US Chamber Sues to Block Trump $100,000 Fee for H-1B Workers (2)

The US Chamber of Commerce filed a lawsuit to block a $100,000 fee the Trump administration is imposing on employers hiring new workers on H-1B specialty occupation visas.

The fee violates the Immigration and Nationality Act and exceeds the authority of the executive branch, the business group argues in a complaint filed Thursday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

It’s the second lawsuit against the White House’s move, which surprised US businesses that rely on the H-1B program and left many workers scrambling to return to the US before it took effect Sept. 21. The administration subsequently clarified that only new petitions for H-1B workers would be impacted but still hasn’t answered major questions about how it would be implemented.

The fee will force American companies to either absorb dramatically higher labor costs or hire fewer skilled workers with no replacements readily available in the US, the Chamber’s complaint argues.

“The new $100,000 visa fee will make it cost-prohibitive for US employers, especially start-ups and small and midsize businesses, to utilize the H-1B program, which was created by Congress expressly to ensure that American businesses of all sizes can access the global talent they need to grow their operations here in the U.S.,” Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer, said in a statement.

Fee Structure

Congress has already set multiple fees for H-1B petitions, including fees to file a petition and fund fraud prevention measures as well as another specifically for employers with a large share of H-1B workers. Before the proclamation, employers generally paid about $3,600 in fees for a petition, according to the lawsuit.

The INA allows the executive to charge fees for administering visa services, but not more than that, the Chamber argues. Until now, those fees have been set through notice-and-comment rulemaking.

The White House proclamation issued last month instead imposed the fee as a condition of entry, making unprecedented use of authority of an INA provision giving the president broad power to suspend the entry of certain foreign nationals. But that logic would allow the president to create a new “shadow INA,” the suit argues.

“It would find the proverbial elephant in a textual mousehole, given the lack of any text naturally read as empowering the President to create new immigration programs,” the Chamber argued.

Harm to Businesses

The fee would make the H-1B program practically unavailable for many of the organization’s members, especially small businesses, the lawsuit said.

Although the Sept. 19 proclamation said the fee would allow for employers to bring in the “best of the best,” the new costs to the program would mean access to workers has less to do with quality than the financial resources of a company, the Chamber argued.

A coalition of unions, health-care recruiting firms, academic groups, and religious organizations filed the first legal challenge to the fee earlier this month. Like the Chamber’s complaint, that lawsuit also contended the fee was arbitrary and capricious and exceeded the president’s statutory authority. That challenge also argued the fee would exacerbate labor shortages for critical workers like nurses.

The Administration’s actions are lawful and are a necessary, initial, incremental step towards necessary reforms to the H-1B program,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said via email.

The case is US Chamber of Commerce v. DHS, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-03675, complaint filed 10/16/25.