The Trump administration has proposed an additional $103,265 fee on employers filing H-1B visa petitions subject to the annual cap. If implemented, the move could significantly increase the cost of hiring skilled foreign workers, including professionals from India.
It is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, after which a 30-day public comment period will begin.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the proposed fee would apply to every cap-subject H-1B petition, including applications for workers eligible under the advanced degree exemption. The proposal is not final yet.
Earlier reporting noted: For Indians in the US, two new $100,000 walls may be coming up: What H-1B visa and OPT fees could mean The Trump administration on Monday published a proposed regulation that would charge American employers $103,265 for every new H-1B petition subject to the annual visa cap, reviving in a different form a fee that a US court had struck down in June. Earlier reporting noted: And DHS is separately weighing a $100,000 charge – a third in the US of this scale – on Optional Practical Training (OPT), the post-graduation work programme that has long been the bridge between an American degree and an H-1B or other work visas for foreign students, The Wall Street Journal initially reported.
Zach Kahler, a spokesperson for US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), said the proposed fee aims to recover federal government costs involved in processing, screening, and supporting legal immigration programmes that are otherwise funded by taxpayers. The money would help cover expenses related to immigration benefit processing, fraud detection, national security screening, government system upgrades and record management, according to DHS. The department said the funds would help cover immigration-related work carried out by USCIS, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Justice Department’s immigration courts, the State Department and the Department of Labor.
The proposed fee would not apply to cap-exempt H-1B petitions filed by certain non-profit research organisations, government research bodies and institutions of higher education.
Earlier reporting noted: The proposal is in addition to other measures already in motion or being planned by the US government.
FWD.us President Todd Schulte criticised the proposal, calling it a “massive tax on American businesses” and arguing that it was part of a wider effort to weaken legal immigration.
