Corporations that rely on foreign guest workers to fill jobs American workers could hold are about to face a steep new bill. The Department of Homeland Security filed a proposed rule Monday that would add $103,265 to the cost of every cap-subject H-1B petition, a price the administration says is long overdue.
The charge applies to the regular 65,000 visa slots and the 20,000 additional spots reserved for workers with advanced degrees from American universities. It stacks on top of existing filing fees, and DHS expects to collect it on all 85,000 cap-subject petitions filed each year. Until now, taxpayers have been quietly picking up the tab for much of the federal government's costs of running the program.
That very specific $103,265 figure is not arbitrary. DHS identified $8,777,488,035 in costs that it believes H-1B employers should cover rather than taxpayers. Divide by 85,000 petitions, round $103,264.57 to the nearest five dollars, and there it is: the price of doing business with a program that has long subsidized corporate hiring decisions on the public's dime.
USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler put it plainly: American taxpayers have been subsidizing a program that exists primarily to serve corporate bottom lines:
"The proposed H-1B fee is intended to recover the costs incurred across the federal government to adjudicate, vet, and support lawful immigration programs that otherwise must be funded by taxpayers."
DHS projects the fee will bring in roughly $8.8 billion each year, money that would otherwise never be collected from the corporations benefiting most from the program.
This is not the administration's first attempt to put a price on H-1B access. A September 2025 presidential proclamation imposed a $100,000 payment on certain H-1B petitions, relying on the president's authority to restrict entry under Sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
A federal judge in Massachusetts vacated the DHS guidance implementing that payment on June 8. Another instance of an activist court stepping in to shield corporate interests from accountability. The administration appealed to the First Circuit three days later, where the case remains pending.
Monday's proposal is built on firmer legal ground. Rather than relying on executive proclamation authority, DHS is using Sections 286(j) and 286(m) of the INA, statutory fee-setting authority that explicitly allows the department to recover the full costs of immigration adjudication and naturalization services.
It is also going through the full notice-and-comment rulemaking process, the kind of procedural rigor that makes a rule far harder to challenge in court than a presidential proclamation. The proposal is scheduled for publication in Tuesday's Federal Register, and the public will have 30 days to submit comments before DHS moves toward a final rule.
The 2025 proclamation targeted petitions for workers coming from abroad. This rule casts a wider net. It covers all cap-subject petitions, including change-of-status filings for workers already in the country, such as foreign students transitioning from F-1 student visas into H-1B jobs with American employers.
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Universities, governmental research organizations, and qualifying nonprofit research groups remain cap-exempt and would not face the additional charge, a carveout DHS left intact from existing law.
DHS also left open the possibility that an employer could owe both payments at once. If the government wins its First Circuit appeal and the proclamation is extended, employers would face two separate bills, the $100,000 proclamation payment and the $103,265 regulatory fee, for a combined cost of over $200,000 per petition.
The administration is also making a straightforward labor-market argument: H-1B workers are cheaper, and employers know it. DHS cited a 2026 analysis by Harvard economist George Borjas that compared H-1B workers with similarly qualified American workers, controlling for education, age, occupation, sex, and location. The conclusion was damning: Employers paid H-1B workers 16.1 percent less than their American counterparts.
Over six years, that pay gap adds up. Borjas estimated employers could still come out ahead after paying a fee of between $100,000 and $200,000, and there was no shortage of takers for fiscal year 2026, when USCIS received 343,981 registrations.
DHS wrote:
DHS believes that U.S. employers, if required to pay an additional $103,265 fee when filing an H-1B cap-subject petition, would be less likely to hire an H-1B worker over a qualified and highly-skilled American worker unless the need is legitimate and they have no alternative for obtaining the specialized skills of the employee. Given that demand for H-1B workers greatly exceeds the statutory cap, this fee could also have the indirect benefit of better protecting the wages and job opportunities of U.S. workers.
Small employers will feel it. More than half of the 28,649 entities that filed cap-subject petitions in fiscal year 2025 were classified as small businesses, and DHS estimates the fee would have a significant financial impact on 11,051 of them.
DHS considered a small business discount and rejected it. Carving out smaller employers, the agency concluded, would simply give corporations an incentive to game the exemption and leave the government billions short of what it needs to finally make the H-1B program pay for itself.
https://redstate.com/ben-smith/2026/08/24/court-knocks-down-trumps-h-1b-fee-so-he-builds-it-3265-taller-n2206006
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