The Trump administration has published a proposed regulation that would require employers to pay a one-time fee of more than $100,000 for each new H-1B temporary skilled worker visa application — a measure that would come on top of existing fees ranging from roughly $2,000 to $5,000. The proposal, published in the Federal Register this week, opens a 30-day public comment period before it can take effect, meaning it could be months before any new rules are enforced. Crucially, the fee would apply regardless of whether a visa application ultimately succeeds, and would extend beyond overseas applicants to include foreign nationals already living in the United States on student visas — a growing segment of H-1B recipients.

The move is not without precedent. Last September, Trump issued a presidential proclamation imposing a similar $100,000 fee, but that measure was suspended in June after a federal judge ruled it constituted an unlawful tax. The new proposal appears designed to clear that legal hurdle by going through formal rulemaking rather than executive action. The H-1B programme, which the US government caps at 85,000 visas annually — distributed partly by lottery from a pool that last year exceeded 344,000 registered applications — is the primary route through which American companies hire skilled foreign workers on a temporary basis, typically for three to six years.

Supporters of the fee increase argue the programme has been systematically abused. More than half of all H-1B holders work in computer-related roles, and critics point to the growing role of India-based IT staffing and outsourcing firms, which they say allow large companies to circumvent legal requirements to pay visa-holders comparable wages. A government fact sheet accompanying the proposal cited unnamed major companies that continued receiving thousands of H-1B approvals even while laying off thousands of domestic workers. Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University, argued that claims of chronic skilled-labour shortages in the IT sector simply do not hold up: