DHS Secretary Mullin 'Two Lakh Applicants Paid $1 Lakh for H-1B Visas'

More than two lakh applicants opted to pay USD 100,000 for their H-1B visas to work in the US in the fiscal year 2026, Markwayne Mullin, Secretary, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said here. 

Testifying before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Tuesday, Mullin said the DHS had received about 2.86 lakh H-1B applications in the fiscal year 2026. "We had 286,000 applicants a year to date for the H-1B visas, out of those, over 200,000 of them paid USD 100,000 to be able to come in because it allows us to process them in a little bit faster of a manner," Mullin said in response to a question by US



Senator Susan Collins on the shortage of doctors in rural parts of the country.

Mullin said applicants paying USD 100,000 get their papers processed in about 15 days and it takes about 7.5 months to process other applications. Collins told the subcommittee that a hospital in Presque Isle, a rural community in northern Maine, recently had to pay the fee to secure a much-needed surgeon from overseas. 

She said that medical service providers serving remote areas should be treated differently from employers recruiting highly skilled workers in sectors with larger domestic labour pools.