Homeland Security Will Charge Visa-Dependent Employers $4,000 at Every H-1B Renewal

The US Department of Homeland Security published a final rule on August 10, 2026 requiring covered employers to pay the 9-11 Response and Biometric Entry-Exit Fee on every extension of status petition, including an extension the same employer files for the same worker in the same job. The rule sits at 91 FR 51360 and takes effect on September 9, 2026. The fee is $4,000 on an H-1B petition and $4,500 on an L-1 petition, and the statute puts it on the employer. DHS rejected comments asking that workers be allowed to pay it, writing that "the statutes and existing regulations specify that the fee is required to be paid by the employer."

Which employers are covered is set by a ratio rather than a size. Under section 402 of Public Law 114-113, a covered employer is one with 50 or more employees in the United States where more than half of those US employees hold H-1B, L-1A or L-1B status. A 60-person engineering office staffed largely on transfers is covered. A 30,000-person manufacturer sponsoring 200 specialists is not. Agencies that segment investor portfolios by headcount or by capital expenditure will not find this population in their own files without recutting the list.

The change is in the frequency, not the price. Under the interpretation DHS adopted in the 2016 Fee Rule at 81 FR 73292, the charge attached when a worker first entered the classification or moved to a new employer, and an extension filed by the same employer for the same person was exempt. From September 9 it attaches at each extension, which turns a one-time cost of entry into a recurring cost of holding a role on US soil across a worker's stay. DHS put the share of covered employers' H-1B petitions that carried the fee between fiscal year 2018 and fiscal year 2025 at 27%, and said that under the new reading the share would have been 75%.

The reason for the rulemaking is a collections line. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in December 2015 that the fee would raise about $420 million a year. DHS records actual receipts of $158 million in fiscal 2016, falling to $25.6 million in fiscal 2025. Half of what is collected, up to $1 billion, goes to the 9-11 Response and Biometric Exit Account, which funds the Traveler Verification Service that Customs and Border Protection uses for facial comparison at air, land and sea ports. The fee itself is currently set to expire on September 30, 2027, so the recurring charge has a statutory end date roughly 13 months after it starts.

The strongest objection is the one DHS made itself, and it is not weak. Responding to commenters who said the rule would push skilled work out of the country, the department wrote that H-1B demand has exceeded the statutory cap for more than a decade and that for L-1, which has no cap, the fee "is minimal compared to other costs associated with the hiring of an L-1 employee (relocation, wages, other existing fees)." For one hire that is right. For a firm renewing several hundred transfers on a three-year cycle it is a line item that did not exist in the last budget, and the firms it lands on are by definition the ones with the least ability to substitute domestic staff. The uncapped L-1 category is the clean test, because it carries no lottery to muddy the signal: if covered employers' L-1 extension filings hold flat through fiscal 2027, DHS is right and this reading is wrong.

There is a second reason to hold the calendar loosely. DHS adopted the identical interpretation in the 2020 Fee Rule at 85 FR 46788, and that rule was enjoined in its entirety during litigation unrelated to this fee, before it could take effect. Petitions filed on or after September 9 carry the charge, and DHS said it will not apply to petitions already pending on that date.