Virginia AG Joins Blue-State Coalition Fighting Trump’s $103,000 H-1B Charge

Virginia Attorney General Candidate Jay Jones speaks during a campaign rally in Fairfax City. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones joined 21 other Democratic attorneys general in a letter demanding that Citizenship and Immigration Services drop a proposed $103,265 charge on H-1B petitions filed by employers who are not cap-exempt.

California AG Rob Bonta and Massachusetts AG Andrea Joy Campbell co-led the filing.

AGs from Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin also signed on to the letter.

This is not the $100,000 entry payment President Trump first imposed by proclamation in 2025. That order restricted H-1B workers coming from abroad unless the petition came with $100,000, with narrow national-interest exceptions.

U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston vacated it in June after 20 states sued, calling the charge a tax Congress never authorized. The First Circuit refused to revive it while the appeal proceeds.

Trump signed a new proclamation last week extending the same $100,000 restriction through September 21, 2027.

The proclamation says the H-1B program “has been exploited to replace, not supplement, American workers with lower-paid labor.”

DHS has also published a separate proposed rule that would lock in $103,265 through notice-and-comment rulemaking for non-cap-exempt employers, with only a 30-day comment window. That rule is what Jones, and the rest of the liberal coalition, are attacking now.

Jones said in a press release that H-1B holders “are our teachers, doctors, nurses, caretakers, and more. They are our neighbors and friends and family. They have filled out every form and met every government demand to come here and be part of the American Dream.”

“Donald Trump is trying to close the door by pushing the boundaries of executive power, indifferent to the burden this proposed rule will put on Virginians. Here in Virginia, we fight for our communities, and my office will use every legal tool to make sure this proposal doesn’t go any further.”

The letter argues USCIS lacks authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act, that the charge is a tax only Congress can levy, that the agency skipped a real look at the hit on states and cheaper options, and that 30 days is too short to comment.

Bonta said the administration is “once again overstepping its legal authority and imposing unjustified burdens.”

Hospitals, school districts, and tech firms that use the visa to fill jobs are the employers the AGs say cannot eat a six-figure surcharge per worker.

Conservatives have argued the H-1B system has become a pipeline for cheaper foreign labor, rather than a way to bring in skilled specialty workers.

The post Virginia AG Joins Blue-State Coalition Fighting Trump’s $103,000 H-1B Charge appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.