Immigration-attorney pay 2026: three published seats, not a job-title average

The Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, citing Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, reports a May 2025 median annual wage for all U.S. lawyers of $159,670. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $78,360; the highest 10 percent earned more than $351,600. Industry medians in the same release sit at $178,380 in the federal government, $157,870 in legal services, $131,390 in local government and $115,330 in state government. Those figures mix every practice. They exclude most self-employed lawyers and partners of unincorporated firms. They are not an immigration-seat average. The same handbook lists 863,700 lawyers employed in 2025 and projects 5 percent growth from 2025 to 2035. That is a national lawyer stock, not an immigration headcount.

NALP's 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey, salaries as of 1 January 2025, is the lockstep perimeter. The overall median first-year associate base was $200,000 across 437 offices. By firm size, the first-year median was $150,000 at firms of 250 or fewer lawyers, $190,000 at 251–700, and $215,000 at 701 or more. The modal first-year figure was $225,000 — 32 percent of offices, and 44.7 percent of offices at 701-plus. New York City, Austin, Boston, Houston, San Francisco and the Washington, DC area had median first-year bases of $225,000. Eighth-year medians were $330,000 across all firm sizes and $375,000 at 701-plus. NALP does not break out immigration. The survey is the right instrument if the seat is an Am Law immigration group. It is the wrong instrument if the seat is a two-lawyer removal shop on a county docket.

One New York lockstep publisher still posts the ceiling some of those Am Law seats sit on. Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP's careers page, accessed 11 September 2026, states that associates in New York are paid on a base salary scale currently ranging from $225,000 to $420,000, plus a discretionary year-end bonus. The page lists Corporate, Litigation, Tax, Executive Compensation and Benefits, and Trusts and Estates. It does not list immigration. Treat that range as a posted lockstep perimeter, not as an immigration department census, and do not read it as a class-year table — those live on the 2026 associate scale.

The federal immigration-attorney perimeter is advertised, dated, and a different labor market. A USAJOBS announcement for ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor in Washington, D.C., listed GS-11 through GS-15 attorneys at $85,447–$197,200 per year. A Department of Justice Trial Attorney vacancy for the Office of Immigration Litigation, updated 23 April 2026, listed $121,785–$197,200 (GS-13 to GS-15). A Department of Justice Immigration Judge vacancy, updated 20 August 2026, listed $161,590 to $209,600. OPM Salary Table 2026-DCB, effective January 2026, puts GS-11 at $85,447–$111,087, GS-13 at $121,785–$158,322, GS-14 at $143,913–$187,093, and GS-15 at $169,279, then a $197,200 cap under 5 U.S.C. 5304(g)(1). Salary Table 2026-NY, at a 37.95 percent locality, starts GS-11 at $88,005 and still caps GS-15 at $197,200. Those tables are the ladder ICE OPLA, USCIS, DOJ OIL and other 0905 immigration-attorney seats use. They are not a survey of actual step-in-grade.

The BLS lawyer median is every practice mixed together, not an immigration seat.

USCIS's FY 2025 H-1B petition report, transmitted 11 February 2026, is the filed-volume series in the grid above; 328,185 of those petitions were approved. Filed volume ran 398,269 in FY 2021, 474,301 in FY 2022, 386,584 in FY 2023 and 427,091 in FY 2024. That is the core corporate-immigration file a general counsel buys. It is not a lawyer wage. The characteristics report's beneficiary median is client payroll, already used as a decoder caveat, and is not restated here as counsel pay.

Cap-registration demand moved the other way. USCIS, last updated 17 July 2026, recorded 343,981 eligible FY 2026 registrations against 470,342 in FY 2025, a 26.9 percent drop, while unique employers rose from about 52,700 to about 57,600. Selected registrations for FY 2026 were 120,141. USCIS states it has received enough petitions to reach the statutory 65,000 regular cap and 20,000 master's exemption for FY 2027. The registration fee is $215 per beneficiary on Form G-1055. Less lottery-volume junior processing; more mid-level work on wage-level strategy, bona-fide-job attestations and duplicate-registration risk.

DOL Office of Foreign Labor Certification, data as of 30 September 2025, received 117,849 PERM applications in FY 2025, down 22.4 percent from FY 2024, with 138,093 certified and 157,669 remaining. California, Texas, Georgia and New York were the top states of employment. In the same fiscal year the office received 575,063 Labor Condition Applications for H-1B, H-1B1 and E-3, up 7.4 percent, covering 910,968 certified positions. Green-card desks may thin relative to extension and amendment desks. That is a staffing mix inside a business-immigration group, not a hiring freeze a chief legal officer can read off a headline.

The fee line is the one a general counsel can put next to outside-counsel invoices. USCIS Form G-1055, accessed 11 September 2026, prices H-1B electronic registration at $215 per beneficiary; Form I-129 H-1B/H-1B1 paper at $780 (online $730) plus an Asylum Program Fee of $600 regular / $300 small employer / $0 nonprofit, plus a $500 fraud fee when applicable; Form I-140 paper at $715 (online $665) plus the same Asylum Program Fee schedule. 8 CFR Part 106 codifies those I-129, I-140 and Asylum Program Fee amounts. The April 2024 fee rule (89 FR 6194, effective 1 April 2024) created that Asylum Program Fee; it is still the 2026 employer-fee baseline. A company pays that schedule whether the lawyer is at Fragomen, at a labor firm, or on payroll.

Public Law 119-21, signed 4 July 2025, then put a second fee schedule on the court side. EOIR's collection portal went live in September 2025. The Federal Register of 21 January 2026 (91 FR 2561) adjusted those OBBBA fees for filings postmarked on or after 1 February 2026: Form I-485 $2,980 (EOIR share $745); I-589 initial asylum $100; cancellation 42B $1,640; EOIR-26 appeal $1,030; OCIJ motion to reopen or reconsider $1,065. A general counsel who never sees a Notice to Appear still sees the I-485 and I-140 line. A nonprofit staff attorney sees the I-589 and 42B line against an LSC appropriation that is already smaller.

A general counsel is buying a filing machine or a courtroom; those are different salaries. The make-versus-buy test on this record is not “is immigration expensive.” It is whether the company needs a named owner for I-9, inspection defense and wage-level strategy, or whether petition volume is still cheaper as a managed program at a specialized firm. The fee line is paid either way. The salary line is the one the org chart has not usually drawn.

Those 33 closed files are the New York associate-line figure, not an immigration census. Eight of them were immigration-adjacent — business mobility, I-9, or removal — over the same three years. Five of those eight were business-immigration or mobility; three were removal or hybrid. Three of the eight drew a counter-offer, the same incidence as the New York associate line's 37 percent. Median offer-to-acceptance on that line is 11 working days. Immigration-adjacent files that closed without a re-brief sat inside the 6 to 12 week window. The ones that did not are the finding this page has to carry.

Over a 24-month window we opened 12 immigration-adjacent processes in New York. Eight closed inside the 33. Four stalled before a shortlist because the brief said “immigration attorney” and the work was either I-9/compliance or removal-only, not both. Two of the eight that did close had to be re-briefed after the first slate — petition-prep names sent against a courtroom specification, or the reverse. That is the uncomfortable number. A search firm that cannot convert its own title is not a story we prefer, and it is the one that makes the rest of the telemetry believable. Quarterly surveys since 2019 keep returning the same split: companies and candidates use one job title for two books.

Of 96 New York associates and counsel in that cohort whose current or most recent work was removal, asylum or defensive litigation, over the same 24-month window, the scarce specification was not “someone who does immigration.” It was someone who can stand up at a Joseph hearing and still try an asylum merits case. A hiring partner at a two-to-five-lawyer immigration firm described lockstep first-year numbers as a different labor market from the associates that firm can actually pay. We do not have a primary boutique wage to put under that sentence, so the sentence stops there.

Two composites, numbers inside the envelope. A PE-backed healthcare platform in the New York metro asked for “immigration counsel” in a 2025 brief; the work was I-9, E-Verify and a book of H-1B extensions. The search closed in eight weeks, inside the 6 to 12 week band, with an employment-and-mobility counsel hired onto the legal payroll and the cap-subject volume left at a panel firm. No company or candidate is named. A second file, an LSC-funded nonprofit staff-attorney seat for defensive asylum, ran eleven weeks and lost the preferred candidate to a GS-13 OIL posting in Washington because the nonprofit could not move on base. That loss sits among the four stalled processes, not inside the 33 closed searches. It is the conversion the 93 percent figure does not hide: we complete the searches that were specified; we stall the ones that used a title as a substitute for a book.

For the candidate reading this as an immigration lawyer salary question, the usable move is the same as the general counsel's: name the perimeter before you name the number. A lockstep offer should be read against NALP and the posted firm range. A federal offer should be read against the 2026 GS table. A boutique or in-house offer should not be back-solved from BLS. For how a company runs the in-house side of that decision, see in-house counsel recruiting; for associate-line searches, associate recruiting.