The Donald Trump administration is moving forward with plans to publish a new regulatory regulation, which will make it much harder to qualify for an H-1B visa. This new rule is expected to make it harder for corporations to use the H-1B visa and make it clear who can get the status.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) put this move, called “Reforming the H-1B Nonimmigrant Visa Classification Program,” on its regulatory agenda just before the White House announced a contentious $100,000 charge for H-1B visa holders.
Main Areas of Interest in the Proposed H-1B Reform
The abstract for the DHS regulation lists the main modifications that will improve the program’s integrity and better safeguard the pay and working conditions of U.S. workers. The main parts are:
Changing the rules for who can get cap exemptions: Making it harder for some groups, like non-profits or research institutions, to hire H-1B workers outside of the annual quota.
Employers who break program rules will be watched more closely: Companies who have a history of not following the rules will face more scrutiny and harsher fines.
More oversight of third-party placements: strictly controlling the practice of H-1B holders being put by their sponsoring firm at a customer or client site.
The DHS has provisionally set December 2025 as the date when the final rule might be published.
Possible Limits on Foreign Nationals and Customer Sites
The new rule is likely to bring back limits that the Trump administration tried to put in place but failed to do so. More specifically, it might comprise steps that would:
Make it harder for highly trained foreigners to get H-1B status.
Stop H-1B holders from working at client premises.
These things were very important to a rule from 2020 that didn’t work out. During President Trump’s first term, officials worked hard to make it almost impossible for a company to send an H-1B holder to a customer’s location. A 2018 letter on contracts and itineraries put a lot of restrictions in place. As a result, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) sometimes limited approval periods for work at client sites to very short intervals, often just one day.
Not Making the Same Legal Mistakes
The Trump administration’s first try to make a rule adjustment to the H-1B category didn’t work. The last rule came out late in the president’s term, but a judge stopped it on October 8, 2020, because it broke the Administrative Procedure Act. Officials are starting the process early this term in the hopes of avoiding legal hurdles that stopped the 2020 attempt.
An overview of the H-1B program and its background
The H-1B nonimmigrant visa is the most common option for highly talented foreigners to get long-term work in the U.S. and then apply for permanent residency (a green card).
There is a limit of 65,000 visas per year for the program.
People who have a master’s degree or higher from a U.S. university can get an extra 20,000 visas that are not subject to the cap.
Studies show that those with H-1B visas usually make the same amount of money or more than local workers with the same level of education and expertise.
During the first term of the Trump administration, USCIS put in place regulations that led to the highest rates of H-1B denials in history. But after a legal settlement in response to a number of lawsuits, these practices were stopped.