The Trump administration is proposing a $103,265 fee on every H-1B petition subject to the annual visa cap, using formal federal rulemaking after a federal court blocked collection of President Donald Trump\u2019s separate $100,000 payment.<\/p>\n
The Department of Homeland Security placed the proposal<\/a> on public inspection Monday. The Federal Register will publish it on Tuesday, August 25, opening a 30-day public comment period. If DHS finalizes the rule as proposed, employers will pay the fee when filing a cap-subject H-1B petition, in addition to existing filing costs.<\/p>\n DHS does not describe the $103,265 proposal as a replacement for Trump\u2019s proclamation. The agency says the two charges rely on different legal authority and cover different petitions.<\/p>\n The proposed fee would apply to all cap-subject petitions, including petitions in the 20,000-slot U.S. advanced-degree allocation, while excluding cap-exempt H-1B filings. The proposal does not list F-1 student status itself as an exemption.<\/p>\n The controlling question is whether the H-1B petition is subject to the annual cap.<\/p>\n DHS calculated the fee by dividing approximately $8.78 billion in projected annual immigration-system costs by 85,000 anticipated fee-paying petitions. The department projects about $8.8 billion in annual revenue that could support U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and immigration-related work at ICE, Customs and Border Protection, the Justice Department\u2019s immigration courts, the State Department and the Department of Labor.<\/p>\n The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs completed its review<\/a> on August 19 and classified the proposal as both economically significant and a major rule.<\/p>\n Court Fight Over $100,000 Payment<\/p>\n Trump issued the separate $100,000 payment requirement by proclamation in September 2025. As previously reported<\/a> by The Dallas Express, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin vacated the implementing policy on June 8 after finding the administration lacked authority to impose the charge in the manner it had used. The government appealed on June 11.<\/p>\n The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit denied the government\u2019s request to stay Sorokin\u2019s ruling in a July 24 order<\/a>, leaving the vacatur in force while the appeal proceeds. DHS says the proclamation payment, unless extended, will expire before the proposed $103,265 fee could take effect.<\/p>\n Texas H-1B Fight Grows<\/p>\n The federal proposal arrives less than a week after Gov. Greg Abbott proposed legislation that would ban H-1B workers from Texas public schools, as previously reported<\/a> by The Dallas Express.<\/p>\n \u201cExactly zero Texas public school employees should be here on H-1B visas,\u201d Abbott said during his August 18 announcement.<\/p>\n The Dallas Express has documented the program\u2019s use in Dallas schools. Dallas ISD recorded 1,290 H-1B approvals from January 1, 2020, through December 31, 2025, according<\/a> to previous DX reporting. A separate DX investigation<\/a> found that the district spent approximately $2.54 million on H-1B-related legal services between 2020 and late September 2025.<\/p>\n Those figures do not establish Dallas ISD\u2019s potential cost under the new federal proposal. The $103,265 fee would attach only to cap-subject petitions, and the available public employer data do not show which district approvals involved cap-subject filings.<\/p>\n No responsible estimate of Dallas ISD\u2019s potential cost can be made from the public records currently available.<\/p>\n Abbott\u2019s proposed state ban would require legislative approval. The federal $103,265 fee also remains only a proposal. DHS must complete the public-comment process and issue a final rule before it can collect the new charge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration is proposing a $103,265 fee on every H-1B petition subject to the annual visa cap,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[144839,144840,102,104,103,144841,144842,144843],"class_list":["post-415692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-103265-h-1b","tag-cap-subject-h-1b-103k-h-1b-fee-proposal","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-dhs-h-1b-rule","tag-h-1b-fee","tag-trump-h-1b-fee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}