&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Federal judge rules Trump’s $100,000 fee for H-1B visas unlawful, strikes it down")
A federal judge on Monday struck down the $100,000 fee that US President Donald Trump had imposed last year on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, concluding that it constituted an unlawful tax that Congress never authorised.
US District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston issued the ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenging a fee Trump announced in September that dramatically raised the cost of obtaining H-1B visas.
The H-1B programme offers 65,000 visas annually, with another 20,000 visas for workers with advanced degrees, approved for three to six years. Earlier, employers seeking a visa for a foreign worker typically paid about $2,000 to $5,000 in fees depending on various factors.
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The fees hike has discouraged H-1B visa requests, according to court filings. As of February 15, US Citizenship and Immigration Services had received just 85 payments of the $100,000 fee, the administration said in a March filing.
However, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary, Markwayne Mullin, told a Senate panel recently that more than 200,000 applicants seeking H-1B visas to work in the US paid $100,000 for expedited processing during fiscal year 2026.
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The administration argued that the fee constituted a monetary penalty that the president had lawful authority to impose under federal immigration law to restrict the entry of certain foreign nationals. Trump administration officials projected it as an initiative to encourage companies to hire Americans instead.
The Trump administration contended that the judge had no authority to get involved in the visa fee dispute. The Justice Department claimed Trump’s action was unreviewable for multiple reasons and the judge should toss the states’ case.
But Sorokin, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, concluded that the fee was not a penalty but a tax that the Republican president lacked any authorisation from Congress to issue.
“Here, the substance and application of the $100,000 payment reveal that it is a tax, regardless of what the payment is called,” he wrote.
The president had dramatically raised the cost of visas for highly skilled workers in an executive order last year.
On June 3, Mullin said the DHS has the authority to waive a new $100,000 H-1B visa fee in certain cases, offering potential relief to employers facing high recruitment costs.
Speaking at his first Senate budget hearing as DHS secretary, Mullin also said the department can consider fee waivers on a case-by-case basis after Senator Susan Collins of Maine pointed out that a rural hospital had to pay the fee to hire a surgeon from abroad after failing to find a qualified US candidate. “We do have some authority and flexibility to be able to waive some of this on a case by case,” Mullin said.
