Companies Stare Down $100,000 Fee With New H-1B Visa Rules

The Trump administration’s overhaul of the US visa system for highly skilled immigrants is about to get its first major test.

The annual lottery for H-1Bs, the most popular visa for white-collar professionals looking to build a career in the US, gets underway with new rules this month. For the first time, successful sponsors for immigrants arriving from another country will need to pay a $100,000 fee. And the system will now favor more experienced and higher paid workers, rules likely to disadvantage IT consulting firms that won an outsize share of the visas in recent years.