Trump Renews the $100,000 H-1B Fee Through September 2027 and Signs a New Executive Order Targeting Employer Layoffs

On September 18, 2026 — one day before Proclamation 10973 was due to expire on its own 12-month clock — President Trump signed a new proclamation extending the $100,000 H-1B entry fee for another year, through September 21, 2027. He paired it with a separate executive order, "Enhancing Program Integrity and Interagency Coordination in the Administration of the H-1B Nonimmigrant Visa Program," which directs USCIS, the Department of Labor, and the State Department to factor an employer's recent and planned layoffs into H-1B adjudications. Both actions arrive while the underlying $100,000 fee remains under a live federal-court vacatur, which is what makes reading the two carefully worth doing.

What we know from the White House

• Signed: September 18, 2026
• Document 1: Presidential proclamation extending the $100,000 H-1B entry-fee requirement first imposed by Proclamation 10973 (September 19, 2025)
• New effective window: 12:01 a.m. Eastern time, September 21, 2026 through September 21, 2027, unless extended again or ended sooner
• Document 2: Executive order, "Enhancing Program Integrity and Interagency Coordination in the Administration of the H-1B Nonimmigrant Visa Program"
• Agencies directed: Departments of State, Labor, and Homeland Security, in consultation with the Departments of Commerce and Education and the Small Business Administration
• Source: White House fact sheet and presidential-actions pages (whitehouse.gov), published September 18-19, 2026

What the renewed proclamation does

The renewal keeps the mechanics of the original Proclamation 10973 intact: new H-1B petitions for beneficiaries outside the United States must still be accompanied by a $100,000 payment as a condition of eligibility, subject to the same narrow national-interest exception process DHS has run since 2025 (requests submitted to DHS in advance of filing, and described by the administration as "extraordinarily rare" grants). What changes is the calendar — instead of lapsing at the end of its first 12-month term, the fee requirement now runs through September 21, 2027. The administration's stated justification leans on a single statistic: it says H-1B registrations by large IT outsourcing firms have fallen 92% since the fee took effect in 2025, which it is citing as evidence the policy is working as intended.

What the new executive order adds

The companion executive order is a distinct document from the fee proclamation, and it reaches further than money. It directs the Secretaries of State, Labor, and Homeland Security to consider whether a sponsoring employer has conducted, or plans to conduct, layoffs of similarly situated U.S. workers when adjudicating H-1B petitions, H-1B visa applications, admissions, and the underlying Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) those petitions rely on. To support that review, the order directs those agencies to coordinate with the Departments of Commerce and Education and the Small Business Administration for wage, industry, and employment-specialization data. It also gives the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division 30 days to begin reviewing data from previously submitted LCAs to determine whether enforcement action against specific sponsoring employers is warranted. The order's stated rationale cites tech-sector employers collectively seeking H-1B visas for hundreds of thousands of workers while laying off between 800,000 and 1.3 million U.S. employees from 2022 through 2026.

The part that makes this more complicated than a simple renewal

The $100,000 fee is not currently enforceable — and this new proclamation does not change that on its own. As we covered when the fee's status first flipped (see our earlier article), Judge Leo Sorokin of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated the policy implementing the original fee on June 8, 2026, holding that the administration lacked constitutional and statutory authority to impose what the court treated as a tax. The First Circuit declined to stay that ruling on July 24, 2026, so the vacatur has remained in force since. Extending the proclamation's calendar does not undo a judicial vacatur of the policy that implements it — the government's appeal of the June 2026 ruling was still pending before the First Circuit as of this writing, and parallel challenges remain active in other circuits. In practice, that means the fee has a live legal basis to run through September 2027, but whether it is actually being collected still turns on how that litigation resolves, not on the new proclamation alone.

How this fits with the separate $103,265 fee proposal

This is not the same action as the $103,265 fee DHS proposed through formal notice-and-comment rulemaking on August 25, 2026 (see our earlier article), which remains a proposed rule with its comment period open. That rulemaking is a DHS attempt to reach a similar outcome through a different, more litigation-resistant legal vehicle — ordinary rulemaking rather than a presidential proclamation invoking entry-restriction authority. The two now exist side by side: a renewed but judicially vacated proclamation fee, and a separate proposed regulatory fee that has not been finalized. Employers should not assume either is currently being collected without checking the latest posture of both tracks.

What this means if you are an H-1B petitioner, employer, or OPT/STEM OPT worker planning ahead

• Do not budget for the $100,000 fee on a petition filed today based on the proclamation renewal alone — the fee remains under a standing court vacatur, and the practical "is it being collected right now" answer depends on the appeal, not the proclamation's new expiration date.
• If your employer has had recent layoffs, or is planning any, factor the new executive order into your risk assessment for pending or upcoming H-1B petitions, LCAs, and visa applications — adjudicators are now directed to weigh that history, independent of the fee question.
• Track both fee tracks separately: the renewed $100,000 proclamation fee (litigation-dependent) and the proposed $103,265 rulemaking fee (comment period open, not yet final) are not the same policy and could each move independently.
• OPT and STEM OPT holders weighing the timing of an eventual H-1B petition should treat this as confirmation that the fee fight is not over, not as a signal that a specific dollar amount will definitely apply by the time they file.

Bottom line

On September 18, 2026, the administration extended the $100,000 H-1B fee's authorization through September 21, 2027 and layered on a new executive order requiring agencies to weigh sponsor layoffs in H-1B adjudications. Neither document resolves the litigation that has kept the fee itself unenforceable since June 2026 — that fight continues in the First Circuit and elsewhere. What is confirmed is that the administration intends to keep pursuing this fee for at least another year, through whichever legal vehicle survives court review, and that H-1B sponsors with recent layoffs now face a new, explicit axis of scrutiny that has nothing to do with the fee at all. We will update this article as the appeal and the new executive order's 30-day Wage and Hour Division review play out.