Trump 2.0 Tuesday: Immigration Updates with Rosanna Berardi

Webinar Streamed August 11, 2026

TLDR:

• The Trump administration has rolled out five major immigration policy shifts in recent months, and the legal landscape is changing fast.
• A federal appeals court has currently blocked enforcement of the $100,000 H-1B filing fee, but the litigation is ongoing. F-1 international students lose “duration of status” on September 15, 2026, meaning they’ll now face a hard expiration date instead of open-ended status.
• USCIS is also applying heightened scrutiny to public charge determinations on green card applications, TPS has been terminated for Haiti and Syria, and a new $250 visa integrity fee now applies to many non-immigrant visa categories.
• Employers and foreign nationals alike need to stay on top of these fast-moving changes. Berardi Immigration Law is tracking them closely.

Transcript:

Welcome to the Berardi Immigration Law and Barclay Damon Trump Tuesday webinar. I’m Rosanna Berardi. I’m the managing partner of Berardi Immigration Law and of counsel to Barclay Damon. We’re a business immigration law firm. We help clients and companies get work permits, green cards, and citizenship, and boy, do we have a lot to talk about today.

So if you follow us on social or you read any of our blogs, it’s my personal feeling that the Trump administration has a very specific campaign, and that is not to fix immigration like they promised on the campaign trail, but rather to send a message that America’s closed.

Whether it’s illegal or legal immigration, we’ve seen a series of policies this year, it doesn’t seem to stop. Every other week, there’s a new policy memo closing the door on some very long-established immigration concepts.

So today, we’re gonna go over about 5 of them. They’re really important and they’re critical. It’s even hard for us to keep up with, but I wanna give you a good overview of what’s going on. And remember, we have a businessman as president. We have somebody that really knows how to market, and it’s my personal opinion that all of these immigration policies and memoranda that are coming out are part and parcel of a marketing message that America is closed but guess what? It’s not.

I’ve owned this firm for 21 years. We are busy as ever. Is it harder to get people into the US? It is. Is America closed? It’s not. So let’s begin today with a big one. So you might have heard that, hey, when you don’t know what to charge somebody to discourage them from entering a country, you pick one hundred thousand dollars.

So in September of ’25, I remember I was out to dinner and got a text from my team saying if an H-1B petition, the filing fee is now a hundred thousand dollars. What? That’s crazy. It is crazy, but that was the proposal from the administration.

Made a lot of noise. There are so many companies that are reliant upon H-1B workers, particularly in tech, particularly in medicine. Now, whether you like that or not, H-1Bs play a significant portion and a significant part of the US labor force and economy. So employers, rightfully so, were freaking out saying, “What? I was paying like five thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars for an H-1B, now I have to pay 100?” The chief marketing officer, AKA President Trump, got a lot of headlines and a lot of noise on this one, rightfully so. So what happened?

As lawyers, we’re like, “This is never gonna fly.” You just can’t arbitrarily decide from one day to the other to increase the fee times a billion. So lots of states challenged this. There’s so many people out there saying, “Companies will never pay this,” blah, blah, blah. Guess what?

Companies have paid this. You know why? They need workers. Why don’t they hire Americans? ‘Cause there aren’t any for the positions. I can go on about that for days. Nonetheless, it’s been back and forth, back and forth in the court system. It’s been like a tennis match, constantly pushed back, challenged the fee. The federal court agreed with it, then somebody vacated the guidelines.

What you need to know today, right now, August 11th of 2026, is that a court, a federal appeals court, denied the government’s request to keep enforcing the fee, the one hundred thousand dollar fee, while litigation continues. So right now, today, the one hundred thousand dollar H-1B filing fee for H-1B foreign nationals outside of the United States is not being enforced.

Today, the appeal is still active. The tennis match still continues. What does this mean for you if you want an H-1B or you’re an employer that relies upon this program? Well, overnight, boy, did it surely get expensive. The government was viewing this as a punitive measure. Hey, you want H-1B employees, government, hospital, Meta, NVIDIA? You’re gonna pay for it.

Guess what? They still will. But anyway, there’s just a lot of uncertainty going on with this appeals. This is probably gonna change again. We’re constantly blogging. We’re constantly putting up videos. So watch this one closely. But for today, August 11th- If you’re thinking about hiring H-1B, make sure you check in with us or someone about where this stands. This is not a, “Oh, it doesn’t apply. We’re good.” No, it doesn’t apply for now. For now, today.

It’s difficult to get an H-1B. Have we obtained them for many, many people this year? We have. Did some people pay the expensive fee? They did. And we’re gonna watch this one really, really closely. So before you decide to hire someone, before you’re gonna file your H-1B petition, it’s really important to remember that the legal landscape is super fluid right now, and what was true yesterday may not be true tomorrow.

So H-1B $100,000 fee today is not being enforced. That’s a big one. That was a huge headline. Now, talk about big headlines. The administration is now obsessed with international students, the ones that come to the United States, pay double in tuition, diversify our university populations, and are the best and brightest minds in the world. The administration has a hard time with international students and is further closing the door.

Now, this is a huge change. So since the sands of time, the Immigration and Nationality Act allows foreign students to come to the United States. They have to be accepted and admitted by an accredited university or college or vocational school, and since the sands of time, they can come in and stay as long as their program. So if they have an associate’s program, it’s 2 years; bachelor’s, 4; master’s, 2 or 4; PhD, 7. People can be in the US for a long time under F-1 foreign student status. The government, upon accepting and admitting a foreign student, when I was an officer at the border, we would look at the student’s I-20 that says, University of Buffalo admitted John Smith from China to attend their bachelor’s in electrical engineering program.

He’s paying $20,000. Here’s proof that he can pay that. No, no, um, financial aid available. And what can happen then is we would then take the passport, take the I-94 card, which that is what determines how long the person can stay. I’d stamp it with my stamp, say, “John Smith, you’re in a 4year degree program. Your status expires D/S.” Now, what the heck does that mean? Duration of status, meaning you can be here as long as your program. For years and years, universities enjoyed the benefit of duration of status, which meant if John Smith finished his 4year degree and then decided he wanted a master’s, he can apply for that and just remain in the United States. Well, now the Trump administration closed the door on that and said, “No more duration of status.” John Smith, when you enter the United States, the immigration officer is gonna give you a hard stop. There’s gonna be an expiration date that John Smith is responsible for tracking. The duration of status, this fluid concept that allowed international students to go from one program to the next, will be over on September 15th. That’s just in about a month.

There is a lot of controversy about that. International students, listen up. You’ve got to pay attention. This is not just another date in your life. You no longer have an open-ended period of status. You’re going to need to monitor that. If you do wanna go from a bachelor’s to a master’s or a master’s to a doctorate, what you need to do is file for an extension through USCIS. Filing fee, timing, stress. Are they going to approve it? This is an extra burden. Why?

The administration has an idea that foreign students are a problem in the US, and it’s too loosey-goosey, and there’s too many of them rolling around, roaming around. Au contraire. Um, my personal opinion, because I live this every day, the International Student Program is heavily regulated as a result of 9/11, and universities and colleges have significant obligations in keeping international students in status.

However, now they have an additional one. This DS status will no longer exist. The ports of entry, meaning the people that you knock on the door when you fly in or drive across the border, will be told as of September 15th to do a date-certain expiration. So for employers out there, you’ve got to look at this closely.

I know many of you hire, uh, students through the OPT Work Program, also through STEM OPT. A lot of future H-1B candidates have F-1 status. There’s new additional compliance steps. There’s new monitoring guidelines, and there’s a risk here. If you miss a deadline, you’ve got somebody working without authorization, that can come back to haunt you.

So here we are with another message saying, “Well, if you want to come here, we’re going to make it hard for you, and we’re going to make it hard for all of these colleges and universities that educate the best and brightest minds in the world, that run all the major companies on the US stock market. We’re going to make it really hard for them to come to the United States and stay here.” Well, guess what?

Pay attention to your expiration date. Make sure you know what you’re doing while you’re in the US. Make sure you audit your, um, international students or any employer that wants to hire one, make sure you know if that student is in status. America’s not closed. So far, we talked about the $100,000 fee not being applied today and also the duration of status no longer existing for F1s.

Is America closed? So this one’s a beaut. The public charge memo that came out. What the heck is a public charge? Well, I’m sure you have people like this in your life that say, “These people, these foreigners come to the United States, and the first thing they do is apply for welfare benefits, and they’re on the public system for decades, and they don’t do anything.” Au contraire, public charge has existed under the Immigration and Nationality Act for 5 decades, 6 decades now.

What does that mean, a public charge? There is a mechanism under the immigration law that says if you, Mr. or Mrs. Foreign National, come to the United States in legal status, you cannot become a public charge. What does that mean? That means somebody that is reliant upon government assistance, food stamps, welfare, whatever else is under that umbrella. The public charge regulation and policy has existed for a long time to ensure people do not come in and remain on public assistance for decades and decades.

So right now, if you’re applying for a green card, if you are lucky enough to have your employer sponsor you or a US citizen via marriage, there is a component in the application called the public charge criteria. What does the government look at to make sure that you, Mrs. Foreign National, is not going to be reliant on the US government assistance program? They’re going to look at obvious things, income, your assets, your employment history, education, family support, affidavits of support from people saying, “I will support Mrs. Foreign National if something happens.” But the government’s turned this up a notch. Through law? No, through a policy memo, and they’re giving the government officers, USCIS adjudicators, a lot more bandwidth, if you will, to determine if somebody is indeed going to be a public charge. They’re looking at things closely. They’re wanting to connect the dots.

When we prepare these cases, we prepare them like it is being reviewed by a fifth grader. We make it super clear that Mrs. Foreign National is indeed employed. We have copies of her educational documents. We list her employment history very neatly to establish a chronology. We show family support or affidavits from people. We show the tax returns that were filed or bank statements. This evidence needs to be crystal clear.

Gone are the days where you submit a bank statement and hope for the best. USCIS is now charged and given a significant amount of discretion in making these determinations. So what to do? We’ve been doing this since day one, so from our firm’s perspective, there’s not a big change. But if you’re out there and you’re putting a green card application together or if one of your employees is, it’s really critical to make this easy-peasy for the officer.

Remember, you don’t want the USCIS officer to dig and have to figure out, “Well, I don’t know. She was employed in 2023.” In, in 2024, but there was nothing for 2025. Why? Maybe that person was on maternity leave and you established that.

So this public charge mechanism has been around for a long time, but the government’s looking at it microscopically. Again, is America closed? No. Are they looking closer? Yes. Be prepared. So if you’ve watched the news, or read, I can’t even say newspaper, I’m dating myself, there’s something that exists under the immigration law called Temporary Protected Status, TPS. Temporary Protected Status allows individuals from certain countries to remain in the United States if it’s not safe to return to their country. This could be because of a natural disaster like, um, an earthquake, a hurricane. Could be because of armed conflict. Any place that’s unsafe to return to, the government has a program called TPS. TPS allows individuals to stay in the United States, live and work until it is deemed safe in their country to return to. Now, this administration has gone nutso on TPS. Why?

The administration says, “This is called temporary. Why do we have people in the United States for a decade under TPS? It’s supposed to be temporary.” Well, guess what? If you live in a country like Haiti, where there’s been a natural disaster or armed conflict, unfortunately those things don’t get resolved in a year or 2 or 3. Can you imagine?

Even our own Department of State has said, “Don’t travel to Haiti, it’s not safe.” So what happened here? The Trump administration unfortunately said, um, and it was challenged at the Supreme Court level and the Supreme Court gave the government the power to do this, that TPS for Haitians and Syrians is now terminated and they must stop working in the United States and they must leave the country. TPS is critical.

There are millions of people in the United States filling very important jobs, and their ability to remain in the US is very, very blurry right now, ’cause there’s a lot of countries, there’s a lot of litigation. There’s a lot going on. TPS for Syria and Haiti, if you have any employees from these 2 countries, make sure you reach out or you look very closely at the expiration date of their employment documents.

The TPS announcements are happening every day. Man, it’s hard to keep up with this one. But we’re definitely monitoring this. Again, temporary. The holidays are coming up and if you’re having Thanksgiving and someone says, “Well, they shouldn’t be here, it’s temporary,” just remember what temporary means in the context of a natural disaster. It would be great to fix things within the year, but most of the time that doesn’t happen. So TPS, keep your eye on the ball on this one.

Finally, our last update for today, there’s a new fee. Of course there is. This administration, they’re gonna stick it to people. It’s gonna be expensive to enter the United States. Why? Because we have got the chief marketing officer saying that America’s closed or if you’re gonna come, boy are you gonna pay.

So there’s a new $250 visa integrity fee. This is a fee that is expected to apply to non-immigrant visas. When you’re in Greece or Spain or Italy and you are getting your H-1B visa from the US Embassy or Consulate in that country, the government’s going to charge you an additional fee of $250. It could potentially hit H-1B, L, F, J-1s, B-1s and other non-immigrant categories.

Now, alright, $250, not the worst thing. but this is just part and parcel of what’s happening with the administration in general. And if you’re a company that is bringing in 50 people from Greece and there is a $250 fee, that adds up considerably. So some things you have to think about as an employer, are you gonna pay for this?

Are you gonna make your employees pay for it? The government doesn’t care as long as somebody pays for it. This should be part of your budgeting. This is just another and we’re seeing this over and over and over again. So if you are gonna create your immigration budget for 2027, plan now for this additional thing.

So, we went over 5 things today. The $100,000 fee for H-1Bs not being applied, no more duration of status for F-1 non-immigrants, public charge, TPS, and the $250 visa integrity fee.

Look at this in total. Look at how these are all pieced together. These were all dropped, you know, within the last month or so. What does this mean? This is the administration saying, “We’re making it harder,” but it doesn’t mean we’re closed. We get people in all day, every day. We have a thriving practice here. We’re 25 people on our team. We’re one of lots and lots of immigration firms.

It’s important as an employer and as a foreign national that you know what you’re doing. You’re responsible for knowing this. Will it be a detriment to employers? When I do media interviews, boy, you should see the comments. “Good. Get these people out of here. They shouldn’t be here.” Well, guess what?

They are the best and the brightest that fill critical employment gaps, and I’m one person with one opinion. But if you are a foreign national coming to the United States, pay attention. You are required to know when your immigration status expires. A lot of these issues are moving targets.

They’re changing. They’re fluid. We blog. Follow us on social media. We have a very active LinkedIn page. We’re constantly doing videos. Check us out on YouTube. We are around for any questions if you have any issues. keep fighting the good fight. America is not closed, and Berardi Immigration Law is thrilled to be able to help facilitate your American dreams.

Thanks for watching, and until next time, have a great day.