. Congress has set an annual cap of 65,000 H-1B visas, with another 20,000 available under the advanced-degree exemption for people who have earned a master’s degree or higher from a U.S. institution.
The proposed additional fee would not apply to H-1B petitions that are exempt from the annual cap, including petitions filed by certain institutions of higher education, nonprofit research organizations and governmental research organizations, according to DHS.
The proposal could have major consequences for U.S. companies that rely heavily on foreign skilled workers and for Indian professionals, who make up the largest share of H-1B beneficiaries.
The administration argues that the steep fee would help protect American workers by making companies less likely to hire an H-1B worker over a qualified U.S. worker, while also shifting more of the cost of administering the immigration system from taxpayers to employers seeking immigration benefits.
Critics, however, are already questioning whether the administration has the legal authority to impose such an extraordinary charge. Atlanta immigration attorney Charles Kuck told The Washington Post that the proposal amounted to “again an illegal tax.”
The earlier $100,000 fee drew lawsuits from states, business groups and universities, which argued that the administration had exceeded its authority and that such a large charge could hurt industries that depend on highly skilled foreign professionals.
The new proposal appears designed, at least in part, to address the procedural and legal vulnerabilities of the earlier policy by going through notice-and-comment rulemaking and tying the fee to the government’s costs of administering immigration programs. Whether that approach will survive an expected new round of legal challenges remains uncertain.
For employers and H-1B workers, however, nothing changes immediately. The $103,265 charge remains a proposal. After the 30-day comment period, DHS would have to consider public comments and issue a final rule before the new fee could take effect.
