Trump extends USD 1,00,000 H-1B fee by a year, tightens employer scrutiny
US President Donald Trump has extended by one year the USD 1,00,000 fee on employers bringing in foreign workers on H-1B visas, the White House said. The fee, first imposed in 2025, was due to expire this month.
In a presidential proclamation issued on Friday, Trump said the 2025 move had led to a 92 per cent fall in H-1B registrations by large IT outsourcing firms. Indians remain the single largest beneficiary group of the US H-1B visa programme.
"An extension of the 2025 Proclamation will continue to protect the economic and national security interests of the United States, improve labour market access for American workers and graduates, and ensure that employers recruit only the most highly-skilled and essential alien workers when needed in line with the original intent of the program," Trump said.
The 2025 decision to levy the USD 1,00,000 fee has been challenged in court and the matter is pending before two different federal courts. The 2025 order raising the fee was set to expire this month. It did not apply to visas granted to foreign citizens already in the United States on student visas, who make up a large share of new H-1B recipients, or to renewals of current visas.
The order also sets a 30-day deadline for the Secretary of Labour, acting through the Wage and Hour Division, to begin reviewing data from previously submitted labour condition applications. The review will determine whether further action against sponsoring employers is warranted.
Trump also issued a separate proclamation tightening scrutiny of H-1B visa applications through better inter-agency cooperation. "The Order enhances program integrity in the H-1B visa program by improving interagency coordination and directing enhanced scrutiny of H-1B visa applications where there is a heightened risk that American workers would be laid off," a White House fact sheet said. It said the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Labour and the Secretary of Homeland Security have been directed to consider petitioner employers' recent or planned lay-offs of similarly placed US workers while considering H-1B visa applications.
In the executive order, Trump said the H-1B nonimmigrant visa programme was created to identify uniquely skilled and highly specialised foreign temporary workers to strategically supplement the US economy. "Instead, the program has been widely abused by certain employers, third-party placement groups, and outsourcing firms to undercut and displace the supply of skilled United States labour," he said. The latest orders extend the fee, continue legal and administrative scrutiny around the programme, and add closer checks on employers applying for H-1B visas.
