Fresh US court filings published on 28 February show that only 70 employers have so far paid the controversial US $100,000 supplemental fee—imposed in late 2025—for each new H-1B petition exceeding a firm’s 50-employee, 50 % non-immigrant threshold. The data confirm what Indian IT services firms feared: many mid-sized US consultancies are postponing or cancelling sponsorship, shrinking the universe of available client-side positions for Indian nationals. Immigration attorneys say the fee, championed by the Trump administration to ‘protect American workers’, effectively adds 30–35 % to total first-year cost of onboarding an H-1B professional. Indian talent is collateral damage. Job-board Dice reports a 12 % drop in new H-1B-tagged postings since January. Some employers are shifting roles to near-shore hubs like Toronto and Guadalajara or asking Indian consultants to work remotely from Bengaluru under contractual arrangements—raising permanent-establishment tax questions for Indian boards. Policy outlook: Business associations are lobbying Congress to sunset the surcharge in next year’s budget. Until then, Indian staffing firms must diversify destination markets and up-skill talent for Canada’s Global Talent Stream and the UK’s Scale-up visa as hedge strategies. Mobility managers should audit current H-1B pipelines for cost exposure, re-price client contracts that assume the old fee structure, and brief assignees on longer adjudication times as fee invoices add another administrative layer.
Source: The Times of India
