When Spanish and Portuguese Prof. Jorge Coronado was a department chair in the early 2010s, he never wondered if the international faculty he hired would get a visa.
Once departments had selected the best candidate for the job, they let Northwestern’s Office of International Student and Scholar Services handle the applicant’s paperwork, Coronado said. Fees for an H-1B visa, reserved for highly specialized workers like world-renowned professors, typically ranged from $1,700 to $4,500, but he said he always expected NU to cover the cost.
“It was to such a point that we just didn’t think about it,” Coronado said. “It wasn’t like they were saying, ‘Hey, what does this person get, a J-1 or an H-1B?’ Nobody would ask you that.”
On Sept. 19, the Trump administration issued a presidential proclamation adding a new $100,000 fee, on top of the existing fees, to petitions for new H-1B visas. Today, NU department chairs find themselves reckoning with the new visa petition fee on top of an existing hiring freeze.
While students worried about their international peers’ chances of securing a worker visa after graduation, faculty wondered aloud about how the H-1B fee would impact the University’s standing in the global research community.
In 2025, USCIS approved 84 new employee H-1B visas and 51 renewals for NU, according to the department’s data. These numbers mirror previous years since 2017.
Fifth-year musicology Ph.D. candidate Kristian Rodriguez, who is also the Bienen School of Music divisional chief steward for the NU Graduate Workers union, said many of their peers have given up on working in the U.S. after finishing their graduate programs.
Rodriguez predicted that visa restrictions like the H-1B fee will narrow application pools as international candidates look for positions outside the U.S.
“That is going to have a significant impact on the quality and vibrancy of our workforce at Northwestern,” they said. “It depends on skilled labor from outside the United States at all levels — undergraduate, graduate, postdoc, faculty and so forth.”
According to Inside Higher Ed, U.S. universities employed more than 16,000 international workers on approved H-1B visas, making up about 5% of the total approved H-1B visas for the 2025 fiscal year.
A Ph.D. candidate who requested to remain anonymous because they are actively searching for a job said they are aiming for a research and development position at a private company in the U.S., which would likely require an H-1B visa.
They said some research labs lack job security because of funding concerns. If they got laid off from an underfunded lab, they said, they would lose their H-1B status.
Other private companies are restricting job applications to U.S. citizens or green card holders because of federal funding issues, they added. Still, despite advice from mentors in the industry to leave the country and return when they have more experience, they continue to search for a position in the U.S.
“I made some very good friends here in the U.S., either with other international students or domestic students, so I do have some bonds here,” they said. “If I leave the U.S., I won’t be able to see some of my friends for several years.”
Ian Wagreich, an immigration lawyer who helps universities manage student and temporary work visas, said the presidential proclamation initially appeared to apply to people who already had H-1B visas.
Employers across the country panicked, he said, thinking that H-1B visa holders abroad had to return to the U.S. before the proclamation took effect.
After the proclamation, the NU Office of International Student and Scholar Services issued a statement advising H-1B visa workers that were out of the country to return to the U.S. by the time the proclamation was set to take effect Sept. 21.
The White House later clarified that the fee would only apply to new visa applications, not to current holders or renewals. The next day, the University updated their statement calling attention to the White House’s clarification, but did not retract their original advice to return to the U.S.
Wagreich said it remains to be seen how the “broadly written” proclamation will be interpreted down the line. He added that it may not apply to international students currently enrolled in U.S. universities.
“That’s what it appears today,” Wagreich said. “Who knows if it’ll be the same tomorrow?”
The Ph.D. candidate who requested to remain anonymous said they hope the new fee will not apply to U.S.-based students like them. They are waiting to finish their program at NU until they secure a job offer because they need to maintain status in order to avoid the fee, they added.
Wagreich said it’s unclear if employers will only have to pay the fee once or if it will apply to every petition they file. Whatever the specifics, he said the policy is likely to make H-1B visas too expensive for smaller employers, including universities.
Wagreich added that he expects higher education associations or healthcare providers in underserved areas to file suit against the proclamation.
The new fee comes after the University announced a faculty and staff hiring freeze in June — just one of a litany of cost-cutting measures taken by the University in recent months. Weinberg Prof. Kevin Boyle, who serves as a history department chair, said it was unclear how the H-1B fee would affect recruitment if the hiring freeze was lifted.
Now the director of Weinberg’s Andean Cultures and Histories working group, Coronado said that the federal government’s new policies have heightened anxieties for his international colleagues, causing many to turn down collaborations or positions with American universities.
He said exchanging ideas and engaging with professors from other countries has provided tremendous value to his classrooms in over 20 years at NU.
“My closest colleagues in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, I mean, some of them were born here, but many of them were born somewhere else,” Coronado said. “I’m talking about brilliant faculty. What would it mean for them to not be able to be here and teach students?”
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Related Stories:
— Northwestern calls for H-1B visa holders to return to U.S. by 12:01 a.m. Sept. 21
— Northwestern advises international students, warns of travel risk following U.S. visa policy changes
