#h-1b fee

A US federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa petitions was unlawful, giving technology companies temporary relief from a policy that threatened to raise the cost of hiring foreign skilled workers. The decision removes, at least for now, a major cost burden for employers that use the H-1B program to fill roles in domains including software development, cloud computing, data science, and AI. US District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston found that the fee functioned as a tax that the administration did not have authority to impose without congressional approval. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenging the fee. Standard employer costs for H-1B petitions typically range from about $2,000 to $5,000, making the proposed $100,000 payment a sharp increase for companies seeking foreign talent. The ruling is unlikely to end uncertainty for employers, with the Trump administration expected to appeal. But it