Washington DC - President Donald Trump's extortionate $100,000 fee for H-1B skilled worker visas has been hit with a major legal challenge from Democratic states.

California and 18 other states launched a lawsuit against the measure announced in September, arguing on that it breaks a federal law regulating fee collecting by immigration authorities.

Per current rules, fees are only supposed to cover the cost of administering visa programs. In the case of H-1B visas, that amount would fall between $2,000 and $5,000.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office also said that Trump lacks the authority to impose the $100,000 surcharge.

"As the world's fourth-largest economy, California knows that when skilled talent from around the world joins our workforce, it drives our state forward," Bonta said in a Friday press release.

"President Trump’s illegal $100,000 H-1B visa fee creates unnecessary – and illegal – financial burdens on California public employers and other providers of vital services, exacerbating labor shortages in key sectors."

Experts are warning that Trump's Gold Cards, which allow wealthy foreigners to buy their way into an EB-1 or EB-2 visa, could also be illegal as a path to citizenship because Congress has not approved it.

There's also a risk of citizenships being revoked if a legal challenge to the scheme were to be successful.

American Immigration Lawyers Association senior director Shev Dalal-Dheini said applicants could the $1 million fee they paid to buy in.

"At the very minimum, they’d have to sue the US government to get it back," she told Axios, lamenting that Trump has missed the point of the EB-1 and EB-2 visas in creating the new Gold Card system.

"They are supposed to go to Nobel Prize winners, people who have done groundbreaking research – doctors, athletes," she said.

"This gold card has no requirement. It's just, 'give us a million dollars and feel free to do whatever you want in the United States,' instead of 'individuals of exceptional ability.'"