President dramatically raised cost of visa for highly skilled workers in executive order last year
A US judge has invalidated Donald Trump’s $100,000 annual fee on H-1B visa applications, ruling it an unlawful tax that violated federal administrative law and the constitution.
US district judge Leo Sorokin in Boston issued the 42-page ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenging a fee Trump announced in September that dramatically raised the cost of obtaining H-1B visas… The ruling vacated the sweeping fee, which was a 20-to-50 fold increase on existing rates, and the Trump administration is widely expected to appeal.
In his ruling, Sorokin’s found that the fee amounted to a tax, rather than a regulatory restriction. Since the constitution gives Congress, not the president, the exclusive power to levy taxes, Trump lacked the authority to impose it.
There already was a fee for the visa, increasing it doesn’t make it a tax. This isn’t a Trump breaking the rules thing, it’s a court and politicians ruling for corporations over people thing.
It’s a fee explicitly set in law by Congress. The president does not have the authority to change that.