Medical Groups Cheer Court Decision to Halt $100K H-1B Visa Fee

Medical groups are hailing a federal judge’s decision to strike down the Trump administration’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee, which would have limited the country’s healthcare workforce.

“At a time when communities across the country face physician shortages and growing barriers to care, we should be removing obstacles — not creating new ones — to attract talented physicians and other highly skilled professionals,” AMA President Bobby Mukkamala, MD, said in a statement. “International medical graduates play a vital role in caring for patients, particularly in underserved and rural areas.”

Jan Carney, MD, MPH, president of the American College of Physicians, said in a statement that the fee “has been very difficult for employers of noncitizen medical residents and other international medical graduates to meet,” noting that these healthcare professionals make up 25% of the U.S. physician workforce.

“Immigration policies and fees that do not consider the significant need in the U.S. for these physicians have the potential to dramatically harm access to care for patients,” Carney said in the statement. “Ensuring a stable physician workforce and protecting access to essential healthcare requires immigration policies that recognize the benefits that noncitizen physicians and medical trainees provide to the health of the American public.”

“Our country needs qualified H-1B professionals for our citizens to have access to healthcare services and national health security, and they are particularly critical in rural and medically underserved communities,” American Association of Medical Colleges president and CEO David Skorton, MD, and chief public policy officer Danielle Turnipseed, JD, MHSA, MPP, said in a joint statement.

They cautioned that if the H-1B visa fee ultimately is allowed to stand, issues affecting the medical workforce and healthcare infrastructure in the U.S. will be worsened.

A White House spokesperson said the administration “is confident this order will be reversed on appeal.”

H-1B visas allow employers in the U.S. to hire skilled workers from outside the country for positions difficult to find American workers to fill. President Trump issued an executive order last September that all new H-1B visa applicants would be charged a $100,000 fee, which the administration claimed was a way of preventing foreigners from taking jobs from Americans. Before that, most H-1B visa applications already cost thousands of dollars.

Since the order was issued, medical and nursing organizations have been calling for a physician and healthcare worker exemption from this fee. And in March, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation that would exempt doctors and other healthcare workers from the fee and protect them from future H-1B fees.

This week, U.S. District Court Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston sided with 20 states and struck down the visa policy, concluding that the executive branch exceeded its authority and violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies develop and issue regulations. States argued that the policy will negatively impact their ability to hire for key roles, including medical workers.

“The Court finds that the Policy imposes a tax on H-1B petitions without the requisite delegation by Congress,” Sorokin wrote.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also sued, in federal court in Washington, D.C., and has appealed a denial of a summary judgment against the fee hike. That left the higher fee in effect, at least until September 2026, when it is scheduled to expire. Monday’s ruling is also a summary judgment, to the opposite effect. Still another lawsuit was filed in federal court in San Francisco, by religious groups and labor organizations, setting up the possibility of divided rulings in three appellate court circuits.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.