Trump Extends $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee for Another Year Amid Ongoing Legal Challenges

President Trump signed a proclamation on September 18, 2026 extending the $100,000 H-1B petition fee for another year, through September 21, 2027. The scope matters more than the headline number: Reuters and the American Immigration Council both describe the fee as applying to new petitions for workers who are outside the United States, with renewals and current visa holders exempt and a national-interest exception available. One outlet in the citation set describes the fee as covering renewals as well; that contradiction is unresolved in the public reporting, and the narrower reading is the better supported one.

The extension arrives while the policy's legal footing is unsettled. A federal judge in Massachusetts struck the fee down in June 2026, holding that the executive cannot impose what amounts to a tax by proclamation. That ruling is on appeal at the First Circuit, and the US Chamber of Commerce is pursuing a separate challenge. Extending a measure that a district court has already invalidated keeps it operative during the appeal, which is the practical effect employers have to plan around.

For the large H-1B filers the cost is real but bounded relative to their hiring budgets, and it falls hardest on the offshore-heavy IT services model rather than on the biggest technology employers. The more consequential effect for companies such as MSFT, AMZN and GOOGL is planning uncertainty: a fee that may or may not survive appellate review is difficult to build a multi-year hiring plan against, and it pushes work toward offshore delivery centers and toward countries with more predictable skilled-migration rules.

What to watch: the First Circuit's schedule, whether USCIS issues implementation guidance clarifying the renewal question, and whether the next H-1B cap season shows a measurable drop in petition volume. That petition count is the cleanest available measure of whether the fee is changing behavior or simply being absorbed.