A federal judge on Monday struck down President Trump’s $100,000 fee for H1-B visas to bring highly skilled foreign workers to the U.S.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Massachusetts concluded that the fee was an unlawful tax that Congress did not authorize.
“Here, the substance and application of the $100,000 payment reveal that it is a tax, regardless of what the payment is called,” Judge Sorokin, an Obama appointee, wrote, adding that Congress had not delegated its tax powers to the Executive Branch.
The judge cited the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision upholding Mr. Obama’s mandate for individuals to buy health insurance, in which the high court concluded that it was a lawful exercise of Congress’s authority to tax.
“The payment is not a penalty,” Judge Sorokin wrote of Mr. Trump’s visa fee.
Attorneys for the Trump administration argued that the judge had no authority to decide the visa fee dispute. They argued that the action was not reviewable because the president has unchecked authority to limit immigration.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit was filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general after Mr. Trump announced in September a dramatic increase in the cost of obtaining H-1B visas.
New York Attorney General Rob Bonta and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell led the lawsuit on behalf of the states.
H-1B visas were developed in 1990 and used largely by U.S. tech companies to bring highly-skilled workers from foreign countries. It allows U.S. employers to seek government approval to bring non-immigrant workers to work specialty jobs that require certain expertise or there is a shortage of American workers. The workers can hold that occupation for six years.
Traditionally, H-1B visa fees had ranged from $2,000 to $5,000 per application.
However, Mr. Trump ramped that up to $100,000 in September in order to restrict the number of people in the program. The president argued that the program had undermined American workers, threatened national security and amounted to a “large-scale replacement of American workers.”
The fee increase dramatically reduced the number of H-1B visa requests, according to court filings in the case. As of Feb. 15, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had received 85 payments of the $100,000 fee. That’s down from hundreds of requests it usually receives.
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