The U.S. Department of Homeland Security posted a proposed rule in the Federal Register on August 24 that would make the $100,000 H-1B visa fee permanent — locking it in at $103,265 per application. For context, companies used to pay between $2,000 and $5,000.
That's not a fee increase. That's a policy statement with a dollar sign in front of it.
The H-1B program offers 65,000 visas annually, plus an additional 20,000 for workers with advanced degrees, typically lasting three to six years. For decades, as 100 Percent Fed Up reported, tech companies, universities, and research firms have used the program to import foreign workers at a fraction of what they'd pay to recruit and train Americans. The old fee structure made that math easy. A $3,000 filing cost on a position paying six figures? That's a rounding error on a quarterly earnings call.
Vice President JD Vance put the administration's position plainly: "If an American corporation needs workers, it should hire and train Americans."
The $100,000 fee was originally imposed by executive order earlier this year. Seventy employers paid it. Eighty-five visa applications were filed as of late February. Then a federal judge in June declared the fee illegal. A Boston-based appeals court later allowed it to continue temporarily through September while the legal challenge played out.
That's where the proposed rule comes in. By making the fee permanent through the formal rulemaking process — with a public comment period and finalization targeted by year's end — the administration is building the legal foundation the courts said was missing. The executive order was the opening move. This is the structural one.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a lawsuit. Democratic-led states joined in. A coalition of unions and employers piled on. The argument is predictable: the fee is too high, it discourages participation in the program, it hurts innovation.
Which is another way of saying it works exactly as intended. The entire point is to make importing foreign labor expensive enough that hiring domestically becomes the path of least resistance. When the fee was $3,000, "we can't find qualified Americans" was a convenient excuse that cost nothing to repeat. At $103,265, that excuse comes with an invoice.
The exemptions are narrow — student visa holders and current visa renewals are excluded. Everyone else pays. And the companies fighting it in court aren't arguing that American workers don't exist. They're arguing that training them costs more than importing someone who's already trained elsewhere. Which is exactly the calculation the fee is designed to change.
When it costs more to skip the American workforce than to invest in it, the talent pipeline suddenly gets a lot less "broken."
