DHS Expands $4,000 H-1B and $4,500 L-1 Fees to Same-Employer Extensions for Covered Employers
The Department of Homeland Security on Monday finalized regulations expanding when a special post‑9/11 biometric fee must be paid by companies that heavily rely on H‑1B and L‑1 visa workers—a move the agency says is needed to shore up funding for the U.S. biometric entry‑exit system and better reflect congressional intent.
Under the rule, “covered employers”—those with at least 50 employees in the United States and with more than half of their U.S. workforce in H‑1B or L‑1 status—must pay the 9/11 Response and Biometric Entry‑Exit Fee (often called the “9/11 Biometric Fee”) not only on petitions for initial status and change of employer, but also on all extension‑of‑status petitions, even when there is no change of employer. The rule, published in the Federal Register at 91 Fed. Reg. 51360, takes effect Sept. 9, 2026.
The additional fee—set by statute at $4,000 for H‑1B and $4,500 for L‑1—is paid on top of standard petition filing charges and other mandated fees for covered employers.
The 9/11 Biometric Fee was created in 2015 as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, replacing and doubling an earlier “supplemental” H‑1B and L‑1 fee first enacted in 2010. Congress directed that the “combined filing fee and fraud prevention and detection fee … including an application for an extension of such status, shall be increased by $4,000 [H‑1B] or $4,500 [L‑1],” with half of receipts deposited into a dedicated 9/11 Response and Biometric Exit Account to fund DHS’s biometric entry‑exit system and half going to the U.S. Treasury.
When DHS first implemented the 9/11 Biometric Fee in a 2016 fee rule, the agency read the statute to require payment only when the separate fraud prevention and detection fee applied—essentially, in cases requesting an initial grant of status or a change of employer. Extension petitions filed by the same employer for the same worker typically did not trigger either fee.
In the new rule, DHS says that reading was wrong. Citing the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which rejected broad judicial deference to agency interpretations, DHS states there is “always a best reading of a statute” and concludes that the best reading of section 402(g) of Public Law 114‑113 is that the 9/11 Biometric Fee must be paid “for all extension of status petitions even when the Fraud Fee is not applicable.”
“The language ‘including an application for an extension of such status’ is a substantive amendment” intended to reach all extensions, DHS writes, while the insertion of the term “combined” clarifies that the increase is imposed once per petition, not separately on the filing fee and the fraud fee. For extensions where the fraud fee does not apply, DHS says, the statutory phrase “combined filing fee and fraud prevention and detection fee” should be read as “the filing fee plus $0,” to which the 9/11 Biometric Fee is added.
The rule is closely tied to DHS’s effort to expand and maintain its biometric entry‑exit system, which uses facial comparison technology to verify the identity of noncitizens entering and departing the United States at air, land, and sea ports of entry.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the DHS component responsible for border inspection, deploys facial comparison through its Traveler Verification Service (TVS), the matching backbone of the biometric program. DHS says TVS has allowed CBP to introduce more “contactless” travel processes, reduce document handling, and strengthen detection of impostors and overstays.
Since the program began, CBP officers have intercepted 87 impostors at airports and 2,158 impostors in the land pedestrian environment using facial biometrics, and DHS has confirmed more than 516,601 overstays between June 2017 and Oct. 28, 2025, through biometric exit checks, according to data cited in the rule.
Despite that operational build‑out, DHS says actual 9/11 Biometric Fee collections have fallen far short of expectations. In 2015, the Congressional Budget Office projected annual revenue of roughly $420 million, with half of that—about $210 million per year—flowing into the dedicated biometric account. Instead, collections have steadily lagged, dropping into the tens of millions of dollars per year in recent fiscal years, even excluding pandemic‑related impacts.
DHS attributes much of that gap to its earlier interpretation limiting fee liability to petitions where the fraud fee also applied, which allowed covered employers to avoid the 9/11 Biometric Fee on substantial volumes of extension filings. From fiscal 2018 through fiscal 2025, DHS estimates that only about 27 percent of H‑1B petitions filed by covered employers were subject to the biometric fee; under the new interpretation, DHS says roughly 75 percent of those petitions would have been covered.
“Without the regulatory changes adopted here … DHS cannot maintain its current biometric entry operations or continue implementing other essential entry and exit programs,” the agency warns, pointing to risks around security, cyber resilience, data management, and system scalability if funding remains inadequate.
The rule applies only to “covered employers,” defined in statute as U.S. employers with at least 50 employees in the United States and with more than 50 percent of those workers in H‑1B or L‑1 nonimmigrant status. Employers that do not meet that threshold are not subject to the 9/11 Biometric Fee and are unaffected by the rule.
DHS acknowledges that the change will increase costs for covered employers that regularly file extension petitions, but it argues the impact is limited to a relatively small slice of petitioners and is justified by Congress’s intent to impose higher fees on large, high‑volume users of H‑1B and L‑1 categories. The agency estimates that at most 16 percent of small entities that file H‑1B or L‑1 petitions will be affected.
Commenters on the 2024 notice of proposed rulemaking raised concerns that higher fees would discourage hiring, push companies to lay off or avoid H‑1B and L‑1 workers, or disproportionately burden workers from India and China who must renew status multiple times because of long employment‑based green card backlogs. DHS rejects those predictions, pointing out that overall demand for new H‑1B visas has exceeded the annual cap of 65,000 for more than a decade.
“The demand for new H‑1B visas exceeds the number available each year,” the agency writes. “This indicates that there remains a shortage of H‑1B workers, so the total number of aliens hired with H‑1B status annually is likely to remain unchanged by this rule due to the excess demand.”
DHS also stresses that the fee is imposed on employers, not directly on workers, and says H‑1B employers are generally prohibited from reducing wages or compensation packages to recoup petition‑related business expenses. The rule does not alter wage obligations, recruitment rules for H‑1B‑dependent employers, or the maximum period of stay permitted in H‑1B or L‑1 status.
Of the 146 public comments received on the proposal, some supported the expansion of the 9/11 Biometric Fee, arguing that large outsourcing firms and other heavy users of H‑1B and L‑1 visas should “pay their fair share” and that higher costs could help curb perceived abuses of the programs. Other commenters urged DHS to go further, suggesting even higher fees, minimum salary thresholds, or broader reforms to address the displacement of U.S. workers. DHS dismissed those suggestions as beyond the scope of the rule, noting that fee levels and covered categories are fixed by statute.
The majority of commenters opposed the proposal, warning about increased costs, possible impacts on competitiveness and talent attraction, and perceived unfairness to long‑term nonimmigrant workers caught in backlogs. DHS acknowledges those concerns but says it is constrained by Congress’s design of the fee and must implement the statute in line with its text and broader legislative scheme.
The final rule confirms that the expanded fee obligation will not apply retroactively to previously filed or pending petitions; it will attach only to petitions filed on or after the effective date, Sept. 9, 2026.
For employers, DHS directs petitioners to updated fee information on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website and notes that guidance on H‑1B and L‑1 filing fees, including the 9/11 Biometric Fee for covered employers, is available through USCIS fee charts and Form I‑129 instructions.