The United States is planning to impose new fees targeting H-1B and F-1 Optional Practical Training (OPT) programs.
In a proposed regulation released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the H-1B visa fee could be increased to $103,265, according to a Federal Register posting on Monday.
Last year, the fee was imposed but has since been blocked by the courts. If the proposed regulation is passed, it could raise the cost of working in the US for foreign nationals, students transitioning from universities to workplaces, and employers sponsoring H-1B workers, according to an immigration services firm.
A note by the immigration services firm read, “A proposed OPT fee rule was sent to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on August 20 and is now under review. A proposed rule to impose a fee on certain H-1B petitions was received by OMB and cleared review on the same day, August 19.”
It further noted that DHS might settle on a modest $100 fee for OPT applications, while the H-1B fee proposal appears tangled up with the ongoing court battle over the administration’s earlier, blocked attempt at a petition fee.
And if this regulation does go through, it won’t stop at fees. It would also scrap the 60-day grace period certain workers and their dependents currently get when the job tied to their immigration status suddenly ends.
Why This Hits Indians Hardest
For India, this is nowhere close to being a distant policy footnote. With roughly 5.2 million Indians currently living and working in the US, per the latest census figures, this proposal lands squarely on one of the country’s biggest overseas professional communities. Indians alone make up close to 71 per cent of all H-1B visas issued.
The OPT route matters just as much, if not more. It’s the main bridge most Indian students use to go from graduating at an American university to actually working in the country — which means a steep new fee here wouldn’t just be an inconvenience, it would knock that bridge out from under thousands of graduates who depend on it every single year.
Major US employers with a heavy reliance on Indian talent are expected to feel the pinch too, with companies including Amazon, TCS, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Google among those likely to be affected.
This isn’t the first such jolt in the past year either. In September 2025, Trump signed a proclamation imposing an annual fee of $100,000 on H-1B visa applications — a move that prompted the Indian Embassy in Washington to release an emergency assistance helpline for Indian nationals. That fee was later struck down by a federal court, but this new round of proposals suggests the administration is looking for another route to achieve a similar cost hike, one that could hold up better in court this time.
For Indian techies already working in the US on these visas, and for the students hoping to follow the same path, the message from Washington seems consistent even as the legal mechanism keeps changing: working and staying on in America is set to get considerably more expensive.