We get this question a lot from employers. The certified LCA lists $85,000. The employee has been paid $100,000 for two years. Business slows, a major account goes away, and the employer asks the obvious question: can we go back down to the $85,000 we certified? Usually the answer is no. The LCA wage is...
Can You Lower an H-1B Employee’s Salary to the LCA Wage?
On September 11, 2026, DHS published a new rule in the Federal register titled “Eliminating the Discretionary 60-day Grace Period,” with comments due 60 days later, which puts the deadline at November 10, 2026. The short version: if this rule is finalized as drafted, a nonimmigrant worker whose employment ends is out of status and...
Aug242026
On August 25, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would impose a $103,265 fee on H-1B cap-subject petitions. The timing is not a coincidence. It comes one month after the First Circuit refused to let the government reinstate the $100,000 fee created by last September’s presidential...
I’ve been telling people this for a while now: if you own your own company and want to sponsor yourself for an H-1B through it, you do not need a board of directors. No investors. No outside corporate governance. None of it. I’ve said it enough times that people started asking me if I was...
Just when employers thought they had a handle on the $100,000 H-1B fee, the litigation took another turn. On July 24, 2026, the First Circuit Court of Appeals declined to let the government reinstate the fee while its appeal plays out. A quick recap We’ve been tracking this fee since before it even took effect....
If you’re on an H-1B visa, estate planning probably isn’t on your radar. Between visa renewals, green card timelines, and building a life in a new country, “I need a will” tends to get pushed to some vague future point — usually right after buying a house, or having kids, or “when things settle down.”...
In a long-awaited decision, a federal judge has declared the Trump administration’s attempt to impose a $100k fee on certain H-1B workers to be unlawful. Last September, the immigration community was shell-shocked when the Trump administration announced a $100k fee applicable to certain H-1B workers. Practitioners, employers, and employees initially scrambled to understand what the...
The current government shutdown has created significant uncertainty for employers and foreign workers navigating the H-1B process. While the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) remains operational, other key agencies involved in the process, particularly the Department of Labor (DOL), have been directly affected, making it challenging for employers to move forward with H-1B filings....