On August 25, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would impose a new $103,265 fee on H-1B cap-subject petitions, including those filed under the advanced degree exemption. The proposal would effectively codify and make permanent the Trump administration’s earlier $100,000 H-1B fee initiative, which was imposed by presidential proclamation in 2025 but subsequently blocked by a federal district court. The proposed fee would be payable at the time of filing and would be in addition to existing H-1B filing fees and surcharges. DHS estimates the fee would generate approximately $8.8 billion annually.
Unlike prior USCIS fee increases, DHS proposes using revenue from H-1B cap filings to fund activities across multiple federal agencies, including U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the Department of State (DOS), and the Department of Labor (DOL). The proposal would allocate the projected revenue as follows: approximately $3.0 billion to USCIS, $3.0 billion to EOIR, $1.2 billion to DOL, $1.05 billion to ICE, with smaller allocations to DOS and CBP. DHS states that these funds would support activities ranging from adjudications, fraud detection, and vetting to immigration court operations, labor certification programs, and visa-processing functions.
This fee funding structure represents a departure from USCIS’s historical fee-setting approach, where USCIS fees have traditionally been tied to the costs of adjudicating immigration benefits. Here, DHS is proposing shifting broader immigration-system costs to employers filing H-1B cap petitions based on its determination that such employers are better positioned to absorb the additional expense than other immigration benefit requestors.
The NPRM provides a 30-day public comment period. The proposal arises amongst the backdrop of ongoing litigation over the administration’s previous $100,000 H-1B fee. In June 2026, a federal judge ruled that the fee was unlawful and barred the government from collecting it. The administration has appealed that decision, and further judicial review remains pending. As a result, legal challenges to DHS’s authority to impose a fee of this magnitude are widely expected if the rule is finalized.
If finalized, the proposal would represent a dramatic increase in the cost of sponsoring new H-1B workers in the annual cap (previous government costs were between $2,000-$6,000 depending on employer size and whether expedited processing was requested). As such, the additional fee could significantly affect employer demand for H-1Bs and workforce planning.
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