A federal judge has struck down President Donald Trump’s $100,000 fee for H-1B visa applications, potentially rolling back one of the Administration’s hallmark immigration policies.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston ruled that the fee, which affects employers sponsoring highly skilled foreign workers, acted as an unlawful tax that Trump does not have the authority to impose. Sorokin’s decision vacated “in its entirety” the Trump Administration’s policy from September that raised the cost for companies applying for an H-1B petition from a few thousand dollars to more than $100,000. The Administration had announced the fee in a proclamation, claiming that the H-1B program “has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”
A coalition of 20 Democratic state attorneys general had filed a lawsuit in December challenging the policy change.
In legal arguments, the Administration said that the fee was a “penalty” aimed at restricting the entry of certain foreign nationals into the U.S., which the President has the authority to do under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act if their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
Sorokin, however, determined that the fee instead functioned as a tax, which the President cannot issue without authorization from Congress. Sorokin, a Barack Obama-appointee, pointed to the Supreme Court’s decision in February to strike down the bulk of Trump’s tariffs, concluding that Trump did not have the authority to impose them. The Trump Administration did not seek congressional approval for the H-1B fee.
The Trump Administration intends to appeal the decision, according to White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers.
“President Trump has clear legal authority to restrict entry of any class of aliens he determines is not in America’s best interests, and that is exactly what he did,” Rogers
