The Department of Homeland Security is proposing a new $103,265 fee for H-1B petitions, just months after a federal judge struck down the Trump administration’s earlier attempt to impose a similar charge.
The rule, published Aug. 25 in the Federal Register, would apply to H-1B petitions subject to the annual cap, including those covered by the 20,000-visa advanced degree exemption. It would exempt petitions filed by institutions of higher education and their affiliated nonprofits, along with nonprofit and governmental research organizations. Unlike the administration’s earlier fee, it would also apply to workers already living in the U.S. rather than exclusively to petitions filed from abroad.
The proposal follows a June 8 ruling in which a federal judge in Massachusetts vacated the administration’s original $100,000 H-1B fee, finding it violated the Administrative Procedure Act and functioned as a tax Congress never authorized. That ruling singled out healthcare specifically, faulting the administration for justifying the fee based on abuses in science, technology and IT roles without ever weighing its effect on the healthcare and education sectors that rely on the visa pipeline. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in July declined to reinstate the fee while the administration’s appeal proceeds, leaving it blocked for now.
The new rule takes a different legal approach, framing the fee as a way to offset the cost of running the federal immigration system rather than as a standalone deterrent. DHS estimates it would generate about $8.8 billion a year: nearly $3 billion would fund immigration courts, roughly $1 billion would go to ICE for vetting and student visa administration, and $3 billion would offset existing costs for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Health systems already got a preview of what a fee this size could mean for recruitment. When the original $100,000 proclamation was announced last year, hospital CIOs warned it could strain IT staffing, and the American Hospital Association later found 64% of hospitals using the H-1B program planned to pause, defer or limit hiring because of it.
The rule does not specify whether the fee would be refundable if a petition is denied, and public comment on the proposal is open for 30 days.
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