Washington, Sept. 24 -- The Trump administration's new $100,000 fee on every new H-1B petition, paired with a plan to tilt future selections toward higher-paid jobs, has upended hiring calendars from Silicon Valley to hospital systems and research universities. Executives and graduate students spent the weekend recalculating costs, while immigration lawyers rushed out advisories that read more like emergency playbooks than routine client updates. What looks, on paper, like a simple surcharge and a shift in selection mechanics is already functioning as a de facto brake on skilled immigration, particularly for entry-level roles and for employers outside Big Tech and Big Finance. As the development ricocheted through the market, an NBC News ...