This site explained Proclamation 10973 in October 2025, when it was three weeks old and two lawsuits had just been filed. The short version: a $100,000 payment attached to new H-1B petitions for workers outside the United States, effective September 21, 2025, with exemptions for changes of status and extensions inside the country and a rarely granted national interest exception.
The long version has now run through the courts, and the payment is, for the moment, dead.
The path
The decisive case turned out to be neither of the two filed in October. State of California v. Mullin, brought by a coalition of states in the District of Massachusetts, produced a ruling on June 8, 2026 vacating the agency guidance that implemented the payment. The court's reasoning followed the line the Chamber of Commerce had drawn in its own suit: the INA sets the terms of the H-1B program and ties fees to the cost of processing, and a proclamation under the entry-suspension power cannot rewrite them.
DHS asked the First Circuit for a stay pending appeal, and the district court's order was administratively paused while that motion was considered. On July 24, 2026 the First Circuit denied the stay. The vacatur took effect.
DHS's statement was precise. It disagrees with the ruling, will comply with it while it considers next steps, and, if the order is later lifted, still plans to collect the payment. The Chamber's separate case in the District of Columbia is on appeal.
What that means today
The $100,000 payment does not currently apply to any petition. Employers filing for workers abroad owe the ordinary fees and nothing more. Payments already made through Pay.gov are a question for counsel; the government has not announced refunds, and the possibility that the vacatur is reversed on appeal is the reason it has not.
Everything the proclamation never touched remains untouched. Visas issued before September 21, 2025 were never affected. Renewals were never subject to the payment. Current H-1B holders were always free to travel. The disruption fell entirely on new hiring from abroad, and that disruption has now paused.
What DHS plans next
The department has said publicly that it intends to pursue the same objective through rulemaking, which is the route the courts have signaled would survive: a fee adopted under the statutory fee-setting authority, through notice and comment, rather than a payment imposed by proclamation. A proposed rule is expected, and its arithmetic will not be gentler. If and when it appears, it will carry a comment period and, unlike the proclamation, an effective date that cannot precede its publication.
Employers who planned their fiscal 2027 cap filings around the payment, or around its absence, should plan around neither. The registration period opens in March; a rule proposed in late summer could be final by then or could not.
What to do
- Petitions filed now owe nothing beyond the standard fees. File normally.
- Keep records of any payment made under the proclamation, including the Pay.gov receipt and the petition it accompanied. If the vacatur holds, the question of refunds will be litigated, and receipts are the claim.
- Watch the Federal Register. A proposed rule will be published there first, with a comment deadline. Employers, universities and trade associations who want to be heard will have thirty to sixty days to say so.
- Cap-exempt employers, universities and nonprofit research organizations, should note that the proclamation's exceptions were discretionary and the coming rule's may be categorical. That is a distinction worth commenting on.
The proclamation asked whether the President could reprice a visa category by decree. Two courts have said no, at least by this instrument. The agency's answer is to reach for a different instrument. The price, one suspects, will be familiar.