The Trump administration is seeking to charge employers a $103,265 fee for hiring skilled foreign workers through the H-1B program, after a similar effort was rejected by courts last year.
The move was announced in a proposed regulation posted on Monday, the Washington Post reported. Last year’s fee was imposed through a decree from President Donald Trump and promptly shot down by Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin of Massachusetts, who ruled that it was both an illegally imposed tax and failed to consider the wider impact. This new effort gives a fuller justification for the move and is imposed differently, going around Sorokin’s two main gripes.
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The proposed regulation argues that H-1B visas improperly disadvantage U.S. workers, citing a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research that puts the average salary of an H-1B worker at 15% below that of their native-born counterparts.
This new fee would disincentivize employers from choosing foreign workers over Americans, saying it would make employers “less likely to hire an H-1B worker over a qualified and highly-skilled American.”
The new move also seeks to justify itself by using these fees to contribute toward the legal immigration system, providing $3 billion annually, including $1 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This sizable total would hire 8,400 staffers for the immigration system.
FEDERAL JUDGE STRIKES DOWN TRUMP $100,000 FEE ON H-1B VISA WORKERS
While Trump’s coalition is fully aligned against illegal immigration, the issue of H-1B visas has split his base with his newer big business allies. Large businesses employ tens of thousands of foreign H-1B workers, leading to widespread complaints that employers are choosing to hire temporary workers with fewer rights over native workers.
The battle over H-1B visas has flared up throughout Trump’s presidency, with the worst round of fighting occurring just before Trump’s inauguration, over Christmas 2024.
