What if the most expensive decision in your immigration journey is not the H-1B filing itself, but a single plane ticket?

In 2025, a new $100,000 fee tied to certain H-1B filings quietly turned routine international travel, layoffs, and even backup-status planning into six-figure decisions. Framed as a filing technicality, it is designed to keep many people who are outside the United States from reentering through H-1B. In practice, it is reshaping how companies move talent and how families think about leaving the United States for any reason at all, especially as questions about when the fee applies resurface with the H-1B lottery right around the corner.

What Actually Triggers the $100,000 H-1B Fee

For this year’s H-1B lottery, cap-subject H-1B cases filed as change of status inside the United States are not subject to the $100,000 fee. If the beneficiary is in the United States in another status (for example F-1, L-1, H-4) and the petition is filed and approved as a change of status, the employer does not owe the supplemental payment.

More broadly:

• Any H-1B petition filed inside the U.S. that is approved as a change of status, transfer, extension, amendment, or concurrent filing does not trigger the fee.
• Any H-1B petition filed for consular processing (or later required to be used through a consulate) does trigger the $100,000 fee. That includes lottery cases and all other H-1B filings, if the worker will apply for the visa at a consulate instead of remaining in the United States.

This fee is a condition of eligibility. If it is required and not paid, the petition cannot be approved. For most employers, paying $100,000 for a single H-1B case will be very difficult to justify, which changes how they evaluate everything from emergency travel to hiring laid-off H-1B workers abroad.

How It Shows Up in Real Life

The policy sounds abstract until you map it onto actual fact patterns.

1. Emergency travel that quietly closes the door to return

An H-1B worker is in valid status in the United States but does not have a current visa stamp. A serious family emergency arises in India. They travel.

Because of new, stricter social-media vetting and security checks, they cannot get a regular visa appointment until well into 2027. Their underlying H-1B status in the United States expires at the end of 2026.

Emergency appointment slots and cancellations exist, but demand is extreme and nothing is guaranteed. If the employer needs to file the H-1B extension while the employee is abroad, that filing becomes a consular-processing case and the $100,000 fee is triggered.

Unless the company is willing to spend $100,000 on that single extension, the worker cannot return in H-1B status. They may be stuck abroad indefinitely or lose the role entirely. If a spouse is on H-4 with work authorization, that spouse’s career in the United States is suddenly tied to whether the employer is willing to make a six-figure decision.

2. Layoffs that become one-way exits

An H-1B employee is laid off and returns to India to regroup while job searching.

A new U.S. employer wants to hire them. Because the worker is abroad and no longer in status, the H-1B transfer is filed for consular processing, which automatically pulls in the $100,000 fee.

Pre-rule, the questions were about skill fit and timing. Now the first question is whether any single hire is worth a $100,000 filing. Often the answer is no, which means laid-off H-1Bs who leave the United States may find it dramatically harder to return in H-1B status. Spouses on H-4 EAD, L-2, or E-3D, who may have built robust careers, are wrapped into that same calculation.

3. The F-1 travel flexibility and tax strategy that no longer works

An F-1 recent graduate wins the H-1B lottery but already has plans an international trip this summer.

The historical playbook: convert the case from change of status to consular processing, allow the student to travel freely, and have them reenter later with an H-1B visa. If cap gap was not needed, this was a fairly standard approach.

Today, that conversion essentially requires a $100,000 check.

The same is true for F-1s who wanted to:

• Use their full OPT and STEM OPT time before switching to H-1B, or
• Extend F-1 tax treatment for another year or two before taking on H-1B tax and compliance obligations.

Those moves relied on consular processing as a flexible tool. With the new fee, they become high-cost luxuries.

4. Backup H-1Bs for L-1, TN, O-1, E-3, H-1B1, and spouses

For years, employers ran a quiet “backup H-1B” strategy across multiple categories:

• L-1 workers: H-1B as a landing spot when the L-1 maxes out.
• TN, E-3, and H-1B1 professionals: H-1B as a more AOS-friendly platform for green cards.
• O-1 talent: H-1B as a way to get three-year extensions instead of one-year O-1 renewals.

Employers also entered spouses with independent work authorization, such as H-4 EADs, L-2S, and E-3S, so those spouses would have their own H-1B approval. A consular-processing H-1B could sit quietly on the shelf and be activated later if:

• The principal spouse’s status went sideways, or
• Lengthy EAD processing times led to gaps in work authorization.

The common thread: these approvals were often structured as consular processing because activation might happen after travel or from outside the U.S.

Now, that “shelf” option for H-1B almost always means doing it through a consulate and therefore paying the $100,000 fee. What used to be a low-cost safety net for L-1s, TNs, O-1s, E-3s, H-1B1s, H-4s, L-2s, and E-3Ds has turned into an emergency lever that many companies simply will not pull.

What This Means For You (Employer or Employee)

Here is the practical impact depending on where you sit.

If you are an employer, this rule means you need to:

• Be honest internally that a $100,000 consular-processing and if the company would ever be willing to pay this.
• Rebuild your playbook, treating international travel as risk management. This may involve the company reconsidering their work from abroad stance, for example.
• Backup H-1B strategies should now be filed as a change of status, not consular activation.

If you are a visa dependent employee, for you and your family, this rule changes the risk calculus around:

• Travel on an expiring or missing visa stamp.
• Decisions to leave the United States after a layoff.
• Timing of extended time abroad (like weddings/honeymoons, for example).
• Whether you and your spouse should have separate, independent paths to work authorization.

For H-1B workers and other nonimmigrants, the stakes around travel are now much higher, but the decision to travel is still fundamentally personal:

• A valid visa stamp is not just a convenience; it is a critical safeguard for returning to the United States to work.
• If a visa is expiring within the next 12 to 18 months, a trip abroad can carry real risk of being unable to return in H-1B status, especially if consular appointments are backlogged or subject to additional vetting. Rules can also change without advance notice, as they did when social media vetting (Announcement of Expanded Screening and Vetting for H-1B and Dependent H-4 Visa Applicants) for H-1B and H-4 applicants was introduced in December 2025, a prime travel season for many.
• Laid-off workers who leave the United States may find that any future H-1B offer now comes bundled with a $100,000 decision for the new employer.
• F-1, L-1, TN, O-1, E-3, H-1B1, and their spouses on H-4, L-2, and E-3D who once had flexible, travel-friendly paths into H-1B may now have to choose between travel plans and preserving a cost-effective United States strategy and independent work authorization.

For anyone already in the green card process, this is also a moment to rethink how you treat the “optional” parts of an adjustment of status filing. The I-485 work and travel applications (EAD and advance parole) should be treated as default, not add-ons. Having those approvals in place gives the family an independent safety net for work authorization and travel that is not entirely dependent on the H-1B or on being able to get back into the United States on a visa stamp.

Travel for a sick parent, a funeral, a wedding, or a major life event is not something any company policy can neatly govern. The goal is not to tell people whether to travel, but to make sure they understand the legal and practical consequences so they can make an informed, personal decision for themselves and their families.

If you remember nothing else, remember this: the $100,000 fee is triggered by consular processing. Your strategy should be built around avoiding that outcome wherever possible.

About the Author

Ashlee Drake Berry is an employment-based immigration attorney and Head of Legal at Casium, a legal technology company focused on U.S. business immigration. She previously managed high-volume H-1B, PERM, and green card programs for a major technology company and has extensive experience advising startups, enterprise employers, and individual professionals on temporary visas and employment-based green card strategies. Ashlee writes regularly about the intersection of immigration policy, legal technology, and talent strategy, with a focus on practical playbooks employers can use to navigate fast-changing rules.