WA sues Trump admin over $100K H-1B visa fee, says it violates U.S. Constitution
Washington Attorney General Nick Brown announced Monday that the state joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s “unlawful” $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa petitions.
A coalition of 20 states teamed up to file the lawsuit Dec. 12 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Leading the suit: Attorneys General Andrea Campbell of Massachusetts and Rob Bonta of California.
Employers can seek out highly qualified foreign professionals via the H-1B visa program, allowing such workers to temporarily fill jobs requiring at least a bachelor’s degree when not enough U.S.-based employees are available for those roles.
The plaintiffs argue that President Donald Trump’s September proclamation requiring $100,000 for new petitions makes it more challenging to fill worker shortages in areas like health care and education.
Brown said in a Dec. 15 news release that the visa program attracts skilled professionals to the state, helping to keep it on the “cutting edge in highly specialized areas of education and research.”
“The federal government can’t arbitrarily turn these visas into an extortion racket to punish employers and institutions the President does not like,” he continued in the release.
The defendants are the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem; the U.S. Department of State and Secretary of State Marco Rubio; the U.S. Department of Labor and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer; the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi; and the United States of America.
McClatchy has contacted the above departments seeking comment and received responses from DHS and the DOJ.
“This lawsuit is an embarrassingly obvious attempt by a bunch of Democrat attorneys general to kneecap President Trump’s agenda and undermine his clear authorities under the US Constitution and federal immigration law — all while boosting their own political profiles,” DHS said in an emailed statement. “Pretending it’s anything else is naïve at best.”
The Department of Labor referred McClatchy to the Justice Department.
A DOJ statement said that the department fully backs Trump’s America First agenda and is dedicated to safeguarding American workers. The DOJ will “continue to hold companies accountable when they unlawfully exploit American workers, and defend President Trump’s efforts to provide certainty to those employers using the H-1B program as intended,” the emailed statement continued.
Plaintiffs argue that DHS gave Noem wide discretion in deciding which petitions could qualify for an exemption and which others must pay the fee. They contend that this could potentially lead to selective enforcement against employers that have fallen out of favor with the Trump administration.
They further allege that the fee was set arbitrarily and that it violates the U.S. Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act.
Close to 500 H-1B visa holders in Washington work across more than 30 of the state’s agencies and public colleges and universities, per Brown’s office. Employers previously had to cover between $960 and $7,595 in statutory and regulatory fees for such visas.
Multiple Washington cities — including Seattle, Redmond and Bellevue — are among the top cities with the most Labor Condition Applications submitted for the H-1B visa, according to myvisajobs.com. That’s perhaps no surprise given that Seattle-area tech employers like Amazon, Meta and Microsoft are among the leading H-1B employers, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data.
Brown’s office says that the new, substantially higher fee would “have a major impact in Washington, particularly in higher education.” That could lead to universities and colleges not being able to meet certain requirements and shelving planned courses, and the state might lose out on opportunities to be the home of future scientific breakthroughs, according to the news release.
The state AG’s office further argues that that’s particularly concerning as Washington’s higher-ed institutions look to retain a leg up in areas like the medical and artificial intelligence fields.
“These costs would be particularly difficult to absorb now, as Washington faces a budget shortfall,” Brown’s news release says.
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