The Trump administration plans to charge employers a fee of $103,265 for H-1B skilled foreign workers, according to a proposed regulation posted on Monday. Revenue from the fee would be used to offset the costs of running the federal immigration system - including courts and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
A similar $100,000 fee was shot down in June by an Obama-appointed federal judge in Massachusetts, after Trump attempted to implement it via presidential proclamation and 20 blue states went apeshit. The administration's argument is that the H-1B program has been used to take jobs from Americans, and the additional fee would cause employers to consider the cost of just hiring Americans.
Citing a working paper in the National Bureau of Economic Research, the new proposed regulation argues that the new fee would make employers "less likely to hire an H-1B worker over a qualified and highly-skilled American." The paper found that H1-B workers make on average around 15% less than American counterparts.
The program, passed by Congress in 1991, lets employers hire 65,000 skilled foreign workers per year - with an additional 20,000 visas available for workers who hold advanced degrees from US universities.
The new proposed regulation is set to publish in the Federal Register today - and would exempt some groups such as most US colleges, universities and nonprofit hospitals associated with academic institutions. Unlike last year's prop
