The Trump administration on Monday proposed charging a new steep fee for visas granted to skilled foreign workers, in the latest attempt to fundamentally overhaul the H-1B visa program.
Under the proposal, the Department of Homeland Security would attach a $103,265 fee to the visa, mirroring a move by the administration last year to impose a $100,000 fee to new H-1B visas. But that effort ran into legal stumbles. A federal judge threw out the fee in June, a decision that the federal government said it would appeal.
Critics of the proposed regulation view it as another attempt by the administration to install the fee, despite the legal challenges. If finalized, the fee would be applied in a substantially broader way and have far-reaching implications for businesses across the country that rely on the H-1B program to fill crucial jobs.
“It’s much bigger in scope,” said Doug Rand, who was a senior official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Biden administration. “This regulation, if enacted, would have catastrophic effects on America’s global talent pipeline.”
The $100,000 fee was imposed by President Trump last September through a proclamation citing the president’s authority to shut out certain foreign nationals from entering the United States. That meant the fee was not triggered by every new H-1B visa issued this year — it applied only to workers outside the United States, meaning that companies that hired workers already in the country were able to skirt the fee.
Many firms, including big technology companies, were largely shielded from the changes because they mostly use the H-1B program to recruit international students and other foreign workers who already have some form of status inside the United States. The impact was mostly felt by companies that relied on recruiting workers from overseas, such as I.T. firms that had been among the program’s biggest beneficiaries for years.
But the new proposal appears to apply to workers inside the United States, marking a major shift and potentially requiring more companies to re-evaluate their use of the program.
In a statement, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the new fee would apply to all petitions subject to the annual cap on H-1B visas. Because demand typically exceeds the small number of visas available each year, most employers must enter a lottery once a year to compete for them. This year, the agency said it received more than 211,000 registrations, far exceeding the 85,000 visas available annually.
The Homeland Security Department estimated that the new fee would generate about $8.8 billion annually. The agency said the proposed fee would not apply to employers exempt from the annual cap on the visas, providing some relief for nonprofit universities and hospitals that can apply for H-1B visas year-round.
The Trump administration has called for an overhaul of the H-1B visa program, saying it has unfairly allowed companies to sideline Americans and hire foreign workers at lower pay. The program has long faced controversy, garnering calls for reform across the political spectrum.
Still, economists generally agree that the visa holders boost American productivity and raise wages even for American workers.
Some business groups immediately voiced concern over the administration’s proposal, saying it would prevent smaller businesses from accessing the visas.
Neil Bradley, chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the fee would make it prohibitive for “even more U.S. employers — especially the thousands of start-ups and small and midsize businesses who rely on H-1Bs — to utilize the program.”
“The program helps companies expand, innovate, and create jobs across their operations,” Mr. Bradley said in a statement.
The chamber challenged the $100,000 fee in court last year, saying it would “inflict significant harm on American businesses.” In that lawsuit, a federal judge allowed the administration to move forward with the visa fee, leading the chamber to say that it would appeal the decision. Six months later, a federal judge in Massachusetts reached the opposite decision in a separate lawsuit and voided the policy.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the fee would help cover the costs of multiple federal agencies under the Homeland Security Department.
“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,” Zach Kahler, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in a statement.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is primarily funded by fees it charges people applying for immigration benefits, such as green cards. But in its proposal, the agency said it would also use the money it collected from the H-1B fee to cover certain costs at other agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which already receives funding appropriated by Congress.
“That seems to be very legally tenuous, if not outright illegal,” said Sarah Pierce, a former policy analyst at Citizenship and Immigration Services, who is now the director of social policy at the center-left think tank Third Way.
