The $100,000 H-1B Fee Is On Hold Right Now — Here’s What That Actually Changes for Foreign Workers

If you have been watching US work-visa news with a knot in your stomach for the past ten months, here is the short version: the H-1B $100,000 fee is not being collected today. A federal appeals court refused to revive it on July 24, 2026, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services updated its public guidance four days later to say it will comply. But “not being collected today” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and the difference between that and “gone for good” is the difference between a smart plan and a wasted year.

Is the $100,000 H-1B fee still being charged?
No. As of August 4, 2026, the $100,000 H-1B payment is not being collected. A federal district court in Massachusetts struck the policy down on June 8, 2026, and on July 24, 2026 the First Circuit Court of Appeals refused to pause that ruling while the government’s appeal continues. The appeal itself is still undecided.

That is the whole news event in one paragraph. Everything below is the part that most coverage skips — because most of it was written for corporate HR departments, not for the person actually applying.

What the court actually decided

The fee came from Presidential Proclamation 10973, signed on September 19, 2025, which required a $100,000 payment to accompany certain new H-1B petitions and restricted entry for H-1B workers whose petitions did not include it. The restriction applied to H-1B holders entering the United States after September 21, 2025, and was written to run for 12 months.Twenty states, led by California and Massachusetts, sued, arguing the administration had exceeded its statutory authority and violated the Administrative Procedure Act, and that the policy would damage their ability to staff public universities, schools and healthcare systems. On June 8, 2026, the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts agreed and vacated the policy in its entirety.

Reporting from CDF Labor Law notes that the states’ core argument was that the fee amounted to a tax, which requires legislation — and the district court accepted that reasoning.

Then came a confusing few weeks. On June 12, 2026, the same judge declined a full stay but granted a temporary administrative pause, conditioned on the government filing with the First Circuit by June 18. That administrative pause is why the fee kept being collected in June and July even though a court had already declared it unlawful.

On July 24, 2026, a three-judge First Circuit panel denied the government’s motion to stay, applying the four-factor standard from Nken v. Holder and finding the government had not made a strong showing it was likely to win on the merits. Adams and Reese summarised the reasoning bluntly: Congress must speak clearly when it hands the executive branch power to impose financial burdens, and the Immigration and Nationality Act does not grant that power under the statutes the administration relied on. With the stay denied, the district court’s vacatur is back in force nationwide.USCIS has since posted an alert confirming the sequence and stating that DHS strongly disagrees with the First Circuit’s order but will comply while it considers next steps.

Capitol Immigration Law Group flagged the sting in the tail of that update: DHS’s FAQ warns that if the order is later lifted, it still plans to collect the payment.

Who the fee ever applied to — and who it never touched

This is where a lot of applicants panicked unnecessarily for ten months. The fee was never a universal H-1B tax.

According to USCIS guidance issued in October 2025, the payment applied to new H-1B petitions for beneficiaries outside the United States who did not already hold a valid H-1B visa; petitions requesting consular notification, port-of-entry notification or pre-flight inspection; and petitions for a change of status, amendment or extension that USCIS later found the beneficiary ineligible for, or where the person left the country before adjudication.

It did not apply to petitions filed before the effective date, and it did not apply to properly approved change-of-status, amendment or extension petitions for people already inside the United States. The State Department also confirmed it was a one-time fee on new petitions, that it did not change renewal fees, and that it did not stop existing H-1B visa holders from travelling in and out of the country.

And it only ever touched one visa category. O-1, TN, L-1, J-1, E-3, E-1/E-2 and H-1B1 routes were not changed by the proclamation. If you were pursuing any of those, this entire saga was noise.

Three ways the fee could come back

Treat the current situation as a pause, not a verdict.

The appeal is still live. The First Circuit’s decision was procedural. It does not resolve whether the administration had legal authority to impose the fee — that question comes later.

The Supreme Court is a realistic next stop. Federal courts have reached conflicting conclusions on the fee, which keeps further review, potentially up to the Supreme Court, on the table. Adams and Reese point to the specific fault line: a DC district court had previously upheld the proclamation, and that split suggests the constitutional question is headed higher.

Or it could simply expire — or be renewed. NAFSA notes the proclamation was set to expire 12 months after its September 21, 2025 effective date unless extended. Envoy Global points out that the order directed agencies to submit renewal recommendations within 30 days of the FY 2027 H-1B lottery. That means a decision on extension is plausible in the next several weeks, and September 2026 is the date to watch.

Reddy Neumann Brown’s guidance to employers applies just as well to applicants: this is an interim result, not a permanent resolution, and the fee could return through a higher court’s stay, a government win on appeal, or legislation

The change that hurt applicants more than the fee ever did

Here is the part almost nobody covering the court ruling connects for job seekers. In practice, the $100,000 fee was an employer cost that made companies quietly stop sponsoring from abroad. The rule that directly changed your odds was something else entirely.

DHS finalised a weighted selection process for cap-subject H-1B registrations, effective February 27, 2026, designed to favour higher-paid roles while still leaving room for employers at all wage levels. Under it, each registration receives between one and four entries in the selection pool depending on how the offered salary compares to Department of Labor prevailing wage levels — though each worker can still only be selected once. A Wage Level IV registration went into the pool four times; a Level III, three times, and so on down.FY 2027 was the first lottery run this way.

The results tell the story. USCIS reported 211,600 properly submitted registrations for FY 2027 — down roughly 38% from 343,981 the year before — and confirmed there would be no second selection round, because the first round filled all 85,000 slots. Roughly 40.2% of registrations were selected, with markedly better rates for higher-wage offers and US advanced-degree holders.

Read those two numbers together and the picture is uncomfortable but clarifying: the headline selection rate improved, largely because a third of the competition disappeared, while the structure tilted hard against entry-level and early-career candidates. Ellis notes plainly that the weighted system lowered the odds for entry-level and early-career workers compared with the old random draw.

FY 2027 is closed. What that means if you are job hunting today

USCIS has confirmed it received enough petitions to reach both the 65,000 regular cap and the 20,000 master’s cap for fiscal year 2027. There will be no additional selection rounds — the same as FY 2026. Unselected registrations do not carry over to FY 2028 automatically.

So if you are searching for H-1B sponsorship right now, understand what you are actually shopping for: a cap-exempt role, or a place in the next lottery. USCIS continues to accept cap-exempt petitions, including those filed by institutions of higher education, non-profit research organisations and governmental research organisations. That category is genuinely underexploited by international applicants — university research centres, teaching hospitals affiliated with universities, and non-profit research institutes sponsor year-round with no lottery at all.

Extensions and transfers for people already in H-1B status are generally unaffected by the cap being reached.

What to do between now and the FY 2028 lottery

The FY 2027 registration window ran from March 4 to March 19, 2026, with selections announced March 31 — so expect a comparable window in early 2027, and note that USCIS announces registration dates in advance. That gives you roughly seven months. Use them:

Target the wage level, not just the job title. Under the weighted system, a Level III or IV offer is worth three or four times a Level I offer in the draw. But be careful with the mechanics — a wage level is not set by the dollar figure alone; it is assessed against the occupation, geographic area and applicable prevailing-wage data. The same salary can be Level IV in one metro and Level II in another. Check the DOL prevailing wage data for the specific occupation and city before you accept an offer, not after.

Find employers who sponsored successfully this year. Public disclosure data on past sponsorships is the cheapest research you can do, and it filters out the enormous number of listings that mention sponsorship without ever having filed a petition.

Build a cap-exempt track in parallel. Universities and affiliated non-profits do not wait for March.

Do not treat the H-1B as the only door. Depending on your qualifications and nationality, other routes may be faster and were never touched by the proclamation.

Watch September 2026. That is when the proclamation either lapses or is extended — and when the appeal timeline could produce news.

Be careful about who is telling you what

One practical warning. Whenever a fee is blocked, a wave of “the H-1B is open again, apply now” content follows, and some of it is aimed at selling services. Two facts protect you: the fee was always an employer-side payment, never something a candidate should be asked to pay or reimburse; and no consultant can put you in a lottery that has already closed. If someone is charging you for FY 2027 H-1B access in August 2026, that lottery is over.

Key takeaways

• The $100,000 H-1B payment is not being collected as of August 4, 2026. A Massachusetts district court vacated it on June 8, and the First Circuit declined to restore it on July 24.
• The appeal has not been decided. DHS has said it will comply for now but still intends to collect if the order is lifted.
• The proclamation was written to expire 12 months after September 21, 2025, unless extended — making September 2026 a key date.
• The fee never applied to properly approved change-of-status, amendment or extension petitions for people already inside the US, and never applied to O-1, L-1, TN, J-1, E-3 or H-1B1.
• The FY 2027 cap is full, with no second lottery. Unselected registrations do not roll over.
• The bigger structural change for applicants is the wage-weighted lottery, effective February 27, 2026, which gives one to four entries based on DOL wage level.
• Your leverage between now and March 2027 is wage level, cap-exempt employers, and a second visa route running in parallel.

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