Trump extends $100,000 H-1B visa fee for another year, deepening legal fight

President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Friday extending, for a second year, the $100,000 fee his administration first imposed on new H-1B specialty-occupation visa petitions, along with a companion executive order directing federal agencies to share more data on employer layoffs before approving future petitions. The moves keep in place, through September 2027, one of the most disruptive changes to skilled-worker immigration in decades, even though the fee itself is not currently being collected while a federal appeals court weighs whether it amounts to an unauthorized tax.

The original 12-month restriction, signed on September 19, 2025, was due to lapse this weekend. Rather than let it expire, Trump signed a new proclamation restricting entry of nonimmigrant specialty-occupation workers that restarts the clock, requiring a $100,000 payment to accompany new H-1B petitions filed after 12:01 a.m. on September 21, unless the worker or employer qualifies for a narrow national-interest exemption that the Homeland Security secretary can grant case by case.

The numbers behind the fee

The White House says the policy has already reshaped hiring patterns. According to the proclamation, combined H-1B registrations filed by the largest information-technology outsourcing firms fell 92 percent in the year since the fee took effect, from 24,946 to 2,055, while consular-processing requests for the visa category dropped nearly 97 percent between fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2027. The administration also points to a shift in the composition of applicants: the share of fiscal 2027 H-1B registrants holding a U.S. master's degree rose from 45.1 percent to 66.1 percent, which officials cite as evidence that the fee is screening out lower-wage placements in favor of more specialized hires. More than 700 petitions have been filed with the $100,000 payment attached since the original proclamation took effect, the administration says.

The fee itself is a steep jump from what employers had paid for decades. Standard H-1B filing and fraud-prevention fees historically ran between roughly $2,000 and $5,000 per petition, a fraction of the six-figure charge the administration wants to make permanent.

A yearlong legal fight, still unresolved

The renewal arrives in the middle of active litigation over whether the fee is legal at all. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business and university groups sued shortly after the original proclamation, arguing it exceeded the president's authority under immigration law and functioned as a tax that only Congress can impose. In June, a federal judge in Massachusetts agreed, vacating the government's guidance implementing the fee; when the administration asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to let it keep collecting the charge while it appealed, the appeals court declined on July 24, and the fee has not been enforced since. The underlying case, filed in Washington, continues to move through the courts, with the dispute's docket, Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America v. United States Department of Homeland Security, still open as the government weighs its next move. Homeland Security has said that if the courts eventually lift the block, it intends to resume collecting the payment retroactively to petitions filed while litigation was pending.

Friday's executive order adds a separate layer on top of the fee fight. It directs the secretaries of State, Labor and Homeland Security to coordinate with the Commerce Department, the Education Department and the Small Business Administration on sharing wage and industry data, and instructs officials to weigh an employer's recent or planned layoffs of similarly situated American workers when reviewing H-1B petitions — a provision aimed at companies accused of replacing domestic staff with lower-paid visa holders.

Who the policy reaches

The fee's effects fall unevenly. India has historically accounted for roughly seven in ten approved H-1B petitions, making Indian nationals and the outsourcing firms that employ many of them the group most exposed to both the cost and the uncertainty. Universities, hospitals and research institutions that rely on the visa category to fill specialized positions — engineering faculty, radiologists, software researchers — have also lobbied against the charge, warning it makes it harder to recruit for roles where domestic candidates are scarce. Physician shortages have become a particular flashpoint: a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Reps. Sanford Bishop and Mike Lawler, has introduced legislation that would exempt doctors and other health care workers from the $100,000 charge.

Divided reactions

Congressional Democrats have tried, without success so far, to undo the policy outright. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey introduced the Welcoming International Success Act earlier this year to nullify the original proclamation.

"Trump's shortsighted proclamation has created significant barriers for U.S. employers, universities, hospitals, and research institutions that rely on highly-skilled professionals," Watson Coleman said when she introduced the bill. "The H-1B program does not replace the domestic workforce; it serves as a bridge between U.S. talent and global talent that fuels U.S. economic growth."

The administration has faced pressure from a different direction as well. Some House Republicans allied with the party's immigration-restrictionist wing argue the fee does not go far enough and want the H-1B category curtailed regardless of price, while business and technology groups counter that the industry still has hundreds of thousands of unfilled technical jobs. Coverage of the renewal, including wire reporting distributed Friday, noted that the extension does not apply to workers already in the country on student visas or to renewals of existing H-1B status, narrowing its immediate bite even as it keeps the higher fee looming over new hiring.

What happens next

Two tracks now run in parallel. In the courts, the Chamber of Commerce case continues, with the fee's enforceability hinging on how the First Circuit and, eventually, possibly the Supreme Court rule on whether a president can impose what functions as a new tax through a proclamation rather than legislation. Separately, Homeland Security has proposed an alternative regulatory fee of $103,265 on H-1B cap-subject petitions, a rulemaking that would not depend on the president's proclamation authority and is open for public comment through September 24. Industry analysts tracking the policy say that even if courts ultimately strike down the proclamation fee for good, the proposed rule offers the administration a fallback path to a similarly steep charge. Employers, in the meantime, are left planning for a 2027 hiring cycle under a fee that is legally unsettled but, per Friday's proclamation, not going away on paper.