A US federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa petitions was unlawful, giving technology companies temporary relief from a policy that threatened to raise the cost of hiring foreign skilled workers.
The decision removes, at least for now, a major cost burden for employers that use the H-1B program to fill roles in domains including software development, cloud computing, data science, and AI.
US District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston found that the fee functioned as a tax that the administration did not have authority to impose without congressional approval. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenging the fee.
Standard employer costs for H-1B petitions typically range from about $2,000 to $5,000, making the proposed $100,000 payment a sharp increase for companies seeking foreign talent.
The ruling is unlikely to end uncertainty for employers, with the Trump administration expected to appeal. But it could allow companies that had paused international hiring plans to resume normal recruitment for the upcoming H-1B cycle, said Pareekh Jain, CEO of Pareekh Consulting. Still, he said, employers should remain cautious because the legal and policy concerns are likely to continue.
