Federal Judge Overturns Trump’s Effort to Make Money Off Immigration
A federal judge on Monday blocked President Donald Trump’s exorbitant $100,000 H-1B visa fee.In a 42-page ruling, Massachusetts District Judge Leo Sorokin ruled that the fee was an illegal tax on businesses and ordered it to be vacated. Sorokin used the Supreme Court’s justification in its 2012 case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, concerning fees imposed on Americans who did not sign up for the Affordable Care Act, to argue that the payment was a tax, not a penalty. In his majority opinion in Sebelius, Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that “if the concept of penalty means anything, it means punishment for an unlawful act or omission.” “Here, the $100,000 payment requirement for all H-1B petitions does not aim to establish that hiring H-1B workers is illegal. The payment is not a penalty, just as the IRS fee in Sebelius was not, because it is not ‘punishment for an unlawful act or omission,’” Sorokin wrote.Therefore, according to Sorokin, the fee should be considered a tax—which the president lacks the authority to levy without congressional approval. The government had tried to argue that the fee couldn’t be considered a tax because its purpose was to decrease the number of H-1B applications altogether, not raise revenue. But Sorokin said that argument “falls short.”“Purpose and effect are different. Moreover, every $100,000 payment made pursuant to the Policy does raise revenue,” he wrote. The judge ordered that Trump’s illegal directive be “vacated in its entirety.”The Trump administration announced a $100,000 fee for H1-B visas in September, placing the burden on employers to sponsor college-educated and specialized foreign workers to come to the United States on a temporary basis.The Trump administration’s efforts to wind down the H1-B visa program are just another way that the president is kneecapping the economy for underbaked reasons that reek of white nationalism. Some research has estimated that the arrival of H1-B visa holders between 1990 and 2020 was responsible for 30 to 50 percent of all productivity growth in the U.S. economy during that period, resulting in wage growth for native workers.This story has been updated.