DHS Proposes $103,265 H-1B Visa Fee, Reigniting Legal Battle Over High-Skill Immigration
The Department of Homeland Security announced it would implement a fee of $103,265 on H-1B visas, reopening a regulatory fight over high-skill immigration costs that a federal judge halted just months ago. The Trump administration proposed the specific fee figure on August 25, 2026, weeks after a federal court struck down its previous attempt to raise H-1B visa fees in June. The Verge
Before that June ruling, over 70 employers had already paid a $100,000 H-1B visa fee under the prior increase. The three biggest employers of H-1B workers are Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft. The Verge
DHS also signaled that the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program may soon carry a $100,000 fee. OPT allows foreign students to work in the US for up to one year after graduation, with STEM extensions available for up to three years total. It has long functioned as a key pipeline for converting international university graduates into H-1B holders at major technology firms. The Verge
Separately, the State Department plans to revoke the visas of up to 200,000 asylum seekers. The agency will rescind business and travel visas issued between 2016 and 2026 to people who applied for asylum after arriving in the US. The Associated Press reports this would be the largest mass visa revocation in US history. The Verge
Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, said the H-1B fee increase is "clearly unlawful." FWD.us is an immigration reform organization founded by Mark Zuckerberg and other tech executives in 2013. The Verge
For technology companies, these moves land squarely on the two intake valves that sustain their engineering workforces. H-1B sponsorship is the primary mechanism for retaining specialized talent, and OPT serves as the bridge between US university programs and full-time employment for international graduates. Placing a six-figure fee on either program does more than raise the cost of an individual hire. It alters the unit economics of talent acquisition at a scale where a single visa can already cost between $10,000 and $25,000 in legal and filing expenses before this proposed increase.
The fee structures also matter for workforce planning cycles. H-1B cap-subject petitions are filed in March, with selections running through a random lottery. Employers plan hiring cohorts around these outcomes months in advance. A fee that shifts by tens of thousands of dollars between fiscal years, only to be struck down in court, creates planning whiplash. Companies cannot easily substitute domestic labor for specialized roles on the timelines these regulatory shifts impose.
The visa revocation track adds a different layer of uncertainty. Rescinding 200,000 business and travel visas retroactively, based on a subsequent asylum application, means that a legal status held for years can be voided by administrative action. For any technology employer whose workforce includes individuals who arrived on nonimmigrant visas and later sought asylum, the revocation creates immediate questions about employment authorization, I-9 compliance (the federal form verifying a worker's eligibility to work in the US), and retention.
The broader context here is that pairing a six-figure H-1B fee with the largest mass visa revocation in US history points to a coherent policy direction, even if neither action is final. The administration is raising the financial barrier to entry for employer-sponsored high-skill visas while simultaneously narrowing the population of people who can maintain legal status through other pathways. Whether the courts will permit either action to stand is the open question. In June, a federal judge already struck down one version of the H-1B fee increase. FWD.us has signaled that litigation is the expected next step.
Over the long arc, the technology industry has adapted to immigration constraints before. Visa caps, processing backlogs, and policy shifts between administrations are not new conditions. But the magnitude of these proposed fees and the scale of the visa revocations push beyond the normal friction of regulatory adjustment. A $103,265 fee per H-1B worker is not a marginal cost increase. It is a structural change to how employers budget for talent, and it arrives when demand for AI and ML engineers, many of them foreign-born graduates of US programs, is accelerating rather than stabilizing.
