$100K H-1B Fee? Analyzing Trump’s Policy with Nicole Gunara of Manifest Law
episode
“HR Heretics” | How CPOs, CHROs, Founders, and Boards Build High Performing Companies
32 min
2 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 16 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What triggered the $100K H‑1B fee announcement and why does it matter?
Hey Nicole, how was your weekend?
Oh, the most relaxing weekend of my whole entire career. I mean, I think we all know why we're why I'm here or why we're here today, right? Talking about H one Bs and this crazy one hundred thousand dollars that just came out.
Yeah, so let me give the audience a what's up everybody, welcome back to another episode of HR Heretics. Today is a special episode. If you were living under a rock this past weekend, uh the Trump administration late on Friday night decided to make some changes to the H one B program that many of us use in tech to hire engineers and the like. And so this weekend was a mad scramble for many of you and trying to figure out like what does this mean? How are we going to like think about an immigration program moving forward? Do we need to bring back foreign nationals who are current employees that are out of the country right now, right away, which I know many of you did. And so Nicole, can you give the audience a quick background on you, what you're doing, and why you know a little bit about immigration?
For sure. So I am the principal immigration attorney at Manifest Law. We are a tech forward, tech enabled immigration law firm. And essentially, my background is that I have built a career in developing, designing, and establishing corporate immigration programs. And I also have built a career in developing creative solutions even in the most dire of circumstances. So if anything, I'm probably like the right person for you to really talk about. what to do in a crazy scenario like this where there's just a sudden crisis or a sudden change that really can change how you do or deal with immigration.
Yeah. So just give the audience a quick rundown in case they were uh, you know, doing a sabbatical from their phone. What happened on Friday?
Yeah, so on Friday the Trump administration announced that they were going to sign a proclamation, in many ways, a directive, to have the USCIS and the relevant stakeholder immigration agency assess this $100,000 fee on H1B petitions. And I think what made it seismic is that there were a lot of comments on a live stream. That made people fear that it applied in a lot of different circumstances that s made it seem that if you had an H one B employee, you were immediately going to be assessed this one hundred thousand dollar invoice, so to speak. But that's basically what happened, is that they signed this into effect that night, and then since then, as you know, there's been a lot of developments, a lot of announcements.
So we're recording this. It's Monday, September twenty second at three PM Pacific time. What do we know today? Like what are the facts today?
So I'll tell you what we do have.
What are the confirmed exemptions and renewal rules for the new fee?
We have a written proclamation that was signed by President Trump on Friday that explained that we need to start assessing this $100,000 fee on H1B petitions and that potentially the Secretary of Homeland Security can label what exemptions occur for this particular fee. Thereafter, we had guidances that were issued in two main formats or two buckets of formats. So we had the press secretary of the United States and the rapid response team representing the president of the United States publishing on X, formerly known as Twitter, tweets that basically expressed: hey, these things may not necessarily apply to every single H1B. It's not gonna be quote unquote in an annual fee but a one-time fee on a new petition.
And then we also got published guidance from USCIS and CBP, Customs and Border Patrol, on how they would be adjudicating some of these applications moving forward. But I think the one thing that I have to express to every single person who's listening to this particular podcast and this episode is that where we're at today is that there are some things that are very clear and then there are some things that are not that clear.
Okay. So can you get into the very clear and not very clear so people can better understand?
For sure. So what is very clear is that individuals who are exempted from this fee include people who filed a pending application prior to September 21st of 2025, a 1201 AM EDT, and people who have a currently valid approved petition that was approved prior to that date, in addition to
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What triggered the $100K H‑1B fee announcement and why does it matter?
0:14–2:59
2
What are the confirmed exemptions and renewal rules for the new fee?
2:59–7:54
3
What remains unclear about industry‑wide exemptions and fee applicability?
7:54–10:49
4
What immediate crisis‑response steps should companies take (audit, pause, pivot)?
10:49–14:33
5
Which alternative visa pathways (country‑specific, J‑1, O‑1/EB‑1A) are viable after the fee?
14:33–18:29
6
How do the O‑1 and EB‑1A extraordinary‑ability visas achieve a 94.5% approval rate?
18:29–22:09
7
Why does the policy favor big tech over startups and what are the strategic implications?
22:09–24:54
8
What broader workforce‑planning challenges does the $100K fee reveal for America’s STEM pipeline?
24:54–32:48
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from “HR Heretics” | How CPOs, CHROs, Founders, and Boards Build High Performing Companies
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