A DHS final rule expanding the 9-11 Response and Biometric Entry-Exit Fee took effect on September 9, 2026. The change is narrow in who it covers but expensive where it lands: certain employers must now pay $4,000 on H-1B petitions and $4,500 on L-1 petitions for straightforward extensions with the same employer, a situation that previously carried no such fee.
The fee itself is not new. Commonly called the “50-50 fee,” it has applied since 2010 to covered employers filing petitions that involve an initial grant of H-1B or L-1 status or a change of employer. What the final rule changes is scope. Covered employers must now submit the fee for all extension of status petitions, including same-employer extensions that involve no change in job, location, or terms — and regardless of whether the separate fraud prevention and detection fee applies to the filing.
The definition of “covered employer” is what limits the reach. An employer falls in scope only if it employs 50 or more people in the United States and more than 50% of those employees hold H-1B or L-1A or L-1B status, counted in the aggregate. Most employers, including most universities, hospitals and mid-sized technology companies, fall outside that test. The firms that meet it are predominantly large IT staffing and outsourcing businesses whose U.S. headcount is majority visa-holding — which is precisely the population Congress targeted when it created the fee.
The operational trigger is the filing date, not the approval date. Form I-129 petitions postmarked or electronically submitted on or after September 9, 2026 must include the required fees. A petition mailed before that date under the prior rule is unaffected, but one filed on or after it without the fee is subject to rejection, which for an extension filing can be consequential: a rejected petition is not a filed petition, so an employee relying on the 240-day work authorization that follows a timely-filed extension may not actually have it.
For workers at affected employers, the practical exposure is indirect but real. The fee is a statutory employer obligation and cannot lawfully be passed to the employee for H-1B petitions, where the rules on employer-borne costs are strict. What can happen is that employers facing an extra $4,000 per extension become more selective about which extensions they sponsor, or push renewals toward alternative arrangements. Anyone at a company that plausibly meets the 50-50 test should confirm with their employer that extension filings scheduled for this fall include the fee, since the cost of a rejected extension falls on the employee’s status even though the filing error belongs to the employer.
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