H-1B $100,000 Fee Blocked Again: What Its Status Means for Your Job Offer

Last updated: 3 October 2026.

No H-1B petition filed this week has to carry a $100,000 payment. That has been the position since late July, and on 30 September 2026 a second federal court made it firmer. Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr., of the Northern District of California, vacated the agency policies that put the president’s H-1B fee into practice, and barred the agencies from enforcing them until they complete formal rulemaking. The H-1B $100,000 fee status, as of 2 October 2026, comes to this: blocked by two courts, upheld by a third, on appeal in two, and being rebuilt by the government as a regulation that would cost a little more and reach further.

If you are an Indian graduate on OPT hoping to enter next spring’s lottery, an engineer in Pune holding a US offer, or the person in HR deciding whether to sponsor either of you, this is good news with a short shelf life. My view, after reading the order and the proposed rule side by side, is that you should plan for two outcomes at once. The fee is not being charged today, yet it is far from settled, and the version now being drafted would touch people the current policy left alone.

Where the H-1B $100,000 fee status stands

Three different things travel under the name ‘the H-1B fee’, and most of the confusion comes from mixing them. There is the president’s proclamation, which restricts entry unless a $100,000 payment is made. There are the agency memos and FAQs that told officers how to collect it. And there is a new regulation, still only a proposal, that would set its own fee by a different legal route. The courts have so far struck at the second of these.

What the California order says, and what it leaves alone

The case is Global Nurse Force v. Trump, No. 4:25-cv-08454, brought by healthcare staffing firms, unions and religious and educational groups. Judge Gilliam granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction in part. He vacated and sent back to the agencies the ‘Agency Policies’: the USCIS and Customs and Border Protection memos of 20 September 2025, the USCIS and State Department FAQs of the following day, and the USCIS update of 20 October 2025 that set out how to pay and how to ask for an exception. The agencies are barred from enforcing those policies ‘until notice-and-comment rulemaking under the APA and regulatory flexibility analyses under the RFA have been conducted’. The court refused the government’s request to pause the order pending appeal, and refused to dismiss the case.

Reports have differed on how far the order reaches. Some coverage said it protects only the plaintiffs; others said it applies nationwide. The order itself answers the point. The government suggested that relief be limited to the plaintiffs, and the judge declined, citing Ninth Circuit authority that vacating an unlawful agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act is different from the ‘universal injunctions’ the Supreme Court restricted in 2025. Vacatur sets the policies aside as such, rather than shielding named parties. The judge also noted that the Massachusetts ruling had already left ‘the $100,000 fee’ no longer in effect, so plaintiffs and others were ‘doubly protected’.

What the order leaves alone matters as much. It does not decide whether the president had the power to impose the fee: the judge chose to rule on the agency policies first rather than ‘wade into these complex questions’. It does not cancel Proclamation 11069. It turns on procedure, finding that rules of this weight needed public notice and a chance to comment before they took effect. The Massachusetts court went further. Law firms tracking that case report that it treated the payment as a tax that only Congress can impose, as well as a breach of the procedure law. That ruling is on appeal, and the position can change if an appeals court disagrees.

Why the government wants the fee

The government’s case deserves to be stated in its own words. Proclamation 11069, signed on 18 September 2026, says the H-1B programme ‘has been exploited to replace, not supplement, American workers with lower-paid labor’, and that some employers have used it ‘to suppress wages and displace American workers’. It points to results it credits to the 2025 proclamation and the new lottery rule together: the largest IT staffing and outsourcing firms cut their combined H-1B registrations from 24,946 to 2,055, a 92 percent fall, and registrations for people with at least a US master’s degree rose from 45.1 percent of the total for FY2026 to 66.1 percent for FY2027.

The same document records that the payment was made for ‘over 700 petitions’ in its first year, and that requests for consular processing, the route used to bring workers in from abroad, fell by nearly 97 percent between the FY2025 and FY2027 cap seasons. Read together, the fee looks less like a charge that employers paid than a door most of them chose not to walk through. The government reads that as the policy working. The plaintiffs, among them a nurse staffing agency, a rural medical practice and schools hiring from abroad, read it as the harm. Both readings start from the same number.

On the same day the president signed Executive Order 14431, on H-1B oversight. It directs the State, Labor and Homeland Security departments to draw on wage, employment and academic data from the Commerce and Education departments and the Small Business Administration when they process H-1B cases, to weigh whether a sponsor has made or plans layoffs, and it directs the Labor Department to begin reviewing previously filed Labor Condition Applications within 30 days. None of this is a fee, and none of it has been blocked. An employer that sponsors in 2027 will be sponsoring under closer scrutiny whatever happens in court.

The $103,265 proposal reaches people the current fee spares

On 25 August 2026 the Department of Homeland Security proposed a fee of $103,265 (about ₹99 lakh at ₹96 to the dollar, 2 October 2026), payable when an employer files any H-1B cap-subject petition, including petitions under the master’s cap. Petitions for cap-exempt employers, such as universities and non-profit research bodies, would not pay it. DHS rests the proposal on its power to set fees that recover the cost of its services and to set conditions for admitting temporary workers, and it states two aims: to provide ‘a powerful, reliable, and predictable revenue tool’, and to make employers ‘less likely to hire an H-1B worker over a qualified American worker unless the need is legitimate’. It assumes 85,000 cap-subject petitions a year, all of them paying.

The surprise, for me, was who is exposed. Under the proclamation, the safest person in the system was the F-1 student already in America. USCIS’s October 2025 guidance said the payment did not apply to a petition for someone inside the United States whose change of status was granted. The proposed rule draws no such line. Law firms reading it, among them Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer and Jackson Lewis, conclude that it would cover an F-1 student on OPT moving to H-1B. The proposal also says that an employer caught by both the proclamation and the new fee would pay both.

The rule is a proposal. Comments closed on 24 September; DHS must consider them, publish a final rule with an effective date, and then defend it if it is challenged. No date has been given. One reading of the courts so far is that the government has already chosen the route the California judge described, formal rulemaking, and that the Massachusetts reasoning about taxes would be tested against a regulation on a different footing. Which way that goes is for the courts, and I will not guess. Converted at the same rate, the old $100,000 figure is about ₹96 lakh.

Where you stand: on OPT, abroad with an offer, or already on an H-1B

If you are on F-1 or OPT and planning to register in March 2027, the $100,000 payment was never aimed at you, and it is not being collected anyway. Your exposure is the proposed rule. If it becomes final and takes effect before your employer files, the cost of sponsoring you could rise by about ₹99 lakh. The lottery itself has also changed. Under the weighted selection rule, in force since 27 February 2026, a registration at wage level IV is entered four times and one at level I once. A first job offered at entry-level pay now starts with fewer tickets.

If you are in India with a US offer, you are the person the proclamation was written for, since it applied to new petitions for workers outside the United States. Today the fee is not collected, but the proclamation runs to September 2027 and two appeals are live. An employer that files while the fee is blocked is acting lawfully on the present position; ask what happens to your case if an appeals court reverses that position before your visa is issued.

If you already hold an H-1B, the October 2025 guidance did not apply the payment to people with a valid H-1B visa, or to amendments, changes of status and extensions of stay granted inside the United States. Travel decisions should rest on your own visa and the advice of your employer’s attorney, not on headlines about this fee.

Students thinking further ahead will also want our piece on how long an F-1 student may stay, another rule now being settled in court. Jobs pillar page

What should you ask your employer?

Most of the decisions here are your employer’s, so the useful thing you can do is ask early and in writing.

• If I am selected in March 2027 and a fee of about $103,265 is final by then, will you still file, and is that decided?
• What wage level will you put on my registration, and could the role be offered at a higher level?
• If you are hiring me from abroad: will you file while the fee is blocked, and what is the plan if an appeal reverses that mid-case?
• Could the role sit with a cap-exempt employer, such as a university or a non-profit research body?
• Will any part of a government fee be recovered from my pay, bonus or exit terms? Ask the employer’s immigration attorney whether that is allowed.

An employer that cannot answer the first question today is not being evasive. The rule does not exist yet. What you want is a commitment to tell you as soon as they know.

Dates that will decide this

The California parties file a joint statement by 20 October and return to court on 27 October 2026; the government may also appeal to the Ninth Circuit. The D.C. Circuit, which heard argument on 9 March 2026, could rule at any time, and the First Circuit has the government’s appeal in the Massachusetts case. DHS has given no date for a final $103,265 rule. Last year USCIS announced the lottery dates on 30 January and ran registration from 4 to 19 March 2026; nothing has been announced for FY2028. Proclamation 11069 also asks four departments to recommend whether it should be extended again. Migration piece on green card priority dates before January 2015

None of this is legal advice, and the rulings and rules in this area are moving month by month. Before you accept an offer, resign or book travel because of the fee, speak to your employer’s US immigration attorney, or a licensed US immigration lawyer of your own. If you would like to know when any of these dates moves, sign up for our visa-update alerts and we will write to you when it does.

This week, send your employer the first question on that list. Keep the reply.

Sources

1. Global Nurse Force v. Trump, No. 4:25-cv-08454-HSG (N.D. Cal.), order of 30 September 2026, via govinfo, accessed 2 October 2026.
2. Proclamation 11069, 91 FR 60497, Federal Register 23 September 2026, accessed 2 October 2026.
3. Proclamation text, whitehouse.gov, accessed 2 October 2026.
4. Executive Order 14431, 91 FR 60501, Federal Register 23 September 2026, accessed 2 October 2026.
5. DHS proposed rule, Fee for Certain H-1B Petitions, FR 2026-17324, 25 August 2026, accessed 2 October 2026.
6. DHS final rule, Weighted Selection Process, 90 FR 60864, 29 December 2025, accessed 2 October 2026.
7. Ogletree: $100,000 H-1B fee on hold while the government’s appeal proceeds, 29 July 2026, accessed 2 October 2026.
8. GIP: appeals court declines to revive the $100,000 H-1B fee, 5 August 2026, accessed 2 October 2026.
9. AILA: First Circuit denies stay in California v. Mullin, 24 July 2026, with 29 July update, accessed 2 October 2026.
10. Mu Immigration: federal court eliminates $100,000 H-1B fee nationwide, accessed 2 October 2026.
11. Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer on the $103,265 proposal, accessed 2 October 2026.
12. Jackson Lewis via National Law Review on the $103,265 proposal, accessed 2 October 2026.
13. Dorsey: USCIS guidance of 20 October 2025 on the $100,000 fee, accessed 2 October 2026.
14. US Chamber of Commerce case page, Chamber of Commerce v. DHS, accessed 2 October 2026.
15. Chamber reply brief, D.C. Circuit No. 25-5473, showing argument on 9 March 2026, accessed 2 October 2026.
16. Bloomberg Law on the D.C. Circuit argument, 9 March 2026, accessed 2 October 2026.
17. Law360: Chamber says H-1B fee renewal requires court relief, accessed 2 October 2026.
18. Forbes, 1 October 2026, on the California ruling, accessed 2 October 2026.
19. Immigration Analytics, 1 October 2026, on the California ruling, accessed 2 October 2026.
20. Bloomberg Law on the California ruling, accessed 2 October 2026.
21. Mintz: FY2027 registration period, accessed 2 October 2026.
22. Mintz: FY2027 cap reached, 20 July 2026, accessed 2 October 2026.
23. Trading Economics USD/INR, accessed 2 October 2026.