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A federal judge has ruled that a massive increase on fees for potential immigrant workers to obtain H-1B visas is unlawful, saying that imposing the costly fee would amount to instituting a tax.
Last year, President Donald Trump unilaterally signed an executive order imposing a $100,000 “fee” on H-1B visas, which are designed for highly skilled immigrant workers coming to the United States. Several states sued against the move, and on Monday, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, based in Boston, issued a ruling against Trump’s directive.
Sorokin found that the presidential action was in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, a law that defines which branches of government can engage in formal rulemaking. The judge also ruled that the increase in fees for the visa was really a tax in disguise. Under the rules of the Constitution, only Congress may impose or adjust taxes.
“The substance and application of the $100,000 payment reveal that it is a tax, regardless of what the payment is called,” .
Sorokin also cited, as part of the precedent backing his ruling, a recent decision by the Supreme Court to strike down Trump’s tariffs. Like the $100,000 “fee,” Trump had described those tariffs as necessary for emergency reasons, but the high court rejected that view, finding his tariffs to be unconstitutional taxes.
The Trump administration, , had claimed “that the $100,000 payment requirement is ‘a regulatory payment,’ which is ‘not the same as a tax.’”
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“This is mere ipse dixit,” , citing the Latin legal phrase that roughly means an argument is unsupported or flawed. The administration offers “no definition for what constitutes ‘a regulatory payment,’ cite[s] no cases or statutes employing the term, and advance[s] no reasoned argument explaining how this term encompasses something different than a tax or a penalty.”
The move to impose huge fees on H-1B visas, one initiative of many in Trump’s anti-immigration agenda, had a significant impact. Before Trump’s new “fee” went into place, the costs for that kind of visa were around $2,000 to $5,000. Due to the high increase, just 85 payments for H-1B visas have been made since the costs were increased, a dramatic decrease from the tens of thousands of applications that are usually filed each year.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, whose state was one of 20 involved in the lawsuit, praised Sorokin’s ruling.
“Today’s victory protects the integrity of the H-1B visa program as a tool to address severe labor shortages in vital industries like education, healthcare, and medical research,” Campbell said.
Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a nonprofit organization that bills itself as “working to advance better and more politically resilient solutions on criminal justice and immigration,” also praised the ruling.
“Today’s ruling upholds that the administration violated the Administrative Procedures Act and the Constitution by unlawfully levying a $100,000 fee on many H-1B visas,” Schulte said in a press statement shared with Truthout. “This effort would have harmed American job and wage growth and hurt the quality of life of Americans from their education to health care, and we call on the administration to reverse course and abandon this misguided policy.”
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