President Donald Trump has extended for another year a proclamation requiring employers to pay $100,000 for certain new H-1B skilled-worker visa petitions, the White House said on Friday, prolonging a policy that has drawn pushback from major employers and remains under legal challenge.
The extension keeps the fee requirement in effect through September 21, 2027, with carve-outs for workers, firms or sectors the administration judges to be in the national interest.
Trump first imposed the fee in September 2025, arguing it would curb companies’ use of the H-1B program to bring in foreign labor at lower wages than American workers would command. The measure does not apply to foreign nationals already in the United States on student visas, who account for a substantial share of H-1B recipients, nor to renewals of existing visas or to change-of-status and extension-of-stay applications, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services guidance.
The White House said Friday that registrations from major IT staffing and outsourcing firms have dropped 92% since the fee and an accompanying weighted selection process took effect, with a rising share of petitions now involving applicants holding advanced degrees and higher salary offers.
The policy continues to face court scrutiny. A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled in June that the administration’s implementation guidance was unlawful and barred collection of the fee; that ruling is now before an appeals court in Boston.
In a related move Friday, the administration issued a separate order directing officials to factor in employers’ recent or planned layoffs of U.S. workers when reviewing H-1B sponsorship requests. The Department of Homeland Security is also weighing a broader proposal that would apply a roughly $103,000 fee across the H-1B program.
Established by Congress in 1990, the H-1B program allocates 85,000 visas annually via lottery and is heavily used by technology companies recruiting from India and China. Business groups say the visas fill gaps in the domestic skilled-labor supply, while critics argue the program has been used to undercut American wages.
