Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee challenged by nurse group, unions

Modern Healthcare – Monday, October 6, 2025
By Chris Dolmetsch and Zoe Tillman, Bloomberg

A global nurse-staffing agency and several unions sued over President Donald Trump’s plans to charge a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas that allow skilled immigrants to work in the U.S., saying the move is unlawful.

Trump signed a proclamation last month requiring the $100,000 payment for any new for H-1B visa application, claiming the program “has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.” The lawsuit alleges Trump changed the H-1B program, forcing employers to either “pay to play” or seek a “national interest” exemption, which “opens the door to selective enforcement and corruption.”

“Most fundamentally, the president has no authority to unilaterally impose fees, taxes or other mechanisms to generate revenue for the United States, nor to dictate how those funds are spent,” the groups said in the suit. “The Constitution assigns the ‘power of the purse’ to Congress, as one of its most fundamental premises. Here, the president disregarded those limitations, asserted power he does not have, and displaced a complex, Congressionally specified system for evaluating petitions and granting H-1B visas.”

The lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court in San Francisco by advocacy groups including the Justice Action Center and the Democracy Forward Foundation on behalf the Global Nurse Force, an international nurse recruiting agency, unions representing workers at institutes of higher education and other organizations and individuals.

The new requirement will affect the technology industry in particular. Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp., Meta Platforms Inc. and Apple Inc. employ thousands of H-1B visa holders, while universities and hospitals use them as lecturers and research staff. “Computer-related” occupations accounted for 251,084 H-1B approvals in fiscal 2023, or about 65% of the total, government data show.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit.

The program, introduced in 1990, is one of a series of U.S. immigration initiatives created during the 20th century to address specific labor shortages, and serves as a cornerstone of the employment-based system that allows companies to hire college-educated foreign workers for specialized occupations.

H-1B visas are awarded based on a lottery system, but Bloomberg News has reported employers have exploited flaws in the system by flooding the lottery with entries. The government has changed the process in recent years to limit the ability of companies to game visa outcomes, and the Trump administration is weighing further changes to the way applications are considered.

Trump’s proclamation restricts entry under the H-1B program unless accompanied by the payment. The president ordered the Labor Secretary to undertake a rulemaking process to revise prevailing-wage levels for the H-1B program to limit the use of visas to undercut wages paid to American workers.

The $100,000 payment would be in addition to more current fees, including the $215 application fee. Trump’s proclamation allows for case-by-case exemptions if in the national interest — opening a potential window for certain companies or industries to seek a workaround from the new fee.

Access this article at its original source.