H-1B extended to 2027, and layoffs now factor in

Last month I wrote that Proclamation 10973 would expire on September 20 unless it got extended, and that nobody had signaled which way it would go. It got extended, two days before the deadline, along with something nobody was watching for.

I'm not an immigration lawyer and none of this is legal advice. Talk to counsel about filings. What I can tell you is what changed and how it lands on a housing plan, because that's the part mobility teams have to decide in the next few weeks.

What was signed on September 18

A new proclamation extends the 2025 one. It took effect at 12:01 a.m. eastern on September 21 and runs until September 21, 2027, so the twelve-month restriction is now a twenty-four month restriction.

The structure is unchanged. It's $100,000 per petition, and it reaches workers who, in the proclamation's words, "must seek admission to the United States to effectuate the approval of a petition." The Secretary of Homeland Security can waive it where hiring someone "is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States."

That scope language still matters more than the headline number for how you plan. It's aimed at people who need to be admitted from abroad. Someone already in the United States changing employers sits in a different position, which is why your domestic transfers and your international arrivals keep needing separate treatment on a housing calendar.

Still extended, still blocked

The part that confuses people, and I've now had the same conversation four times in a week, is that these are two different questions.

Extending the proclamation did not restart collection of the fee. In June a federal district court in Massachusetts vacated the agency guidance that implemented the payment, and on July 24 the First Circuit refused to stay that ruling while the government's appeal proceeds. USCIS says it "will comply with the court's order while DHS considers next steps," and adds that if the order is later lifted, DHS "still plans to collect the payment."

So the authority was renewed for another year and the collection is still enjoined. Those are two separate tracks, and the second one is the one that determines whether anybody writes a check.

Worth knowing if you go looking: USCIS hasn't caught up on its own pages. The H-1B FAQ shows a last update of July 28 and the proclamation alert shows June 15, so neither reflects the September extension. If you check the agency site and conclude nothing happened, that's why.

The layoff provision

This is the piece I'd flag to a Bay Area mobility lead, and it got almost no coverage next to the fee.

The same day, an executive order directed the Secretaries of State, Labor and Homeland Security to "consider petitioner employers' recent or planned layoffs of similarly situated U.S. workers when considering H-1B visa applications." It also has them consulting Commerce, Education and the Small Business Administration on wage and industry data.

Read that against the last eighteen months in this valley. A large number of companies here have run layoffs and are also sponsoring international hires, sometimes in adjacent functions. Under the prior regime those two facts lived in different buildings. They don't anymore.

I don't know how this gets operationalized, and anyone who tells you they do is guessing. What I'd take from it is directional: an employer's own recent history is now an input into whether a given transfer clears, which makes approval less purely a function of litigation you can only watch and more a function of facts inside your own company.

And a second fee, on firmer legal ground

Separately, DHS announced on August 24 a proposed rule that would add a fee of $103,265 to all H-1B cap-subject petitions, including those eligible for the advanced degree exemption. It would be paid at filing, on top of existing fees. Petitions that aren't cap-subject, such as those from certain nonprofit research organizations, governmental research organizations, and institutions of higher education, would be excluded. DHS estimates roughly $8.8 billion a year at a projected 85,000 cap-subject petitions.

It's a proposal. It is not in effect and may change or never finalize.

But notice the mechanism. The district court's problem with the proclamation fee was that imposing a financial burden of that size needed authorization the government didn't have. A notice-and-comment rulemaking is a different posture with a different legal footing. If you've been planning on the assumption that the courts made this whole category go away, that assumption is weaker than it was in July.

What it changes about housing decisions

Less than the headlines suggest for this quarter, and more than nothing for next year.

For the assignments you're placing now, nothing moved. The fee isn't being collected, the scope didn't change, and your Q4 arrivals face the same processing they faced in August. The split between committing on your domestic transfers and optioning the international ones is still the right structure.

For 2027, two assumptions deserve a second look. The proclamation now covers the entire year rather than expiring in September, so you can't build a plan around it going away mid-year. And if your company has had layoffs, the approval timeline on international hires may carry variance it didn't carry before, which is an argument for more flexible housing terms on those specific placements rather than across your whole book.

I'd also stop treating "the fee is blocked" as a stable fact to plan around. It's accurate today. Between a live appeal and a proposed rule seeking a similar amount through a sturdier route, the probability that something in this category is collectible in 2027 is not small.

Booking against it

Keep separating populations. Domestic transfers and status changes for people already here get normal terms. Arrivals from abroad get flexible holds with a stated decision date.

Where you have layoff history in the same function as a sponsored role, add buffer to the start date rather than to the booking length. A delayed start is cheap if the unit was held rather than leased; it's expensive if you signed a firm ninety days from a date that slips.

And write the cancellation and date-change terms before you need them. Who eats the cost when a relocation falls through is decided entirely by what the agreement says, and the agreements that protect you get negotiated when the provider wants your business, not when your employee's visa slips.

If you're building 2027 numbers this month, the line worth adding is a contingency on international placements specifically, rather than a flat percentage across everything.

The part you control

Most of this is weather. A court will rule or it won't, a rule will finalize or it won't, and no mobility team has a vote in any of it.

The layoff provision is different, and it's the reason I bothered writing this. It ties an immigration outcome to something your own organization decides. That's worth a conversation between whoever runs mobility and whoever runs workforce planning, and at most companies I deal with those two people have never been in a room together.

Have that conversation before you're explaining to a candidate why their start date moved twice.

Placing international hires into the Peninsula or South Bay for Q4 or 2027? Request a free consultation and we'll structure holds around your actual start-date risk rather than a best case.

Sources

• Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers — The White House, September 18, 2026
• Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Further Enhances Program Integrity and Interagency Coordination in the H-1B Visa Program — The White House
• H-1B FAQ — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
• Presidential Proclamation on Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
• DHS Proposes Additional H-1B Fee — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, August 24, 2026
• Modification of Registration Requirement for Petitioners Seeking to File Cap-Subject H-1B Petitions — Federal Register
• Appellate Court Pauses $100,000 H-1B Fee Policy as Appeal Continues — Littler