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Public story · 2026-08-26 · high
DHS's own economic analysis says the fee would burden 76% of small businesses that sponsor H-1B workers.
Why now: The 30-day comment window opened August 24, just as the temporary fee it replaces is set to expire in September.
DHS published a rule August 24 proposing a permanent $103,265 fee on H-1B petitions, per CNN's report on the Federal Register filing. DHS's own economic analysis concedes the fee would burden 76% of small businesses that sponsor H-1B workers.
The rule would replace a temporary proclamation that expires in September. It also follows a federal judge voiding DHS's earlier attempt to set the fee at $100,000.
A 30-day public comment period is open now, before DHS can finalize the number. Agencies don't usually hand critics a figure that stark in their own paperwork, and DHS did. The window is where affected employers can formally object before the fee becomes permanent.
A flat fee doesn't scale with company size. $103,265 per hire is a rounding error for a company with a frontier AI lab's budget. For a startup running on a seed round, the same number can decide whether a position gets filled at all.
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