A new regulatory notice goes up today, Tuesday, August 25, that would tack a $103,265 charge onto most H-1B petitions filed through the annual visa lottery. The number lands on top of every filing cost a sponsoring company already covers with USCIS.
A Wider Net Than the Fee It Echoes
This is not a revival of last September's proclamation-based surcharge. It is a separate rule built through ordinary notice-and-comment rulemaking, tracked under regulatory docket USCIS-2026-0298 at DHS. Nearly every cap-subject case would owe it, including the 20,000 slots set aside each year for advanced-degree holders trained at American universities. Universities, their affiliated nonprofits, and government research institutions, filings DHS treats as cap-exempt, would not.
Agency math released alongside the rule divides a stated $8.8 billion funding target by an assumed 85,000 annual filings, landing on the $103,265 figure almost to the penny. The public gets 30 days to weigh in once the notice posts, putting the comment deadline around late September, and immigration lawyers are already questioning whether a charge this size can be justified under the statute DHS is leaning on to collect it.
The Older $100,000 Fee Is Not Currently Being Collected
The $100,000 fee created by last year's presidential proclamation is not being enforced right now, and has not been since late July.
A federal judge voided that fee in early June, calling it a tax the executive branch had no independent power to impose. The administration appealed and asked for a stay, and for about six weeks the fee kept applying to consular-processing petitions while the courts sorted out that request. That changed on July 24, when a three-judge appeals panel rejected the government's bid to keep collecting the fee during the appeal, writing simply, "We deny the motion." The panel found the administration had not shown it was likely to win its case, leaving the lower court's order in force nationwide and barring USCIS from assessing the charge unless a higher court steps in.
The government could still ask the Supreme Court for emergency relief, and the underlying proclamation is due to expire on its own terms in late September unless the White House renews it — just days after public comment closes on the new $103,265 rule. By routing the newer charge through standard rulemaking instead of a proclamation, the administration appears to be building a legal foundation less exposed to the argument that sank the first one, though it is not immune from challenge either.
Most coverage of the new fee has centered on Indian and Chinese engineers, who together receive more than four out of every five H-1B approvals in a typical year. Workers from Mexico, Brazil, and the rest of Latin America make up a far smaller slice of the program. But the added cost still reaches Latino-founded startups, hospital systems, and engineering firms competing for the same shrinking pool of sponsored talent, and it deepens a shift already underway.
Austin, Miami and a Labor Market Moving South
Employers facing the earlier six-figure surcharge had already begun routing work toward Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil rather than sponsoring visas at all, Latin Times reported last fall, turning Monterrey into something close to an extension of the Texas tech corridor. That dynamic is not going away. Austin's tech sector, which now accounts for roughly 13% of the metro area's total employment, and Miami's role as a bilingual staging ground for engineers moving between Latin America and the United States, draw heavily on cross-border pipelines that a six-figure charge would make considerably more expensive to formalize through sponsorship.
The Fee's Reach Into Healthcare
Software is not the only sector exposed. Rural and underserved hospitals lean on H-1B physicians, nurses, and lab technicians to fill posts that go unfilled by American applicants. An analysis published in JAMA found reliance on these clinicians climbs sharply in the poorest counties, roughly four times higher than in the wealthiest ones, and comes in at almost double the rate outside of cities compared with inside them. Much of that overlap falls along the border and across the Southeast, in communities with sizable Latino populations. Small hospitals were already struggling to staff up before six-figure visa costs entered the picture.
What Comes Next
Nothing is owed under the new rule yet. It remains a proposal, and DHS has to work through public comments before any final version takes effect. But between a $103,265 charge headed toward finalization and a $100,000 predecessor still tied up on appeal, with a Supreme Court request possible and an expiration date looming over the original proclamation, the trajectory is hard to miss: sponsoring foreign talent, Latin American or otherwise, is getting more expensive no matter how the litigation shakes out.
