A major piece of President Donald Trump’s effort to reshape high-skilled immigration has been extended for another year. A September 18 proclamation renews restrictions targeting certain H-1B workers outside the United States through September 21, 2027, including a requirement that affected petitions be accompanied by a US$100,000 payment unless an exemption applies.
The policy formally begins its renewed 12-month period on September 21, 2026, but its real-world impact remains complicated. A federal judge ruled the US$100,000 payment unlawful in June and blocked the government from collecting it, with the administration’s appeal still pending. That leaves employers and skilled foreign workers confronting two realities at once: a White House determined to tighten the H-1B system and federal courts still deciding how far that effort can legally go.
The White House Has Extended the Restriction Through September 2027
Trump’s September 18 proclamation extends the 2025 H-1B entry restriction for another 12 months, running until midnight Eastern time on September 21, 2027. The measure targets H-1B specialty-occupation workers who are outside the United States and would seek entry based on covered petitions. Under the proclamation, entry is restricted unless the petition is accompanied or supplemented by a US$100,000 payment. The Department of Homeland Security can grant national-interest exceptions for an individual, a company’s workers or potentially an entire industry.
The extension is significant because it turns what was initially a one-year immigration measure into a longer-running part of the administration’s skilled-worker strategy. The White House says more than 700 petitions had been accompanied by the US$100,000 payment after the original policy began in September 2025. The administration argues the restriction discourages companies from using H-1B hiring primarily as a lower-cost labour strategy rather than for unusually difficult-to-fill skilled positions.
The US$100,000 Rule Is Much Narrower Than a Blanket H-1B Fee
The headline number can make the measure sound as though every H-1B worker must suddenly pay US$100,000, but the policy is considerably narrower. The proclamation focuses on certain workers who are outside the United States, while the White House’s implementation guidance says previously issued H-1B visas are unaffected. It also states that existing H-1B holders can continue travelling internationally and that the measure does not change the normal payments associated with H-1B renewals.
That distinction matters for thousands of workers already building careers in the United States. Reuters reported that people already in the country on student visas who later move into H-1B status account for a substantial share of new recipients and were not covered by the original entry restriction. For employers, the largest exposure therefore falls on recruitment pipelines that involve bringing a new employee into the country from abroad rather than simply maintaining an existing worker’s lawful H-1B status.
A Federal Court Has Blocked Collection of the Payment
The largest complication is that the administration’s proclamation and the courts are currently pointing in different directions. In June 2026, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston ruled that the administration’s US$100,000 requirement was unlawful in litigation brought by 20 Democratic state attorneys general. The ruling prevented the federal government from collecting the payment, and the administration filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
That appeal remained pending when DHS published a separate H-1B proposal in August. DHS itself acknowledged in the Federal Register that the district court had vacated the guidance implementing the payment. It added that if the court order is later lifted, the department would resume collection consistent with the proclamation and any extension. A separate legal challenge involving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is also pending. For companies making hiring decisions, the result is unusual: the presidential restriction has been renewed, but one of its central financial mechanisms remains blocked by litigation.
The H-1B System Was Already Highly Competitive
Even without the US$100,000 restriction, H-1B hiring operates within tight numerical limits. Federal law generally provides 65,000 new cap-subject H-1B slots each fiscal year, with an additional exemption of up to 20,000 for workers who hold qualifying U.S. master’s degrees or higher qualifications. That creates an effective annual pool of 85,000 cap numbers, although universities and some other employers or petitions can fall outside the regular numerical cap.
Demand has repeatedly exceeded those limits, requiring USCIS to select which prospective workers can advance through the cap process. The agency reported 343,981 eligible registrations for fiscal 2026, down from 470,342 in the previous cycle—a 26.9% decline—but still far more registrations than available cap numbers. That imbalance is one reason policy changes to H-1B selection carry such enormous consequences. A change in selection rules does not merely increase paperwork; it can materially change which employers and workers ultimately receive access to the limited visa pool.
Higher-Paid Applicants Now Receive Better Odds in the Selection Process
The US$100,000 restriction is only one part of a broader H-1B overhaul. DHS changed the cap-selection system for the fiscal 2027 season, replacing equal treatment in the selection pool with a weighted process based generally on wage levels. Under the rule, a beneficiary associated with wage level IV receives four entries into the selection pool, while wage levels III, II and I receive three, two and one entry respectively.
The system still contains randomness, meaning a lower-wage applicant can be chosen and a higher-wage applicant can still lose. But the odds have deliberately shifted toward positions offering higher wages relative to the occupation and location. That can change recruitment economics for businesses seeking junior engineers, analysts and other early-career professionals. It also advances the administration’s stated objective of steering the program toward what it describes as higher-skilled and higher-paid foreign workers rather than relying on a purely random cap lottery once demand exceeds the statutory limits.
Employers’ Layoffs Are Now Part of the Government’s H-1B Scrutiny
Trump paired the renewed proclamation with a separate September 18 executive order requiring federal agencies to scrutinize an H-1B sponsor’s recent or planned layoffs. The order tells the Departments of State, Labor and Homeland Security to consider whether an employer directly or indirectly conducted layoffs during the previous year—or plans layoffs that negatively affect similarly situated U.S. workers—when handling relevant H-1B applications, petitions, visas and entry decisions.
It also orders greater information-sharing among agencies and directs the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division to begin reviewing previously submitted Labor Condition Application data within 30 days to determine whether further enforcement is warranted. That potentially changes the compliance calculation for large companies undergoing simultaneous restructuring and international recruitment. A technology company cutting one division while trying to bring specialists into another could face more questions about how the positions differ, why foreign recruitment is necessary and whether similarly situated American workers were affected.
The Administration Is Also Seeking a Permanent US$103,265 Fee
The courtroom fight over the presidential proclamation is not the administration’s only route toward dramatically higher H-1B costs. DHS proposed a separate regulation in August that would impose an additional US$103,265 fee on each cap-subject H-1B petition. Unlike the presidential entry restriction, DHS says the proposed regulation relies on different statutory authority and would be established through the federal rulemaking process.
The department estimates that applying the proposed fee to roughly 85,000 annual cap-subject petitions could generate approximately US$8.8 billion in yearly revenue. DHS says the money would help finance immigration-related government operations across several agencies. The proposal is not the same as a final rule, however, and its eventual form could change after public comments and regulatory review. If finalized substantially as written and upheld legally, the cost of sponsoring many new foreign professionals would move from an administrative expense measured in thousands of dollars to one exceeding US$100,000 before salary and other employment costs are considered.
Indian Professionals Have the Greatest Exposure to H-1B Changes
Any major H-1B policy change has an outsized effect on Indian professionals because India dominates the program numerically. USCIS reported that 71% of approved H-1B petitions in fiscal 2024 involved beneficiaries born in India. China ranked a distant second at about 11.7%. Together, the two countries accounted for the overwhelming majority of approvals among the largest source countries.
Those numbers help explain why changes in Washington quickly reverberate through technology hubs such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad and other major centres supplying engineers and technology professionals to multinational companies. The effect reaches beyond individual immigration plans. Reuters reported that heightened scrutiny and changing U.S. visa rules have affected some companies’ hiring and expansion strategies, with major H-1B users including Google parent Alphabet expanding operations in India. Relocating a job abroad is not always an alternative to an H-1B hire, but the economics shift when bringing a worker to the United States becomes substantially more expensive or unpredictable.
The Administration Says Outsourcing-Firm Registrations Have Plunged
The White House argues the first year of restrictions has already changed employer behaviour. Its September 2026 fact sheet says H-1B registrations submitted by the largest IT outsourcing firms declined 92% after the original 2025 proclamation. The renewed proclamation separately states that more than 700 petitions were accompanied by the US$100,000 payment while the policy was being implemented. Those figures form part of the administration’s case that a high financial barrier can discourage business models it considers overly dependent on foreign contract labour.
The broader USCIS data also show fewer registrations, although they should not automatically be interpreted as proof that the US$100,000 policy caused the decline. Eligible registrations for the fiscal 2026 cap fell from 470,342 to 343,981, while unique beneficiaries dropped from roughly 442,000 to 339,000. Multiple factors—including previous anti-fraud reforms and changes to registration rules—can influence those numbers. The government’s narrower 92% statistic specifically represents the White House’s assessment of large outsourcing firms.
Research Shows Why the H-1B Debate Remains Economically Complicated
Economic research does not reduce the H-1B debate to a simple choice between protecting American jobs and promoting innovation. A Journal of Political Economy study using H-1B lottery results found that winning an additional visa displaced roughly 1.5 other workers at the sponsoring firm and produced, at most, modest measurable innovation effects. Other research has reached different conclusions in different contexts. An NBER study of startup firms found that greater success in H-1B lotteries was associated with more subsequent venture financing, successful exits, patents and patent citations.
Earlier research by William Kerr and William Lincoln found that higher H-1B admissions increased employment and patenting among immigrant scientists and engineers, with limited evidence of reduced native science-and-engineering employment. Another economic model found gains for consumers and the broader economy alongside lower wages and employment for some U.S. computer scientists. That mixed evidence helps explain why H-1B policy remains contentious: its benefits and costs can fall on different workers, businesses, industries and consumers rather than moving together in one direction.
