Congress quietly raises cost of hiring foreign workers—but unclear who pays.
S. 5155 — American Hiring Transparency Act · Filed by Rick Scott (R-FL) · Introduced Jul 28, 2026 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill requires employers filing for permanent labor certification to hire foreign workers to pay a fee of at least $10,000 per application, adjusted annually for inflation. Half the collected fees fund a dedicated account to improve the USAJOBS website and labor market testing infrastructure; the other half goes to the general Treasury. The fee cannot be waived or reduced.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a mandatory fee on permanent labor certification applications, designed to increase the cost of hiring foreign workers and fund domestic labor market infrastructure. It is fundamentally a pricing/revenue instrument tied to immigration policy, not a broad labor or hiring reform.
What the text implies
- The fee may be passed through to visa-sponsored workers as a cost-of-hire, reducing their net compensation or making sponsorship less attractive to employers, potentially harming the workers the bill aims to protect.
- The bill does not specify how SecDOL will set fees above $10,000 or what criteria will govern annual adjustments, creating discretionary authority with limited transparency.
The full analysis lists 4 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
U.S. domestic workers (potential wage/employment protection); Federal government (general fund revenue); Department of Labor (discretionary spending authority)