Immigration experts said a new federal policy requiring employers to pay $100,000 for each new H-1B visa could make it nearly impossible for universities to hire international faculty and researchers without shouldering significant costs.
The executive order, which President Donald Trump announced Sept. 19, targets “certain nonimmigrant workers” entering the country on H-1B visas, the temporary work visa for foreign professionals, which universities use to hire foreign-born professors, lecturers and researchers for up to six years. The experts said the $100,000 fee, which only affects new H-1B applications, could strain GW’s budget and risk discouraging highly skilled scholars from choosing to work in the United States.
The International Services Office said it will evaluate the full implications of this proclamation and encouraged the GW community to reach out to the office in a Sept. 21 update to community members. A University spokesperson declined to comment on whether GW will continue to sponsor H-1B visas and if the University has been in contact with the Trump administration about the changes.
GW sponsored 147 new H-1B visa petitions between fiscal years 2020 and 2025, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data. The fee could require GW to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year if the University maintains the same level of H-1B visas. It previously cost employers between $2,000 and $5,000 per new petition.
Universities are exempt from the government’s yearly 85,000 cap on new H-1B visa approvals. As of June 30, U.S. colleges employ more than 16,700 workers on H-1B visas — about 5 percent of the total of H-1B visas granted during fiscal year 2025, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Chad Sparber, an economics professor at Colgate University who has published research about H-1B visas and productivity and this year penned an op-ed on the H-1B visa, said the new $100,000 fee is effectively designed to dismantle the program, making it financially impossible for most universities to hire international scholars.
“No university can afford $100,000 to sponsor a foreign worker. That part’s just not going to happen,” Sparber said.
Sparber said some of his best work has come from working with international faculty, including academics from Italy, Spain, Japan and Nepal. He said taking away that opportunity for collaboration is “terrible” for American productivity and limits interactions between academics of different backgrounds.
“Those are collaborations that don’t happen in a world where we don’t have something like the H-1B that facilitates skilled workers coming into the country,” Sparber said.
Sparber also said if universities can’t afford the H-1B fee, it could lead to larger class sizes and fewer research opportunities for students since universities might not be able to hire as many international faculty.
“We’re kind of at the mercy of whatever the federal law is,” he said.
Sparber added that if universities aren’t exempted, the fee could especially hurt economics and STEM departments because foreign-born scholars are more prevalent in those fields.
“Econ is a field that’s that’s got a very high representation of foreign students, and that’s going to be true. And physics, chemistry, math, computer science, and yeah, those programs are going to really suffer,” he said.
Britta Glennon, an assistant professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania who has also researched the H-1B visa, said many universities will not be able to afford the $100,000 fee for each H-1B visa due to possible budget constraints.
“I think it’s going to be very difficult for universities to pay that fee,” she said. “I mean, that’s basically doubling a lot of faculty salaries. So it’s not a small fee.”
Glennon said some institutions may attempt to find ways to work around the fee, like getting a waiver from the Department of Homeland Security. The order says that the Secretary of Homeland Security can issue exemptions if the hiring of a foreigner is in the country’s “national interest” and does not pose a national security risk.
“There’s the short-term consequence of universities and the private sector all being probably unwilling to pay that fee in most cases,” Glennon said. “I think there are exceptions, but most positions and most companies and universities are going to be unable to pay that.”
Subodha Kumar, a professor of statistics, operations and data science at Temple University, said it is unclear if universities will be exempt from the fee, though he said universities will have an opportunity to make the case for an exemption if they can argue their work is in the national interest for the United States.
“Nobody has clarity on that because first of all, the wording is unclear,” Kumar said. “The Homeland Security is not saying much about it.”
Ron Hira, a political science professor at Howard University, said he does not think a $100,000 H-1B fee is a good idea, but he said the visa program is “scandal-ridden” and has weak worker protections as is. He said employers often get away with paying an H-1B worker at a lower rate than a U.S. worker.
“The incentive structure is set up for for employers to exploit the system and prefer H-1B workers over U.S. workers because they’re cheaper, and they’re controllable,” Hira said.
Joann Weiner, associate professor of economics, said she thinks universities with more funding will be able to afford the visa but said universities with smaller endowments might not be able to.
“There’s a lot of different types of academia, just like there are a lot of different types of companies,” Weiner said. “So the largest companies, like Amazon, Microsoft, they could probably afford to pay $100,000 a year for an employee, but smaller company startups are probably less likely to be able to do that, and a similar kind of thing could happen in academia.”
