US Judge Strikes Down Trump’s $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee, Indians Stand to Benefit

A federal judge has struck down US President Donald Trump’s controversial $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas, ruling that the administration lacked congressional authority to impose what amounted to a tax on employers hiring foreign skilled workers.

US District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston on June 8 ruled that the fee, announced by Trump in September, was unlawful and could not be enforced by the US State Department or US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). 

The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by 20 state attorneys general challenging the measure.

The Trump administration had argued that the charge was a lawful penalty imposed under the president’s authority to restrict the entry of foreign nationals deemed detrimental to US interests. However, Sorokin found that the fee functioned as a tax rather than a penalty.

“Here, the substance and application of the $100,000 payment reveal that it is a tax, regardless of what the payment is called,” Sorokin wrote in his ruling.

The judge also pointed to a recent US Supreme Court decision that invalidated Trump’s broad tariff measures, saying the same legal reasoning applied in this case because immigration law does not grant the president authority to levy taxes.

The White House signalled it would challenge the ruling. “President Trump has clear legal authority to restrict entry of any class of aliens he determines is not in America’s best interests, and that is exactly what he did,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement, adding that the administration expects the decision to be overturned on appeal.

The H-1B programme, widely used by technology companies and other employers to recruit specialised foreign talent, issues 65,000 visas annually, along with an additional 20,000 visas for applicants holding advanced degrees. Indian nationals account for the vast majority of visa recipients, securing over 70% of all approvals. Before Trump’s proclamation, employers typically paid between $2,000 and $5,000 in visa-related fees.

When introducing the fee, Trump argued that the H-1B programme “has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labour.”

The fee did not apply to foreign nationals already in the United States on student visas, a group that accounts for a significant share of new H-1B recipients. Even so, adoption of the measure remained limited. According to a USCIS official, the agency had received only 85 payments of the $100,000 fee as of February 15.

The administration has simultaneously pursued tighter scrutiny of H-1B applicants and proposed a revised visa allocation system that would prioritise higher-skilled and higher-paid workers.