A new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas in the United States that goes into effect on Sunday will be levied per petition and will not be applied to existing visa holders re-entering the country, the White House said on Saturday.

Axar.az reports “This is not an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X on Saturday.

A petition is a request by a company to bring a skilled worker from another country into the United States.

Leavitt said on X that H-1B visa holders can leave and re-enter the country as they normally would and that the new fee would only apply in the next H-1B lottery round and not to current visa holders or renewals.

The White House said the fee was being imposed to level the playing field for American workers which it said are being “replaced with lower-paid foreign labor.”

In a fact sheet distributed on Saturday, the White House said it would allow an H-1B visa application without the $100,000 fee on a case-by-case basis “if in the national interest.”

Trump’s proclamation requires the Departments of Labor and Homeland Security to issue joint guidance for verification, enforcement, audits, and penalties, and directs the Labor Secretary to start a rulemaking process to “revise the prevailing wage levels for the H-1B program” and “to prioritize high-skilled, high-paid H-1B workers.”