President Donald Trump unveiled a sweeping proposal Monday to attach a $100,000 fee to every new H-1B visa application, a dramatic escalation in his effort to reshape the nation’s high-skilled immigration program and which could have huge costs for the nation’s universities.
The H-1B visa, which allows U.S. employers to hire foreign professionals in specialty occupations, is frequently used in university hiring. Colleges and research institutions depend on the program to recruit international faculty members, post-doctoral researchers and other highly trained specialists.
According to the most recent federal data, colleges and universities sponsored 12,687 new H-1B petitions in fiscal 2024. At the proposed rate of $100,000 per application, the nation’s higher-education sector would face an estimated $1.3 billion in new annual costs for initial H-1B filings alone.
Harvard University could be forced to pay as much as $10 million per year to support their H1-B requirements, according to a report in the Harvard Crimson.
Unlike private-sector employers, most nonprofit universities are currently exempt from the annual H-1B cap and have historically paid filing fees that are a fraction of the proposed amount.
There remains one possible escape hatch for universities. Trump’s order grants the Secretary of Homeland Security broad authority to waive the $100,000 charge for workers, companies or even entire industries if their admission is deemed to be in the “national interest.”
The term is undefined, but past practice suggests candidates for such an exemption could include healthcare workers in shortage areas, defense and cybersecurity specialists, and—crucially for academia—researchers and postdoctoral fellows at universities.
Trump framed the proposal as a way to “protect American workers and ensure fairness,” echoing the populist economic arguments that underpinned his earlier efforts to limit immigration.
The plan is expected to face strong opposition from the higher-education community and legal challenges from advocacy groups that argue it would undermine the country’s competitiveness in science and technology.
