New Delhi : The legal fight over the Trump administration’s $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications has now moved to an appeals court after a federal judge refused to block the measure, Bloomberg reported. The fee, which was announced through a presidential proclamation in September, was introduced by President Donald Trump as part of a broader effort to curb what he described as abuse of the H-1B visa programme.
The Chamber had argued that the sharp hike violates federal immigration law and exceeds the fee-setting authority granted to the executive branch by Congress. It claimed the proclamation unlawfully overrides existing statutes governing visa costs. US District Judge Beryl Howell, who serves in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, rejected those arguments in a December 23 ruling, finding that the president acted under an express statutory grant of authority.
Though the Chamber had a solid judge, Obama-appointee Judge Beryl Howell, who’s been tough on the Trump administration, she handed Trump a sweeping victory,” he wrote. “If Judge Howell didn’t find legal defects in the novel proclamation, we doubt the DC Circuit or US Supreme Court would either. These developments come as the entire H-1B visa programme is in the midst of a severe crisis due to new rules involving social media screening and a ban on visa stamping outside a visa-holder’s country of origin.
The case is one of several challenges to the fee. More than a dozen mostly Democratic-led states have filed a separate lawsuit in Massachusetts, while a global nurse-staffing firm and several labour unions have sued in California. Legal experts expect the dispute to ultimately reach the US Supreme Court. The litigants claim that the exorbitant H-1B visa fee would deal a heavy blow to the quality of service offered by institutions like schools and hospitals by restricting access to skilled foreign workers.
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