Topline
More than a dozen states announced Friday they would sue the Trump administration to block a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visa applications, joining several unions and lobbying groups challenging a potential roadblock to the program widely used by the U.S. tech industry.
Key Facts
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, in a statement announcing a lawsuit with 19 attorneys general, said they would challenge the Trump administration’s “unlawful” policy imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applications, arguing it would “create a costly barrier” for employers in the hiring process.
President Donald Trump announced in September the U.S. would impose an annual $100,000 fee on H-1B applications, after fees for the visa reportedly ranged between $2,000 and $5,000 per application.
The states challenging the fee include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
Attorneys general from the states argued the fee would negatively impact health care and education, and New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement the Trump administration’s “illegal attempt to ruin this [visa] program” would “disrupt our children’s education and hurt our economy.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s $100,000 H-1b Fee Faces Other Legal Challenges
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which says it represents 300,000 businesses, announced a lawsuit challenging the $100,000 H-1B fee in October. The lobby group argued the fee would make it “cost-prohibitive” for U.S. employers to use the program and that the increased costs exceeded Trump’s executive powers. That lawsuit followed a combined lawsuit filed by a group of unions, higher education officials and religious organizations, which argued the Trump administration failed to go through the required regulatory process to raise the visa application fee, The New York Times reported. Global Nurse Force, an international nurse staffing agency, sued the Trump administration over the new fee last month, claiming the new cost would reduce working capacity in intensive care units, emergency rooms and surgical units while increasing patient wait times.
