The U.S. parallel: a $100,000 H-1B fee
American employers have already lived through a version of this experiment. In September 2025, President Trump signed Presidential Proclamation 10973, “Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers,” which imposed a $100,000 supplemental fee on new H-1B visa petitions. Before the proclamation, employers typically paid between $2,000 and $5,000 per petition, according to the American Immigration Council.
The fee had an immediate chilling effect. Court filings in the subsequent legal challenge showed that as of February 15, 2026, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had received just 85 payments since the policy took effect, a fraction of typical H-1B filing volumes. Technology companies, healthcare systems, and universities scrambled to understand the scope of the rule and whether it applied to existing workers seeking extensions. It did not, the administration later clarified, but the initial uncertainty was itself disruptive.
On June 8, 2026, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin blocked the fee, ruling that it functioned as a revenue-raising tax rather than a regulatory fee and therefore required congressional approval the administration did not have. Twenty Democratic state attorneys general had brought the lawsuit, arguing the surcharge damaged hiring in healthcare, education, and technology. HRD America covered the ruling and its immediate implications for employers in detail.
What this means for workforce planning
For senior HR leaders, the practical lesson from the H-1B fee episode is not simply that the policy was struck down. It is that the policy, even while it lasted, forced a structural rethink of how companies approach international talent.
Immigration is no longer a compliance function that sits with legal teams alone. As Safeguard Global noted in its 2026 H-1B employer impact analysis, the fee prompted employers to model scenarios they had not previously considered: whether roles justified a six-figure hiring premium, whether domestic pipelines such as recent graduates on Optional Practical Training could substitute, and whether it made more financial sense to hire internationally but outside the U.S. and skip the visa petition process entirely.