Consular H-1B petitions fell 91% after the $100,000 fee. The annual cap still filled.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services tables in a Department of Homeland Security fee study show how hard employers hit the brakes on overseas H-1B hires after the $100,000 surcharge. From September 21, 2025 through May 24, 2026, USCIS received 1,212 initial consular Form I-129 H-1B petitions. In the same stretch a year earlier, the tally was 13,823. That is a 91.2 percent drop in the lane the fee was designed to price: workers applying from outside the United States.

The surcharge came from Presidential Proclamation 10973, signed September 19, 2025 and effective September 21. It restricted entry for certain H-1B specialty-occupation workers unless the petition carried an extra $100,000 payment. Extensions and many in-country change-of-status filings sat outside the core hit. For Indian IT staffing firms that had long moved people from Bangalore or Hyderabad onto U.S. client sites, the overnight math was brutal. Financial Express published the appendix tables on September 8, 2026. DHS had already used those elasticity numbers in an August Federal Register proposal for a separate fee.

A handful of employers absorbed most of the registration collapse. Comparing H-1B cap registrations for fiscal year 2026 with fiscal year 2027, Infosys Limited fell from 8,886 registrations to 759. Tata Consultancy Services dropped from 5,955 to 284. Cognizant Technology Solutions went from 3,752 to a blank in the published table. HCL America and IBM also shed thousands of registrations. In FY2025, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro had each routed roughly three-quarters or more of their initial H-1B receipts through consular notification. Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, with heavier domestic pipelines, saw more modest drops.

That firm split shows up at the kitchen table. A cousin already inside the United States on Optional Practical Training after an F-1 student visa, or on H-4 as the spouse of an H-1B holder, still had a path into the lottery without the six-figure surcharge. A sibling waiting on an offer letter in Pune did not. The annual 85,000-slot H-1B cap still filled for FY2027. USCIS announced on July 17, 2026 that it had enough petitions for the regular 65,000 and the 20,000 master's exemption, with no second lottery. Unique registrations fell 38.5 percent, to about 211,600 from 343,981. That is steep. It is still a different scale from a 91 percent collapse in the overseas petition lane.

The cap survived because registration and consular filing are different doors. Most selected beneficiaries already sit inside the United States, often moving from F-1 status through OPT into a change of status. In FY2024, USCIS reported that about 54 percent of approved initial H-1B petitions requested change of status, and nearly three-quarters of those change-of-status beneficiaries had prior F-1 or F-2 status (students and their spouses or children). FY2027 also ran under a new wage-weighted lottery that favored higher-paid offers. Among selected beneficiaries, 71.5 percent held U.S. advanced degrees, up from 57 percent the year before. Slot counts held. The cheap overseas queue did not.

Anyone still budgeting a start date needs the legal timeline as much as the petition counts. On June 8, 2026, Judge Leo T. Sorokin of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated the agency policy implementing the proclamation in State of California v. Mullin, treating the payment as an unauthorized tax. After a brief administrative stay, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on July 24 denied the government's request to keep collecting while it appeals. As of mid-September, USCIS guidance and immigration counsel treat the $100,000 fee as unenforceable, though the merits appeal continues. By its own terms, Proclamation 10973 expires around September 21, 2026 unless extended. Separately, DHS proposed on August 25 a different $103,265 fee on all H-1B cap-subject petitions. That notice of proposed rulemaking is not in force; it would run through ordinary notice-and-comment, not a proclamation.

Companies that lived on fresh consular H-1Bs are already adjusting. The pattern showing up now is extensions and transfers for people already on H-1B, more local U.S. hiring, work parked in India global capability centers, and nearshore teams in Canada or Mexico when the client still wants North American hours. Corporate margins can survive that shift. A first-gen professional whose plan assumed a fresh consular H-1B and a U.S. payroll for parents' wires faces a different budget picture: longer waits abroad, more remittance pressure on relatives already here, and less confidence that next March's lottery is still an open door from home.

Keep the 91 percent figure tied to the right pile of paper. It covers initial consular petitions during the fee window. Cap registrations still ran in the hundreds of thousands. Put counsel updates on the Massachusetts vacatur, the First Circuit appeal, and any proclamation extension on the same calendar as rent and family support. Stress-test a delayed or offshore start in the Family Support Budget Calculator, and price a status gap with Visa and Job Change Runway When Leave Means Status Risk.

Today's Asian $121,700 income median piece is the longer view of how H-1B selection helps print group earnings. This table is the shorter view. When the overseas lane gets a six-figure toll, the employers who depended on it stop filing. The domestic student-to-H-1B path keeps the cap full. Households feel it as which sibling can still board the plane.

This is reporting on published USCIS tables, Federal Register rulemaking, and court orders, not immigration advice. Coverage, refunds, and start dates turn on petition facts that only a qualified attorney can read for your file.