Topline
A federal judge on Monday struck down President Donald Trump’s $100,000 fee for H-1B visa applications, ruling the new fee unlawfully increased the cost of the visa program relied on heavily by the U.S. tech industry.
The U.S. tech industry relies heavily on the visa program.
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Key Facts
Judge Leo Sorokin vacated the $100,000 fee, ruling it was an “unlawful” tax and Trump lacked the authority to impose it without congressional approval, siding with California and 19 other states that sued to block Trump’s fee.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, in a statement announcing the lawsuit with 19 other attorneys general in December, argued the Trump administration’s “unlawful” fee on new H-1B visa applications created a “costly barrier” for employers in the hiring process and could negatively impact health care and education.
Another challenge to the fees, filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was struck down in December, when Judge Beryl Howell ruled Congress had granted the president authority to impose such a fee.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Forbes in a statement the Trump administration is “confident this order will be reversed on appeal,” arguing Trump has “clear legal authority to restrict entry of any class of aliens he determines is not in America’s best interests.”
what are h-1b visas?
H-1B visas, established under former President George H.W. Bush in 1990, allow U.S.-based companies to temporarily hire foreign employees in occupations requiring a “body of highly specialized knowledge” and a bachelor’s degree or higher. The employer files H-1B petitions, or an I-29, on the worker’s behalf with the Labor Department, and the worker then applies for a visa before entering the U.S., if approved. Before Trump’s fees, costs ranged between $960 and $7,595, according to Sorokin’s ruling.
these companies hire the most workers with h-1b visas
Amazon hired the most workers (4,831) using H-1B visas as of March 31, followed by Infosys (3,195), Tata Consultancy Services (2,885), Cognizant Technology Solutions (2,657), Apple (2,381), Microsoft (2,273), Google (1,903) and Meta (1,606), according to federal data.
key background
Trump imposed the $100,000 on the H-1B program in September, arguing its misuse was widespread and undermined national security through the “large-scale replacement of American workers.” The move marked the latest step by the Trump administration as part of a broader immigration crackdown, after he signed into law a policy bill raising application fees for individuals seeking temporary protected status to $500 from $50 earlier in the year. When the H-1B fees were announced, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said “all the big companies” had been notified and were “on board.” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang criticized the fees, arguing his family’s immigration to the U.S. “would not have been possible” without the H-1B program. Other executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, supported the new fees. Hastings said the fee was a “great solution” and that H-1B visas would be used “just for very high-value jobs.”
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