US Court Halts H-1B Fee Hike as Tech Hiring Jumps 31%

The June 2026 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Massachusetts struck down the fee as an unlawful tax, a decision that employers welcomed but cautioned was not a lasting fix. Sagar Khatri, CEO of global employment platform Multiplier, said the legal win does not change a broader climate of restrictive visa policies, including a wage-weighted selection system that favors senior professionals over early-career talent.

Multiplier's Global Hiring Gap Report, released in the second quarter of 2026, found a 31% increase in international hiring for engineering, product, and data roles from the fourth quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026. The report attributed the spike to two forces: a competitive race for specialized skills in fields like AI and digital transformation, and the operational drag of unpredictable U.S. immigration rules.

Cost savings are no longer the primary driver of global expansion, according to the report. Only 9% of organizations expand internationally mainly to cut costs. Instead, companies are seeking technical talent that is scarce domestically and are increasingly building distributed teams where workers already live, rather than relocating them to the United States.

Khatri said the H-1B system has become too unpredictable for long-term workforce planning. He noted that 37% of businesses now cite visa and immigration processing as a severe operational friction point. Under the new wage-weighted selection process, entry-level and mid-level roles face significantly lower odds of approval, making the visa pathway a gamble rather than a strategy.

The shift is structural, Khatri said, moving away from a relocation-first approach toward localized global hubs. Companies are investing in full infrastructure, including legal entities and payroll systems in multiple countries, to ensure they can hire talent wherever it resides without depending on U.S. visa outcomes.