Filing fees
The employer must pay certain fees in order to apply for H-1B non-immigrant status for potential employees. By law, the employer may never pass any portion of these fees onto an H-1B worker or third party. Of these fees, two of them are mandatory by law for all employers, no matter what size.
SKIP TO:
Mandatory fees
- Base filing fee ($460).
- Fraud prevent and detection fee ($500).
ACWIA fee
ACWIA Fee (American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998):
- $750 for an employer with 1-25 full-time employees; and
- $1,500 for employers having 26 or more full-time equivalent employees.
[There are certain qualifications that if you fall under, may exempt you from paying the ACWIA fee: See Section 2 of the H-1B and H-1B1 Data Collection and Filing Fee Exemption Supplement; Bottom of Page 19-20 of Form I-129 (Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker)].
Additional fees
If the employer wishes to expedite the H-1B visa adjudication process to within 15 calendar days, they may pay a $1,410 premium processing fee. As of September 11th, 2018, the temporary suspension of premium processing has extended until Feb 19th, 2019.
A company with more than 50 employees, and of those, more than half are H-1B nonimmigrant workers, the employer will have to pay an additional $4,000 fee for the application.