Trump Signs Order to Extend $100,000 H-1B Fee, New Deadline Extended to September 21, 2027
On September 19, Trump signed a new announcement extending the $100,000 entry fee for H-1B work visas for another year, with the new deadline extended to September 21, 2027; the previous one-year limit was set to expire on September 20, and would automatically become invalid if not renewed.
This fee originated from Trump's Presidential Announcement No. 10973 signed on September 19, 2025, which stipulated that H-1B applications submitted from September 21, 2025, must pay a $100,000 fee. The government cited economic and national security considerations, aiming to reduce companies' reliance on lower-cost foreign labor.
The policy has faced intense legal battles since its introduction: the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts previously ruled that the fee constituted "illegal taxation" and "improper use of executive power," revoking related enforcement guidelines; the U.S. government subsequently appealed, but the First Circuit Court of Appeals denied the government's emergency stay request on July 24, allowing the district court's revocation ruling to remain in effect. Meanwhile, two other related lawsuits are still pending in other courts, with one ruling stating that the fee falls within the president's legitimate jurisdiction over non-citizen entry matters, resulting in a fragmented legal situation without a unified conclusion.
Despite the judicial controversies, reports indicate that over 700 H-1B applications have paid this $100,000 fee to date. The policy currently exempts certain employers deemed "in the national interest"; at the same time, the government is preparing a broader independent regulation to impose a fee of approximately $103,265 on nearly all H-1B applications subject to annual quotas, which will have a wider scope than the current policy.
Alongside this extension, an executive order requires relevant departments to check whether H-1B employers have recently laid off or plan to lay off domestic employees when reviewing their applications, and this review can even apply retroactively to previously submitted applications.
The White House cited data stating that the policy has "effectively reduced companies' reliance on low-wage foreign labor"—visa lottery registration data shows that the number of applications submitted by IT outsourcing companies has decreased by 92%, while more applicants are turning to highly educated, higher-paid technical talent. However, industry stakeholders, including major tech companies and outsourcing service providers, generally oppose this fee policy, arguing that it significantly raises the cost for companies to hire overseas technical talent.
Reports indicate that even a revised version of the announcement, designed to withstand legal scrutiny, could be issued at any time with little warning. The decision to extend for another year itself indicates that the Trump administration still prefers to maintain this high-threshold fee policy through administrative announcements while the litigation results remain unclear.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
The Trump administration's tightening of the H-1B visa system is not an isolated action but continues its historical immigration policy path—during its first term, the U.S. Department of Labor attempted multiple times to raise the minimum wage thresholds and review standards related to H-1B. This specific $100,000 entry fee formalizes the restriction measures, representing a further upgrade and institutionalization of this policy approach in the new term, following previous tightening of "public charge" rules and increased scrutiny of green card applications, marking another concrete step in the Trump administration's immigration control efforts.
From the perspective of resource and cost transfer, this policy essentially converts the implicit costs originally borne by companies for screening and training overseas technical talent into an explicit, one-time administrative fee of up to $100,000, directly increasing the marginal cost for companies hiring foreign technical talent. The reported 92% drop in applications from IT outsourcing companies is a direct result of the shift in funding and labor demand under this cost impact—companies either abandon the introduction of mid- to low-end technical outsourcing personnel through H-1B, seeking alternative domestic labor or increasing automation investments, or concentrate their limited visa quotas on high-paying, highly educated technical positions that can cover this high cost.
A comparable historical case is the Trump administration's frequent use of "tariffs" in trade—similarly setting a high-threshold explicit cost to screen and limit specific types of cross-border flows (whether goods or labor), often providing exemptions for groups deemed "in the national interest." This "high threshold + selective exemption" policy design logic presents a highly similar governance approach in both trade and immigration, seemingly unrelated fields. The current U.S. tech industry is experiencing a phase of rising uncertainty in talent acquisition policies, forcing companies to consider "policy risk" as equally important as salary and technical capability in their decision-making variables.
This incident essentially represents a transfer of pricing power in the labor market: previously, companies could relatively freely decide whether to introduce overseas technical talent through H-1B based on market supply and demand and their own cost structure; now, the $100,000 entry fee sets a uniform price threshold for every H-1B application, meaning only positions expected to generate sufficiently high economic returns are worth the additional cost for companies to bear. This effectively shifts the pricing power for hiring, originally determined by market supply and demand, partially into the hands of administrative departments—the government indirectly decides which industries and salary levels can continue to attract talent through this visa channel by setting the fee threshold, completing a mechanism shift from "market pricing" to "policy pricing."
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
The height of a threshold determines who stays at the table.
Until there is a conclusion to the litigation, the executive order is the de facto rule.
Explicit fees are a way to bring implicit costs to the forefront.