A federal judge appointed by former President Barack Obama has struck down President Donald Trump’s one-time $100,000 fee for importing foreign H-1B visa workers to take American white-collar jobs.
On Monday, Judge Leo Sorokin of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated the Trump administration’s plans to impose a $100,000 fee on foreign H-1B hires, arguing that doing so is essentially a tax that Congress did not authorize.
“… the Court finds that the Policy imposes a tax on H-1B petitions without the requisite delegation by Congress,” Sorokin wrote:
Accordingly, the Court VACATES the Policy materials implementing the Proclamation’s $100,000 payment requirement. In addition to vacatur, Plaintiffs seek a “judicial declaration that the Policy is unlawful in violation of the APA and the Constitution.” Defendants’ only objection to this requested relief is that “declaratory judgment alone would not redress Plaintiffs’ alleged injuries because . . . that judgment would not affect the Proclamation nor would it enjoin any future action.” But this concern is not applicable here, where the Court has also ordered vacatur of the challenged agency action. Therefore, the Court issues declaratory judgment. [Emphasis added]
The H-1B visa program allows American companies to import hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, primarily from India, to take white-collar American jobs every year. Research has repeatedly found that the program is often used as a huge labor savings scheme for Fortune 500 corporations.
For years Breitbart News has chronicled the abuses against white-collar American professionals as a result of the H-1B visa program. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News.
There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment.
Last year, Trump announced the $100,000 fee, which quickly prompted lawsuits from corporate special interests, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The fee is meant to cut down on corporations using the H-1B visa to import cheaper foreign workers, though executives and visa workers have said the fee included several loopholes they hoped to exploit.
The case is California v. Mullin, No. 1:25-cv-13829 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected].
Read the full article here