A US federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa petitions was unlawful, giving technology companies temporary relief from a policy that threatened to raise the cost of hiring foreign skilled workers.
The decision removes, at least for now, a major cost burden for employers that use the H-1B program to fill roles in domains including software development, cloud computing, data science, and AI.
US District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston found that the fee functioned as a tax that the administration did not have authority to impose without congressional approval. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenging the fee.
Standard employer costs for H-1B petitions typically range from about $2,000 to $5,000, making the proposed $100,000 payment a sharp increase for companies seeking foreign talent.
The ruling is unlikely to end uncertainty for employers, with the Trump administration expected to appeal. But it could allow companies that had d international hiring plans to resume normal recruitment for the upcoming H-1B cycle, said Pareekh Jain, CEO of Pareekh Consulting. Still, he said, employers should remain cautious because the legal and policy concerns are likely to continue.
“This provides breathing room for CIOs, even though it’s temporary,” said Neil Shah, vice president for research and partner at Counterpoint Research. “They should make the necessary contingency plans, whether that means doing more with less by leveraging AI or relying more on local talent.”
If higher H-1B costs return in another form, CIOs will have to be more selective about sponsorship, weighing the added cost against the strategic value of the role and the long-term potential of the employee, Shah said. “Ultimately, the decision comes down to business unit P&L: whether the unit can absorb the cost of acquiring the talent for that role,” Shah added.
That uncertainty could also lead CIOs to compete for talent from other companies, potentially driving up salaries for skilled workers. Some CIOs may conclude that paying a one-time $100,000 fee, amortized over the employee’s tenure, is still more cost-effective than engaging in a bidding war for scarce local talent.
Danish Faruqui, CEO of Fab Economics, said that CIOs may reserve H-1B sponsorship for a narrower set of mission-critical roles if costs increase.
“If there is such a financial burden, CIOs will justify sponsoring very specific roles,” Faruqui said. “These would be principal enterprise architects, AI, ML, and deep-tech researchers, senior product managers, and regulatory and compliance experts.”
More routine or project-based roles are likely to be treated differently, Faruqui said.
“Junior to mid-level software engineers, entry-level business analysts, and entry-level data scientists would shift from H-1B to domestic hiring,” Faruqui said. “Cloud migration, DevOps, ERP, and CRM implementation could be done through contractors or consulting firms, while QA, product testing, tier-one help desk support, and legacy maintenance are roles that CIOs could prioritize for automation.”
Startups, smaller companies, and enterprise IT departments would have faced the greatest pressure from the fee and stand to benefit most from the ruling, Jain said.
Large technology companies would have been better placed to absorb the $100,000 cost, he said. Meanwhile, companies with mature offshore delivery models may be less likely to increase their reliance on H-1B hiring.
The article originally appeared on CIO.