Federal judge strikes down Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa fee

A US federal judge on Monday struck down the $100,000 fee that President Donald Trump imposed on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, ruling that it was an unlawful tax that Congress never authorized. US District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston issued the ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general who challenged the fee Trump announced in September, which dramatically increased the cost of obtaining H-1B visas from the typical $2,000 to $5,000 to a hefty $100,000 per application. The H-1B programme offers 65,000 visas annually, with an additional 20,000 visas for workers with advanced degrees, approved for three to six year periods. Over 70 percent of approved H-1B visas go to professionals from India. The Trump administration had argued that the fee constituted a monetary penalty that the president had lawful authority to impose under federal immigration law to restrict the entry of certain foreign nationals and penalize companies hiring international workers. However, Sorokin, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, concluded that the fee was not a penalty but a tax that the Republican president lacked authorization from Congress to issue. The administration had stated that as of February 15, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services had received just 85 payments of the $100,000 fee, suggesting the steep increase had significantly discouraged H-1B visa requests. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling. The H-1B system was originally designed to attract highly skilled foreign professionals for specialized technical roles but has increasingly been used by companies to hire workers at comparatively lower wages, particularly in the technology sector.