747: Hot Topics in U.S. Immigration Law: H-1B Changes, Campus Compliance, and Employer Enforcement

There's been a little bit of stuff going on in the H-1B visa world, right? Does it cost $100,000? Does it cost like $3,000? Tell us what's going on.

So it has certainly not been boring in the H-1B space.

Some of you may have heard that there's a new proposed fee that just came down on Tuesday.

It's $103,265 for H-1B visas.

That is insane.

way more than the normal cost.

And this is an additional cost.

It is a proposed regulation and everybody has 30 days to comment on this proposed rule.

And I thought it would be good to kind of talk for a second, Susan, about like, where did this come from? Why do we even have this? And I want to spin back in time to last September, September 2025, when there was a presidential proclamation for a $100,000 fee.

And that was a fee that applied to mostly people who were outside the United States trying to come in on an H-1B or who for some reason had to leave and get their visa abroad.

So that has been bandied around the courts for the last several months.

And in June, a court vacated that and said, hey, that $100,000 fee, the president can't do that because it's really a tax and only Congress can tax.

So we all took kind of a deep breath and were happy that there was no $100,000 fee anymore.

It was going to sunset in September anyway.

You know, we didn't know what was going on with that.

So we kind of took, you Then came Tuesday, and on Tuesday came this new published rule for the $103,000 fee.

And what does it really mean? It doesn't apply to all H-1B petitions.

It applies to cap subject petitions.

What does that mean? So those of you out there who have heard of the H-1B lottery...

When you're dealing with employers who are hiring employees and they're subject to that lottery, they're for-profit entities, right? So, you know, typically that's the group.

That's who this $103,000 fee is going to apply to if it moves forward.

And who does it not apply to? It doesn't apply to colleges and universities or not-for-profit entities that are affiliated with those universities.

It doesn't apply to... research and, you know, not-for-profit research institutions.

It does not apply to government research institutions.

So, and I do have to say the justification for the rule, and it's quite a lengthy rule, is that it cost $8.8 billion to sort of run the immigration program.