❄️ Happy New Year! Today's newsletter is 720 words, a quick 4-min read.

 📅 Immigration Insiders Meeting with April Padilla: Don’t miss our first meeting of 2026 with April Padilla, former Division Chief, Security Fraud Division (SCOPS) at USCIS.

April brings 28 years of experience at USCIS in adjudications, SCOPS, policy, fraud detection, risk assessment, and special projects, and is going to help us break down:

• The role of fraud vs. disqualification for EB-1A, NIW, and O-1 approval and RFE trends

• What types of ‘fraud’ signals USCIS will be looking for in the new Weighted H-1B lottery

• And more!

1 big thing: The $100k H-1B fee is (more) real now

On Dec 24, a judge ruled against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s legal challenge to the Trump administration’s $100k fee to be paid by employers on behalf of new H-1B recipients who are located outside of the U.S. at the time of their approval.

Reuters reported this week that a U.S. appeals court agreed to expedite the Chamber’s appeal, agreeing to a plan that will allow oral arguments to proceed in February.

Why it matters: With roughly 50 days until the H-1B lottery registration opens, companies must assume that any registered employee located outside the U.S. will be subject to the $100k fee starting October 1, 2026—if selected.

There are two other serious legal challenges mounted against the $100k H-1B fee. That said, there is no clear timeline on either. Even the Chamber’s appeal doesn’t guarantee the opportunity for a judge to grant an injunction prior to the H-1B registration period in early March.

Programming Note: We’ll have Kara Lynum—former Acting General Counsel at DHS—back co-hosting our Immigration Insiders meeting on Jan 28 to help breakdown the likely timelines for all of these court challenges ahead of the H-1B lottery.

2. Final rule published for the Weighted H-1B lottery

The final rule was published in the Federal Register on Dec 29, and will take effect on Feb 27. This will be about 1.5 weeks before registration opens for this year’s H-1B lottery.

Ahead of the game: If you’re a subscriber of this newsletter, this news shouldn’t have shocked you. We covered the timing and implications of this rule extensively in the Dec 18 edition of the newsletter.

We also unveiled our free Weighted H-1B Lottery Simulator tool for global mobility teams to simulate how their registration strategy will impact their organization's selection odds under a variety of scenarios in this year's H-1B lottery.

And if you're a global mobility leader interested in a complimentary walkthrough and custom report on your H-1B selection odds, shoot me an email at [email protected].

3. The official USCIS data is late…again

For the second quarter in a row, USCIS has missed the historically normal release date for its latest data dump. On Dec 31, USCIS was expected to release its government Q4 data—covering USCIS case processing data from Jul 1 - Sep 30, 2025.

But as of today, that data is still missing from the USCIS data library page.

Why it matters: The State Department already stopped publishing monthly visa issuance data entirely in May. There was no notice when this happened, and there has been no official explanation from State on why the data is no longer being published.

Government data already lags significantly, but if publishing stops entirely, businesses and individuals will be forced to rely on the highly unreliable FOIA process to obtain things like H-1B RFE rates, NIW approval rates, and I-485 processing times.

This is part of why so many law firms and global mobility teams are subscribing to Lawfully Intelligence—our monthly subscription for immigration practitioners to access our most detailed, real-time USCIS case processing data for 23 employment-based case types.

Regardless of if or when USCIS publishes it’s official data, our subscribers have access to the real-time national trends.

Email me at [email protected] and I’ll get you set up with a subscription.

It’s $499/month, but we’re offering a 1-month trial discount until Jan 30. There’s no commitment and you can cancel anytime.

Here’s a sneak peak of one of the 60+ data points we track monthly exclusively for our subscribers:

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📩 That’s it for this week! I want to hear your feedback and questions, so drop me a note anytime at [email protected].

See you next week!