On September 18 the President signed two documents about the H-1B visa, the program employers use to hire foreign professionals. Both were published in the Federal Register on September 23.

The first, Proclamation 11069, keeps for another year the $100,000 payment required since September 21, 2025 with new H-1B petitions for workers outside the United States. It took effect at 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2026 and, absent another extension, expires 12 months later. The second, Executive Order 14431, tells three departments to weigh an employer's layoffs, and starts a Labor Department review of applications already on file.

If you hire from abroad or are abroad with a U.S. job offer, both reach you. The proclamation, though, is only part of the picture.

The ruling the proclamation does not mention

On June 8, 2026, Judge Leo T. Sorokin of the federal district court in Massachusetts ruled for 20 states in State of California v. Mullin, No. 1:25-cv-13829. His judgment lists ten documents that DHS and the State Department issued between September 19 and October 20, 2025 to put the 2025 proclamation into effect — memoranda, an email, an action request, FAQs, webpages, a fee schedule and the payment website — and declares them

VACATED pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act and declared unlawful insofar as they impose a $100,000 payment obligation on H-1B petitions

The court found that the payment "amounts to a tax, not a penalty" and that the immigration provisions the President relied on "do not delegate taxing power to the President".

On July 24 the First Circuit refused to pause that judgment during the appeal, saying the government had "failed to make a strong showing as to the critical likelihood-of-success factor". A stay denial is not a ruling on the merits. The appeal, No. 26-1699, is pending. A separate challenge in Washington by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Association of American Universities reached final judgment for the government, according to the Massachusetts opinion.

USCIS's H-1B page, last reviewed September 21, 2026 — the day the extension took effect — still carries this alert:

DHS strongly disagrees with the First Circuit's order denying the stay request but will comply with the court's order while DHS considers next steps. If this order is later lifted, DHS still plans to collect the payment.

That page describes only the 2025 proclamation. Proclamation 11069 does not refer to the case at all. In a September 15 filing the government told the appeals court that the district court's order "clearly impacts the ability of the President to renew the Proclamation".

What changed in the text

Most operative language carries over nearly word for word from 2025: the restriction; the national-interest exception the Secretary of Homeland Security may grant for "any individual alien, all aliens working for a company, or all aliens working in an industry"; and the duty on employers to "obtain and retain documentation showing that the payment described in section 1 of this proclamation has been made" before filing for a worker outside the country.

Beyond small wording changes, three things differ. The 2025 instructions to start rulemakings are gone; the new text reports DHS's weighted-selection lottery rule, published December 29, 2025, and a Labor Department wage proposal of March 27, 2026. A sentence about B visas is gone. And one sentence is new:

This restriction applies to aliens who must seek admission to the United States to effectuate the approval of a petition described in section 1 of this proclamation, including through consular notification, notification at a port of entry, pre-flight inspection, or pre-clearance.

The opinion records that USCIS put three of those routes — "consular notification, port of entry notification, or pre-flight inspection" — on its "H-1B Specialty Occupations" webpage in October 2025, and that webpage is one of the ten documents the judgment vacated. The scope now sits in the proclamation itself.

The numbers, and what they measure

The case for extension rests on figures given without sources:

The payment "has been made for over 700 petitions" since September 21, 2025. No dollar total is given; 700 payments would be $70 million.
The largest IT staffing and outsourcing firms cut their combined H-1B registrations from 24,946 to 2,055, a 92 percent decrease. The firms and the years compared are not named.
Consular processing requests, the route for bringing a worker in from abroad, fell by nearly 97 percent from the fiscal 2025 to the fiscal 2027 cap seasons.
Registrations for beneficiaries with at least a U.S. master's degree rose from 45.1 percent of the total for fiscal 2026 to 66.1 percent for fiscal 2027.

The proclamation's own word for the effect is deterrence: the payment and the new lottery "have had the combined effect of deterring low-wage and low-skilled recruitment". It does not separate the two. For recent college graduates it reports little change: unemployment was 5.7 percent in June 2026 against 5.8 percent in September 2025.

The companion order: layoffs and a 30-day clock

Executive Order 14431 says the Secretaries of State, Labor and Homeland Security

shall take into account in any labor condition application, petition, visa, and entry of aliens entering or attempting to enter the United States as H-1B nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation whether the employer sponsor directly or indirectly engaged in layoffs within the previous year or plans future layoffs that negatively affect the employment of similarly situated United States workers.

To take into account is not to bar. The order does not define "similarly situated" or say how much a layoff weighs. The statute already has a narrower rule: H-1B-dependent employers, and employers found to have willfully violated the rules in the previous five years, must attest they did not and will not displace a U.S. worker in the 90 days before and after a petition.

The order also sets a clock. Within 30 days — by October 18, 2026 — the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division "shall begin reviewing data related to previously submitted labor condition applications" to decide whether action is warranted under section 212(n)(2)(G) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. That provision lets the Labor Secretary investigate an H-1B employer on reasonable cause, which the Secretary "shall personally certify". The order sets a start date, not a finish date.

A second, separate fee is proposed

On August 25 DHS proposed a $103,265 fee on every cap-subject H-1B petition, on cost-recovery authority it says differs from the proclamation's. A petitioner subject to both "would be required to pay both amounts". Comments closed September 24; it is a proposal, not a rule. DHS wrote then that Proclamation 10973, "unless extended, will expire before the fee proposed in this rule will take effect". It has now been extended.

What to do, and when

Employers filing for a worker abroad: the proclamation says to obtain proof of payment before filing; USCIS's posted position is that it is complying with the court's order. Read USCIS's H-1B page on the day you file.
Employers with layoffs in the past year, or planned: the order says those affecting similarly situated U.S. workers will be weighed in every labor condition application, petition and visa.
Workers already in the United States: the restriction covers people who must seek admission to make a petition effective. USCIS's page, written for 2025, says the payment does not apply to approved changes or extensions of status inside the country.
October 18, 2026: the Wage and Hour Division review must have begun.
November 4, 2026: the states' brief is due in the First Circuit.
Within 30 days after the next H-1B lottery: four departments must recommend whether to extend again.
September 21, 2027: the restriction expires unless extended.

What the record does not say

Whether DHS or the State Department will collect the payment under Proclamation 11069 while the June judgment stands. No USCIS or Labor Department page this desk read addresses the new proclamation.
Whether the vacatur reaches the new proclamation. The judgment names 2025 documents; the appeal is undecided.
Whether employers who paid will get the $100,000 back. No document read addresses it.
Where the statistics come from, or what the Labor Department's review will look for.