What Actually Changed Today

As of today, September 9, 2026, a routine action that used to cost qualifying employers nothing extra now comes with a bill attached. The Department of Homeland Security's expanded 9-11 Response and Biometric Entry-Exit Fee rule takes effect, and it applies to H-1B and L-1 extension petitions that were previously exempt, including the most common scenario of all: an employee simply extending their status with the same employer, no job change, no new sponsor, nothing unusual.

If your client or your employer falls into the specific category this rule targets, this is not a minor administrative update. It's a real, immediate cost increase on filings that used to be routine.

Wait, Is This a New Fee, or an Old One?

Here's the detail worth getting right before you explain this to anyone. This is not a brand new fee category. The 9-11 Response and Biometric Entry-Exit Fee, often called the 9-11 Fee, has existed for years, tied back to the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016. What changed is not the fee itself, but which filings it now applies to.

Previously, DHS collected this fee only when a covered employer filed an initial H-1B or L-1 petition, or a change of employer petition. Extension petitions, particularly the routine kind where an employee stays with the same employer, were exempt entirely. DHS now says that exemption was based on an incorrect reading of the law, and that Congress always intended the fee to apply to extensions too. The agency backed this up with a striking number: only 27 percent of H-1B petitions filed by covered employers between fiscal years 2018 and 2025 were actually charged this fee, a gap DHS says reflects years of extensions slipping through without payment.

So the honest way to describe this to a client is: the fee amount hasn't changed, but the loophole that let most extensions avoid it just closed.

Who Actually Has to Pay This

This rule does not apply to every employer sponsoring H-1B or L-1 workers. It specifically targets what the rule calls covered employers, meaning companies that employ 50 or more people in the United States, where more than half of that entire US workforce holds H-1B or L-1A/L-1B status. This is the same threshold that has always defined an "H-1B dependent employer" for this fee, staffing companies and IT consultancies with a heavily H-1B and L-1 based workforce being the clearest examples.

If your company has fewer than 50 US employees, or if H-1B and L-1 workers make up half or less of your workforce, this expanded rule does not apply to you at all. That distinction matters enormously, since it means the impact is concentrated on a specific slice of the employer landscape, not the entire H-1B sponsoring population.

[INTERNAL LINK: How to check if your company qualifies as an H-1B dependent employer]

The Exemption That Just Disappeared

This is the part that will catch people off guard if they haven't been tracking it closely. Until today, a covered employer filing a straightforward extension for an employee who was staying in the same role, with the same employer, paid no 9-11 Biometric Fee at all. That exemption is gone as of September 9, 2026.

Going forward, covered employers must include the fee with every qualifying H-1B and L-1 extension petition, every single time they file one, for every affected employee. There is no grace period. Petitions submitted without the correct fee are being rejected outright, not processed with a follow up request for payment. One meaningful carve out remains: amended petitions that do not actually request an extension of status stay exempt, so not every filing touching an existing case triggers the fee.

How Much This Actually Costs

The fee amounts themselves have not changed, which is worth clarifying since some confusion has understandably spread about this being a brand new charge. It remains $4,000 per H-1B petition and $4,500 per L-1 petition. What's new is simply how often covered employers will now be paying it, since routine extensions, previously the most common way this fee was avoided, now trigger it just like an initial petition or a change of employer filing does.

For a company that files even a modest number of H-1B or L-1 extensions each year, this adds up quickly. DHS itself estimates the change will generate an additional $37.9 million in federal revenue in fiscal year 2026 alone, and $40 million in fiscal year 2027, numbers that only make sense if a large volume of previously fee-free extensions are now being charged.

During the rulemaking process, DHS received 146 public comments, many raising cost concerns on behalf of employers, and the agency itself estimated that as many as 16 percent of small businesses filing H-1B or L-1 petitions could be affected. DHS acknowledged the added burden but maintained that the change reflects the correct legal reading of the statute, not new policy invented from scratch.

How This Fits Into 2026's Bigger H-1B Cost Picture

This isn't happening in isolation. Anyone advising H-1B clients this year has already had to explain the separate $100,000 proclamation fee that took effect in September 2025, which applies to new H-1B petitions for beneficiaries outside the US who don't already hold a valid H-1B visa, generally tied to consular processing cases. That fee and this one are entirely different mechanisms, covering different situations, and it's worth being precise about which applies where.

The proclamation fee targets new entries from abroad. This expanded biometric fee targets ongoing extensions for employers with a heavily H-1B and L-1 dependent workforce. A client or employer could conceivably face neither, one, or both, depending entirely on their specific filing type and workforce composition, which is exactly why generic "H-1B got more expensive" summaries aren't good enough anymore. The details of which fee applies to which filing now genuinely matter for accurate cost planning.

Before vs After: What Changed for Covered Employers

What Employers and Consultants Should Do Right Now

1. Identify every covered employer in your client base immediately. Confirm which employers meet the 50 employee, majority H-1B/L-1 workforce threshold, since this determines whether the rule applies at all.
2. Audit upcoming extension filings. Flag any H-1B or L-1 extensions with expiration dates in the coming months and confirm whether they fall under the newly expanded fee requirement.
3. Update immigration budgets now, not later. For employers filing a high volume of extensions, the aggregate cost increase can be substantial, and this needs to be built into annual planning immediately rather than discovered filing by filing.
4. Double check every extension petition includes the correct fee before submission, since petitions filed without it are being rejected outright, with no grace period or opportunity to add the fee after the fact.
5. Keep the $100,000 proclamation fee and this biometric fee expansion clearly separated in client communications, since conflating the two leads to inaccurate cost estimates and confused clients.

Quick Checklist for Covered Employers

• Confirmed the company meets the 50+ employee, majority H-1B/L-1 workforce threshold that triggers this rule
• Reviewed all pending and upcoming H-1B and L-1 extension petitions for fee applicability
• Updated internal immigration budget projections to reflect the expanded fee
• Verified whether any planned filings qualify as amended petitions without an extension request, which remain exempt
• Distinguished this fee clearly from the separate $100,000 proclamation fee in all client or internal communications

The Bigger Picture

This rule is a good reminder that not every cost increase in the H-1B and L-1 system comes from a dramatic new policy. Sometimes it comes from an agency deciding it had been under collecting an existing fee for years and closing that gap all at once. For covered employers, the practical effect is the same either way: extensions that used to be routine and free now carry a real, unavoidable cost, starting today.