DHS proposes a $103,265 fee on every new cap-subject H-1B petition

The US Department of Homeland Security has proposed a new fee of $103,265 on every H-1B petition that is subject to the annual cap. The notice of proposed rulemaking was published in the Federal Register on 25 August 2026, a day after USCIS announced it, and the public has until 24 September 2026 to comment. The fee would be paid by the employer at the time of filing, would not be refunded if the petition is denied or withdrawn, and would come on top of every fee an employer already pays. It would not apply to H-1B extensions, to transfers of workers who already hold H-1B status, or to universities, nonprofit research bodies and government research organisations, which are exempt from the cap. Nothing changes until DHS finalises the rule. The earliest realistic target is the lottery for fiscal year 2028, for which registration opens in March 2027.

Background

Congress caps new H-1B visas at 65,000 a year plus 20,000 for people with a US master's degree or higher, and demand outstrips supply so heavily that USCIS runs a lottery each March. In September 2025 the White House issued a proclamation requiring a separate $100,000 payment for new H-1B petitions for workers outside the US. A federal judge in Massachusetts vacated that payment on 8 June 2026, the First Circuit refused to let the government resume collecting it in July (see /news/h1b-visa-fee-first-circuit-denies-stay-july-2026), and by its own terms the proclamation runs only to 21 September 2026 unless extended. The new proposal takes a different legal route: rather than a presidential proclamation, it is a regulatory fee set through notice-and-comment rulemaking under DHS's fee-setting authority, which is harder to challenge on the same grounds. It follows a run of smaller H-1B cost increases this year, including the extension of the $4,000 9-11 Response Fee to renewals at H-1B-heavy employers from 9 September (/news/us-911-fee-h1b-l1-extensions-2026).

What exactly changed

DHS says the fee is meant to recover part of what the federal government spends administering the lawful immigration system, and it lists the activities it wants the money to cover: adjudicating benefits, fraud detection and national-security vetting, systems modernisation, records and fee collection, the immigration courts, consular visa processing, labour-standards enforcement and interagency coordination. The number is arithmetic. DHS estimated those costs at roughly $8.78 billion a year across six agencies, divided them by a projected 85,000 cap-subject petitions, and arrived at $103,264.57, rounded up to $103,265. It projects about $8.8 billion in annual revenue. According to Envoy Global's reading of the proposal, the split would send about $3.0 billion to USCIS, $2.96 billion to the immigration courts, $1.21 billion to the Department of Labor, $1.05 billion to ICE, $484 million to the State Department and $76 million to Customs and Border Protection. "The proposed H-1B fee is intended to recover the costs incurred across the federal government to adjudicate, vet, and support lawful immigration programs that otherwise must be funded by taxpayers," USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler said in the agency's release.

Who it affects

The people most exposed are those whose route to the US runs through the lottery. A software engineer in Bengaluru or Lagos with a US job offer would need an employer willing to spend $103,265 before the government even opens the file, on top of legal and filing costs that already run into several thousand dollars. An international student finishing a US master's degree on OPT and hoping to convert to H-1B through the advanced-degree exemption is in the same position: the exemption improves lottery odds but does not waive the fee. Employers that are exempt from the cap, above all universities and research institutes, could keep hiring at today's prices, which may push more foreign graduates toward academic employers or cap-exempt concurrent employment. Anyone who already holds H-1B status is outside the proposal; changing employer or extending status would not trigger it.

What to do now

If you are counting on a 2027 H-1B sponsorship, ask the prospective employer whether they would file at that price and how the cost would be handled, since it is the employer that pays and the employer that loses the money if the case is denied. Ask too whether the role could sit with a cap-exempt organisation. If you or your employer want to influence the outcome, comments can be filed on docket USCIS-2026-0298 until 24 September 2026; DHS must respond to substantive comments before finalising. People already in the US on H-1B should note that extensions and transfers are untouched. For US work routes that do not depend on the lottery, including O-1, L-1 and the EB categories, see our United States country guide (/country-guides/united-states).