The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has proposed a $100,000 fee on participation in the Foreign Graduate Work Program, a federal pathway that lets recent international graduates of U.S. universities work in the country.

The proposal appeared in a Bloomberg Law News headline on the rulemaking. The full text of the proposed rule had not been published in the Federal Register at the time of the report, so several implementation details — the effective date, who pays, and whether exemptions apply — remain unconfirmed.

What is the Foreign Graduate Work Program?

The Foreign Graduate Work Program is the federal scheme through which U.S. employers hire recent foreign university graduates for practical training tied to their field of study. A $100,000 fee attached to that pathway would represent a steep departure from current cost structures for the programme.

DHS framed the proposal as a response to programme administration costs and to the visa-credential systems that support the work-authorisation pipeline, according to the Bloomberg Law headline summary.

Who would pay the $100,000?

The Bloomberg Law headline does not specify whether the fee would fall on:

• The U.S. employer sponsoring the foreign graduate
• The graduate themselves
• The sponsoring university or academic institution

Without the full proposed rule, the payee cannot be confirmed. Practitioners tracking the rule will look for the Federal Register notice, which typically specifies the payee, the timing of payments, and any transition rules for participants already enrolled in the programme.

How does the U.S. rulemaking process work?

A fee proposal at the $100,000 level would normally move through a multi-step federal process:

• Publication in the Federal Register as a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
• A public comment period during which employers, universities, immigration lawyers, and affected workers can submit feedback
• Review of comments by DHS
• Publication of a final rule, with an effective date set in the final rule itself

The timeline from proposal to effective date is not fixed. Large fee changes often take several months to a year to finalise, especially when they draw industry opposition.

Why the fee matters

A $100,000 fee per foreign graduate would change the economics of the programme substantially. Smaller U.S. employers and the universities that channel international students into the workforce typically operate on margins that a six-figure fee would compress. Large employers with dedicated immigration counsel might absorb the cost; smaller firms and start-ups could not.

The proposal also lands during a period of active immigration-policy revision in Washington, where several work-authorisation programmes are under review. How the Foreign Graduate Work Program fee interacts with those parallel reviews will shape the comment period.

What readers should do

Readers should not treat the Bloomberg Law headline as final policy. DHS proposals commonly change during the comment period, and the published rule may differ materially from the headline description.

The authoritative source for the full text, comment instructions, and effective date is the Federal Register, with supporting materials posted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the DHS press office once the rule is published.