The Trump administration has proposed a fee of $103,265 on H-1B visa applications, published in the Federal Register on Monday, Al Jazeera reports. Filing for the visa has typically cost between $2,000 and $5,000.

The proposal faces a 30-day public comment period before the Department of Homeland Security can finalize it.

What a fee of this size actually does

The H-1B programme issues 65,000 visas a year, plus 20,000 reserved for holders of advanced degrees, and is used mainly in technology, education and research.

At roughly twenty to fifty times the current cost, the fee does not price the visa; it selects who can use it. A large technology firm can absorb $103,265 per hire as a cost of business. A university department, a hospital system or a startup generally cannot.

That is worth stating without loading it in either direction. Supporters of a high fee argue precisely that it should be restricted to roles valuable enough to justify the outlay, which is a coherent position. Critics say the effect falls hardest on the employers least able to pay, which does not describe the largest users of the programme.

The legal question

Trump has invoked the president's power under federal immigration law to restrict the entry of foreign nationals whose presence would harm US interests.

A federal judge ruled the temporary $100,000 version illegal in June, and appeals are pending. The argument against, as the report puts it, is that the power to restrict entry "does not allow him to override the law that created the H-1B visa programme".

That is the crux: an entry restriction is one authority, and rewriting the fee structure Congress set for a statutory visa category is another. The temporary proclamation expires in September, which is why a permanent rule is being pursued now.

The programme is already shrinking

Registrations last year came to about 344,000, down 25 percent from 2024, and far below the 794,000 filed in 2023.

Applications were falling before this fee was proposed. Whether that reflects the temporary charge, a cooler technology labour market, or applicants judging the process not worth entering, the source does not say.

Who is objecting

The US Chamber of Commerce, Democratic-led states, and a coalition of unions and employers are challenging the measure. That grouping is itself notable: business lobbies and organized labour are rarely on the same side of an immigration question.

What we could not establish

We could not establish which employers use the most H-1B visas, the nationalities of recipients, whether the fee applies to renewals as well as new applications, or when the comment period closes. We verified this account from a single publication.