$100K H-1B Entry Fee Did Not Reduce H-1B Visas

There have been a lot of confusing reports over H-1B numbers in the wake of the annual visa lottery. I have seen claims that “H-1B approvals are up.” Let me try to sort out what has happened and I am going to do this qualitatively because no official number have been released. 

The Trump administration imposed a $100,000 entry fee for holders of new H-1B visas, but this fee only applies when the alien beneficiary is not already in the U.S. In 2024, 54 percent of H-1B beneficiaries were already in the U.S. on some other status. 

The fee created a huge disincentive to hire potential H-1B workers from outside the United States. It appears that under a hundred $100,000 fees were paid.

The demand for cheap foreign labor under H-1B greatly exceeds the 85,000 quotas. In FY 2026 there were 343,981 entries in the lottery. 

Assuming 54 percent of the potential beneficiaries were already in the U.S., that means over 180,000 of the workers were already in the U.S. Even without playing games with the H-1B process, like moving people into the U.S. temporarily on some other visa, there are more than twice as many aliens entering the lottery who are exempt from the $100,000 fee (i.e., already in the U.S.) as there are visa slots.

The qualitative result this year was that there was a huge drop in the number of entries in the lottery as employers shunned the $100,000 fee. Due to the reduced number of entries, the chance of winning the lottery increased – producing claims that approvals are up.

There will be 85,000 quota visas this year, as there were last year and the year before. The $100,000 fee had no effect on that number. The Trump administration did not hand out or approve more visas. The odds of winning the lottery simply improved this year; the approval rate is up, not the number of approvals.

The only question is how the $100,000 fee will affect visas not subject to the quota that go to universities or government research. In FY 2024, that was 56,000 visas. That will not be known until the end of the fiscal year.