Trump extends the $100,000 H-1B entry payment through 21 September 2027

President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on 18 September extending for 12 months the $100,000 payment that certain employers must attach to H-1B petitions for workers who are still outside the United States. The new clock runs until 12:00 a.m. Eastern on 21 September 2027. Limited exceptions remain for people, firms or industries judged to be in the national interest.

The original 2025 proclamation took effect on 21 September 2025. The White House said on Friday that the $100,000 sum has been paid on more than 700 petitions since then. The administration argues that the H-1B programme, built to bring in temporary specialty-occupation labour, has been used to replace rather than supplement American workers. The proclamation cites sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the same entry-control clauses used for earlier travel restrictions.

The court problem

A federal judge in Massachusetts struck down the government's implementing guidance in June. The administration has appealed. Friday's extension therefore keeps a policy in force while the legal basis for how it is applied remains in play. Employers who already paid the $100,000 have a receipt. Employers who refused, or who routed talent through other visas, have a pending question about whether the next year's rule will survive the First Circuit.

The Department of Homeland Security added a second track last month. It began work on a separate proposal that would put a fee of about $103,000 on all H-1B petitions subject to the annual cap. That rule would reach a wider set of filings than the entry proclamation, which is aimed at workers who are still abroad. Students already in the United States and people seeking renewals have generally sat outside the $100,000 gate. A cap-wide fee would not give them the same shelter.

Who feels it first

Indian information-technology firms and their US clients are the obvious balance-sheet targets. The H-1B cap is already a rationing system. Adding a six-figure cheque in front of a new arrival changes the arithmetic for any project that was priced on a junior engineer's loaded cost. Some employers will pay and treat the sum as a tariff on talent. Some will keep work offshore. Some will wait for the Massachusetts appeal.

The White House presents the 700 paid petitions as evidence that the rule filters for higher-value roles. Seven hundred is a small number against the tens of thousands of H-1B approvals issued in a normal year. That gap is the point. The proclamation is designed to shrink the inbound flow, not to raise revenue. The DHS fee proposal, if it is finalised, would go further by putting a price on the cap itself.

For applicants the practical advice is unchanged and newly urgent. If the worker is already in the United States, the $100,000 entry payment is not the immediate obstacle. If the worker is abroad and the petition is not wrapped in a national-interest exception, the employer has to decide whether to write the cheque, wait on the courts, or change the staffing plan. That decision now has another year on the calendar, unless a judge takes the year away.