ATTORNEY GENERAL RAOUL JOINS COALITION OPPOSING TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S ILLEGAL H-1B $100,000 FEE

ATTORNEY GENERAL RAOUL JOINS COALITION OPPOSING TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S ILLEGAL H-1B $100,000 FEE

December 23, 2025

Chicago - Attorney General Kwame Raoul today joined 22 attorneys general in filing a multistate amicus brief opposing the Trump administration's unlawful policy imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa petitions for highly-skilled foreign national workers.

Raoul and the coalition's brief, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, supports Global Nurse Force in its lawsuit against the Trump administration over the $100,000 H-1B visa fee. This amicus follows a complaint filed by Raoul and the coalition earlier this month challenging this unlawful fee.

"The $100,000 visa fee threatens the quality of education, healthcare, and other core services available in Illinois and across the country," Raoul said. "The H-1B visa is essential to alleviate nationwide labor shortages in vital fields, including nursing, medicine and teaching, and this unlawful fee is devastating to our residents. I will continue to advocate for the protection of this critical program alongside fellow attorneys general."

In September, President Trump imposed an unprecedented $100,000 fee for new H-1B visa petitions by executive proclamation, undermining the purpose of the program and making it harder to address severe labor shortages in critical fields. The policy affects any visa application filed after Sept. 21, 2025, and purports to grant the Secretary of Homeland Security broad discretion to determine which petitions are subject to the fee or eligible for an exemption. Raoul and the coalition are concerned that this unjustified measure could be applied selectively against employers in Illinois disfavored by the Trump administration.

As Raoul and the attorneys general argue in the brief, H-1B workers are critical to the economies of the amici states and to addressing employment shortages in key fields such as health care and education. Without foreign-trained physicians, the United States is projecting a shortfall of 86,000 doctors by 2036. Additionally, educators are the third-largest occupation for H-1B visa holders, with nearly 30,000 educators receiving the visas, and nearly a thousand colleges and universities employing hundreds of H-1B personnel to support their research and education missions.

In Illinois' 2023-2024 school year, 3,684 teaching positions remained unfilled statewide. Some Illinois schools rely on the H-1B program to hire specialized staff for difficult to fill positions, including bilingual teachers, special education teachers, and bilingual speech-language pathologists.

The amicus brief also argues that the Trump administration's failure to follow notice-and-comment rulemaking requirements when adopting the H-1B fee was unlawful, depriving states of the opportunity to share their concerns about the harms the fee will cause to their economies and to their education and health care systems.

Joining Raoul in filing the amicus brief are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.