Washington: In what appears to be the first major challenge to the new $100,000 fee required for H1B visa applications, a coalition of health care providers, religious groups, university professors and others filed a federal lawsuit Friday to stop the plan, saying it has “thrown employers, workers and federal agencies into chaos.”

US President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on September 19 requiring the new fee, saying the H1B visa program “has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labour.” The changes were slated to go into effect in 36 hours, which caused panic for employers, who instructed their workers to return to the US immediately. The lawsuit, filed in US District Court in San Francisco, said the H1B program is a critical pathway to hiring healthcare workers and educators. It drives innovation and economic growth in the US and allows employers to fill jobs in specialised fields, the lawsuit said. “Without relief, hospitals will lose medical staff, churches will lose pastors, classrooms will lose teachers, and industries across the country risk losing key innovators,” Democracy Forward Foundation and Justice Action Centre said in a press release. “The suit asks the court to immediately block the order and restore predictability for employers and workers.” They called the new fee “Trump's latest anti-immigration power grab.” Messages seeking comment from the Department of Homeland Security and US Customs and Border Protection, which are named as defendants along with Trump and the State Department, were not immediately returned. The H1B visa program was created by Congress to attract high-skilled workers to fill jobs that tech companies find difficult to fill. About a third of H-1B workers are nurses, teachers, physicians, scholars, priests and pastors, according to the lawsuit.