Legal setback for Trump: Second judge halts $100,000 H-1B visa fee

File photo: Second judge blocks $100,000 visa fee A second US federal judge has blocked US President Donald Trump’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, dealing another legal setback to the administration’s attempt to sharply increase the cost of the programme.US district judge Haywood Gilliam in Oakland, California, ruled that US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the State Department failed to follow required rule-making procedures before putting the fee into effect.Gilliam granted a request from a coalition of unions, employers and nonprofit organisations that are challenging the fee in court. The ruling prevents the agencies from implementing the charge while that case proceeds.The plaintiffs argued that federal agencies could not introduce the fee without following the notice-and-comment procedures required under US administrative law.Gilliam agreed that the agencies had failed to follow those procedures before implementing the fee.The ruling comes after another federal judge in Boston separately blocked the fee in June in a case brought by 20 US states. That judge, US District Judge Leo Sorokin, concluded that the administration had...