What Legal Authority Does the Administration Rely on to Impose $100,000 Fees for New H1B Visas?

At the Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin has a piece that provides a policy critique of this decision from his Cato colleague David Bier and then a discussion of the legal issues. Here’s some of the legal discussion:

As David Bier notes, the new $100,000 fee is likely illegal, because the statutes authorizing H-1B fees only allow for fees to recoup administrative costs and some other types expenses. They certainly don’t authorize anything remotely resembling a $100,000 fee.

Trump is trying to get around these constraints by relying on 8 U.S.C. Section 1182(f) , gives the president the authority to “bar the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States” whose admission he finds “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” …

[I]t is far from clear