$103,265 H-1B Fee [What It Changes]

TL;DR

• The $103,265 H-1B Fee is a proposed extra USCIS charge, due at filing, on every new cap-subject H-1B petition, including the advanced-degree exemption; it is not in force as of August 24, 2026.

• DHS set a 30-day comment window after the August 25, 2026 Federal Register date; comments go to docket USCIS-2026-0298.

• The fee would stack on today's Form I-129, ACWIA, fraud, and asylum-program charges, and DHS treats it as separate from the September 2025 $100,000 proclamation payment.

• University, nonprofit-research, and other cap-exempt H-1B petitions are outside the proposal; recruiting teams should split cap-subject and cap-exempt pipelines now.

Key Takeaways

• Quote the $103,265 H-1B Fee as a proposed, cap-subject-only filing surcharge, not as a visa stamp fee and not as a renewal fee.

• Treat the comment period as an operations deadline: if the rule is finalized, the cash hits at Form I-129 filing, not at lottery registration.

• Keep the $100,000 proclamation on a separate cost line; a Massachusetts court vacated that payment's implementing guidance in June 2026.

• Cap-exempt clients are the control group: their petitions are not in the $103,265 math.

• Recruiting firms that already route offer packets through US Tech Automations can add a cap-subject fee gate before a petition is queued.

What the $103,265 H-1B Fee is

The $103,265 H-1B Fee is the extra amount the Department of Homeland Security proposes to collect, at the moment a cap-subject H-1B petition is filed, on top of every other required USCIS and statutory charge.

A 10-person marketing agency that sponsors one designer a year, a solo-run clinic that needs one specialist, and a two-truck HVAC shop that buys recruiting from a staffing vendor all feel this the same way: the cash is due before the worker starts, and it is large enough to change whether the role is offered at all.

Staffing firms that sell H-1B sponsorship as a line item have to reprice the product for every mid-size client, including shops that never touch Form I-129 themselves.

According to the DHS notice of proposed rulemaking scheduled for the Federal Register on August 25, 2026, DHS proposes a $103,265 cap-subject H-1B fee.

The same notice, "Fee for Certain H-1B Petitions" (RIN 1615-AD20, DHS Docket No. USCIS-2026-0298), says the charge would apply to all H-1B cap-subject petitions, including those eligible for the advanced-degree exemption, and would be imposed in addition to all other applicable fees or payments.

Outlook India, writing on August 24, 2026, stressed that the proposal is not a final rule, so employers are not currently required to pay $103,265.

Yahoo Finance, republishing HR Dive on August 24, 2026, described the filing as a joint DHS and USCIS unveiling and linked the public-inspection PDF as the primary text.

What happened on August 24, 2026

DHS filed the notice on August 24, 2026, at 8:45 a.m., with a stated publication date of August 25, 2026, on the public-inspection PDF.

Written comments must be submitted on or before 30 days after that Federal Register publication date, in English, through regulations.gov, identified by DHS Docket No. USCIS-2026-0298.

According to Yahoo Finance's August 24, 2026 report, stakeholders have 30 days from the scheduled August 25 publication to comment.

The legal hook DHS cites is section 286(m) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. 1356(m), which lets immigration examination fees recover the cost of adjudication and naturalization services.

The H-1B category sits in 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) and the admission rules at 8 U.S.C. 1184. Specialty-occupation detail is in 8 CFR 214.2.

USCIS's H-1B Specialty Occupations page still walks employers through the older $100,000 proclamation payment and the June 2026 court order that vacated the implementing guidance.

Waiting for a "final number" skips the only cheap intervention: the comment file.

How DHS got to $103,265

According to footnote 5 of the DHS proposed rule, $8,777,488,035 in costs divided by 85,000 petitions equals $103,264.57, then rounded to the nearest $5, which is $103,265.

The 85,000 denominator is the statutory annual allocation: 65,000 under INA 214(g)(1)(A) plus 20,000 under the U.S. master's exemption in INA 214(g)(5)(C).

According to the Department of Labor's H-1B program page, current law limits qualifying workers to 65,000 plus an additional 20,000 under the advanced-degree exemption.

USCIS's H-1B Cap Season page states the same 65,000 regular cap, notes that up to 6,800 of those 65,000 are set aside for H-1B1 Chile/Singapore, and states the extra 20,000 U.S. master's petitions.

Table 10 of the NPRM multiplies the fee by that volume and prints a revenue projection of $8,777,525,000 (85,000 × $103,265). Table 11 then splits that money across six agencies.

Sources: DHS NPRM Table 11; docket USCIS-2026-0298.

USCIS's own slice in Table 1 of the same notice is about $3.0 billion. DHS is open that this is a revenue tool for the lawful immigration system, not a processing surcharge sized to the minutes a service-center officer spends on one I-129. The GAO user-fee design report that the NPRM cites (GAO-13-820) is the older federal primer on how fee-funded agencies manage revenue instability.

Who would pay, and who would not

The fee would be payable at the time of filing for cap-subject petitions only.

Cap-exempt petitions — including those filed by U.S. institutions of higher education and similar nonprofit entities described in INA 214(g)(5) and (7) — are outside the proposal, as the NPRM and the USCIS cap-season page both state.

A recruiting firm that mixes university clients and commercial clients already has two petition types. This rule would make that split a six-figure difference.

The registration step is still required. USCIS's electronic registration page says each beneficiary needs a registration and the fee on Form G-1055; the G-1055 PDF lists that tool at $215 per beneficiary.

According to USCIS's FY 2026 registration analysis, eligible registrations fell to 343,981, a 26.9% drop from 470,342 in FY 2025. USCIS has already received enough petitions to reach both the 65,000 regular cap and the 20,000 master's cap for fiscal year 2027.

Starting in FY 2027, USCIS weights registrations by OEWS wage level: IV four times, III three, II twice, I once. The $103,265 H-1B Fee would be a second filter after selection. The beneficiary-centric lottery sits in the February 2, 2024 final rule Improving the H-1B Registration Selection Process and Program Integrity (89 FR 7456).

Employers still file a Labor Condition Application through the FLAG system; DOL says LCAs are reviewed within seven working days. OFLC's foreign-labor page holds public LCA files. None of those DOL steps collect the $103,265.

What already sits on a cap-subject I-129

Before anyone adds $103,265, the G-1055 fee schedule already stacks an H-1B paper filing fee of $780 ($730 online; $460 for small employers and nonprofits), an asylum program fee of $600/$0/$300, a $500 fraud fee on many initial or change-of-employer cases, an ACWIA fee of $1,500 or $750, and, for some 50-or-more H-1B-heavy employers, a Public Law 114-113 add-on of $4,000.

The same appendix still lists a $100,000 presidential-proclamation payment to be made on Pay.gov before filing. USCIS filing-fees guidance and the fee calculator are the live tools recruiting coordinators already use to avoid a rejected packet.

Sources: USCIS Form G-1055 PDF, Appendix A; DHS NPRM. Pub. L. 114-113's $4,000 add-on is omitted here because it applies only to 50-or-more, 50-percent H-1B/L-1 employers.

A small employer on the $460 I-129 rate, $300 asylum fee, $500 fraud fee, and $750 ACWIA fee is at $2,010 before the proposed surcharge, or $105,275 after it. USCIS payment rules now reject most paper checks; a six-figure ACH has to clear before the petition is accepted.

The $100,000 proclamation is a different instrument

On September 19, 2025, the President issued the proclamation Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers.

According to that White House proclamation, entry as an H-1B specialty-occupation worker is restricted unless the petition is accompanied by a payment of $100,000, with the restriction set to expire after 12 months unless extended, effective 12:01 a.m. eastern on September 21, 2025.

The White House fact sheet and the September 21, 2025 H-1B FAQ say the $100,000 amount is a one-time fee on new petitions and does not change renewal payments. HR Dive reported the same figure on September 22, 2025.

USCIS later limited who had to pay: petitions filed at or after 12:01 a.m. Eastern on September 21, 2025, for beneficiaries outside the United States without a valid H-1B visa, plus certain consular-notification cases.

On June 8, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated the agency guidance implementing that $100,000 payment in State of California v. Mullin, 1:25-cv-13829, as USCIS still notes on Form I-129. As of June 2026 that vacatur was the live constraint. On July 24, 2026, the First Circuit denied DHS's motion to stay.

The new $103,265 H-1B Fee is a separate 8 CFR Part 106 proposal. Yahoo Finance reported DHS's line that employers already subject to last year's stayed fee would have to pay both where applicable. Keep two columns: "proclamation $100,000 (stayed / on appeal)" and "proposed $103,265 (comment period)." INA inadmissibility rules still govern entry after petition approval.

USTA analysis: stacked cash if both instruments apply

USTA analysis. This is derivation from two sourced figures only.

Input A: $103,265 proposed cap-subject filing fee from the DHS NPRM.

Input B: $100,000 proclamation payment from the September 19, 2025 White House proclamation.

Stacked extra government charges, if a given petition is subject to both: $103,265 + $100,000 = $203,265. That figure is not a DHS total and is not in force.

Relative to the $780 paper I-129 filing fee on G-1055, the proposed $103,265 fee is $103,265 ÷ $780 = 132.4 times that base filing charge.

Relative to DHS's own 5-year average of 96,750 cap-subject receipts in NPRM Table 13, the agency is already assuming volume will fall to 85,000 if the fee is finalized (11,750 fewer petitions, or 12.1 percent: 11,750 ÷ 96,750). NPRM Table 15 counted 28,649 unique cap-subject petitioners in FY 2025 and 14,541 small entities; DHS estimates a significant economic impact on 11,051 of those small entities, or 76 percent (11,051 ÷ 14,541). Those are DHS's numbers. The only original step above is adding $103,265 to $100,000 and dividing $103,265 by $780.

Volume, country mix, and the recruiting desk

Cap-subject volume is already lumpy, as DHS Table 13 in the NPRM shows.

Source: DHS NPRM Table 13.

Registration counts from USCIS show why lottery math and fee math are different problems:

Source: USCIS H-1B Electronic Registration Process.

According to the USCIS FY 2024 Characteristics of H-1B Specialty Occupation Workers report, India-born workers were 71% of FY 2024 H-1B approvals.

That report counts 283,397 India-born beneficiaries (71.0 percent) and 46,680 China-born beneficiaries (11.7 percent) among approved petitions, with a table total of 399,378 beneficiaries in the country-of-birth breakout. Outlook India used the same USCIS FY 2024 dataset to flag concentration risk.

The H-1B Employer Data Hub lets a recruiting firm pull its own clients' petition counts from FY 2009 through FY 2026 quarter 3. USCIS Reports and Studies is the index for the annual H-1B petitions reports.

The Presidential proclamation separately stated that the IT share of the H-1B program grew from 32 percent in FY 2003 to an average of over 65 percent in the last five fiscal years, and that foreign STEM workers in the United States rose from 1.2 million to almost 2.5 million between 2000 and 2019 while overall STEM employment rose 44.5 percent. Those figures are the administration's stated reason for raising price, not the NPRM's cost-recovery formula.

For a staffing agency, the practical read is narrower: candidates already in recruiting automation and a recruiting CRM need a cap-subject flag and a fee-scenario field before anyone sends an offer. Agencies that estimate placements should put $103,265 in the "if finalized" column of every cap-subject bid. Form-to-CRM intake can require "will this role be cap-subject?" Assistant-task automations that chase LCA PDFs should add a fee-proof slot. Mid-size employers described in the small-business automation landscape will not staff a new immigration analyst for one hire.

Recruiting coordinators who already move LCA files and I-129 exhibits through US Tech Automations should treat the proposed fee as a budget gate on that same path, not as a new immigration practice.

What a recruiting team should do during the comment window

Map every open req to cap-subject, cap-exempt, or not-H-1B. Write the $103,265 H-1B Fee into client statements of work as a contingent government charge, payable at I-129 filing if a final rule makes it due. Do not collect it now. File a comment on regulations.gov docket USCIS-2026-0298 if the fee would change small-entity placements.

Keep DOL LCA timing: seven working days after FLAG submission. Keep the USCIS six-month filing window on the cap-season page. Freeze any proclamation-payment SOP behind the June 8, 2026 Massachusetts order, as USCIS currently instructs.

Teams already routing documents through US Tech Automations workflows can add a "cap-subject?" and "proposed $103,265 due if finalized?" pair on the same intake that already holds the LCA and degree packet.

Signal vs Speculation

Demonstrated fact (sourced): As of August 24, 2026, DHS has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to create a $103,265 fee on cap-subject H-1B petitions, including the 20,000 advanced-degree slots, payable at filing, with a 30-day comment period after the August 25, 2026 Federal Register publication, docket USCIS-2026-0298.

Demonstrated fact (sourced): The $100,000 proclamation payment is a separate instrument from September 19, 2025; USCIS reports that a Massachusetts district court vacated the implementing guidance on June 8, 2026, and that the First Circuit denied a stay on July 24, 2026.

Demonstrated fact (sourced): The statutory cap remains 65,000 plus 20,000; FY 2027 cap numbers are already reached; registration and LCA rules are unchanged by this NPRM.

Our read: If the $103,265 H-1B Fee is finalized near the proposed amount, mid-size commercial employers and the recruiting firms that serve them will keep cap-subject H-1B only for roles that can carry a six-figure origination cost. Cap-exempt university and nonprofit-research petitions become relatively more valuable. If the stayed $100,000 proclamation payment returns while the $103,265 fee is also finalized, the stacked $203,265 extra (USTA analysis above) would make most cap-subject placements uneconomic for firms under a few hundred employees.

Our read: The comment file is the near-term lever. After a final rule, the next fight is litigation over whether $103,265 is arbitrary, which Yahoo Finance already quoted counsel flagging. Over 12–36 months, staffing agencies that sell "we handle the visa" will have to productize cap-exempt strategy, wage-level lottery strategy, and a fee-contingency clause.

This block is not a claim the fee is already due.

Glossary

• $103,265 H-1B Fee: DHS's proposed extra filing charge on cap-subject H-1B petitions, including the master's exemption, payable at Form I-129 filing, not yet a final rule.

• Cap-subject petition: An H-1B filing that counts against the annual 65,000 regular cap or the 20,000 U.S. advanced-degree exemption.

• Cap-exempt petition: An H-1B filing that does not count against those numerical limits, including many higher-education and nonprofit-research employers under INA 214(g)(5) and (7).

• Form I-129: The USCIS Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker used to classify an H-1B worker.

• Labor Condition Application (LCA): The DOL Form ETA-9035/9035E filed in FLAG before the H-1B petition.

• IEFA: The Immigration Examinations Fee Account described in 8 U.S.C. 1356(m).

• ACWIA fee: The American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act training-fee add-on of $1,500 or $750 on many H-1B filings.

• Weighted selection: USCIS's FY 2027 lottery method that enters higher OEWS wage levels into the pool more times.

FAQs

Is the $103,265 H-1B Fee in force today?

No. As of August 24, 2026 it is a proposed rule, and Outlook India and the DHS NPRM both state that employers are not currently required to pay $103,265.

Does the fee apply to university and nonprofit hires?

No. The proposal is limited to cap-subject petitions, including the 20,000 advanced-degree exemption, and the NPRM says it would not apply to cap-exempt filings such as those covered by INA 214(g)(5) and (7).

Would employers pay both $103,265 and $100,000?

Only if a specific petition is subject to both instruments at the same time. The $100,000 amount is the September 2025 proclamation, whose implementing guidance was vacated in June 2026; the $103,265 amount is this NPRM.

How was $103,265 calculated?

DHS divided $8,777,488,035 of interagency costs by a projected 85,000 fee-paying cap-subject petitions, getting $103,264.57, then rounded to the nearest $5, as stated in the NPRM.

How long can the public comment, and where?

Comments are due 30 days after the August 25, 2026 Federal Register publication, through regulations.gov docket USCIS-2026-0298, in English, as the NPRM instructs.

What should a recruiting team change in the offer model this week?

Add a contingent line for $103,265 on every cap-subject req, keep cap-exempt reqs on the current G-1055 stack, and do not collect the new amount until a final rule says it is due.

The $103,265 H-1B Fee is a proposed filing surcharge on cap-subject H-1B petitions. It is large, it is not yet in force, and as of August 24, 2026 recruiting operations should put it in the workbook and in the comment file.

If your team already runs hiring packets on US Tech Automations, add a cap-subject fee gate on that same workflow, then use the agentic workflow builder to wire the I-129 checklist, the LCA wait, and the contingent $103,265 line.