When the $100,000 H-1B fee took effect via presidential proclamation on September 21, 2025, it was framed as a real cost employers would have to reckon with before turning to foreign labor over domestic hires. The exemptions built into the policy tell a different story. The fee applies only to employers filing new cap-subject petitions for workers who are abroad or otherwise outside protected H-1B status. It is a one-time charge, not annual. And crucially, it does not touch existing H-1B holders, renewals of current positions, or anyone who applied before the cutoff date.
Those carve-outs matter enormously in practice, because they cover the majority of how large tech and outsourcing-adjacent employers actually use the H-1B program: extending and renewing the visas of workers already inside the pipeline. A company doesn't need to file a brand-new cap-subject petition and eat six figures if it can simply keep renewing the H-1B status of someone already on staff, or shift a role to a worker who filed before the September deadline. The fee targets the front door while leaving every other door in the house unlocked.
The early collection numbers back this up. By mid-February 2026, only 85 payments had been collected under the new fee, totaling $8.5 million — a trickle relative to the scale of H-1B hiring across the tech sector. That's not evidence the fee killed off cheap-labor hiring. It's evidence employers are routing around it, filing through the exemptions rather than the front door the fee was meant to guard.
Layered on top is a new wage-weighted lottery system that took effect February 27, 2026, replacing the old random selection process. Under the new system, Wage Level IV positions get four entries in the selection pool, Wage Level III gets three, Wage Level II gets two, and Wage Level I gets a single entry. On its face this rewards higher-paid petitions. But the rule also lets DHS assign the lowest relevant wage level when a beneficiary has multiple registrations or worksites — a provision sophisticated immigration counsel can work around by structuring filings to minimize the wage level attached to a petition, even for a genuinely high-paying role.
None of this is accidental complexity. Case-by-case national interest waivers, determined by DHS, add yet another discretionary exemption path on top of the renewal and pre-deadline carve-outs. The strategic advice now circulating among immigration lawyers — reported as: map hiring by immigration status, revisit salary structures, confirm worksite assumptions, and develop national-interest exemption arguments — reads less like compliance guidance and more like a playbook for keeping the visa pipeline flowing at close to the old cost.
A $100,000 fee that collected $8.5 million in five months isn't functioning as a deterrent. It's functioning as a toll booth with a wide shoulder lane for anyone who knows the exemptions, while the sticker price gets cited in press coverage as proof the administration is serious about protecting American jobs.
Read the original reporting at Forbes.