The new plan follows a proclamation on Friday requiring a $100,000 fee for new H-1B applications.
Published On 23 Sep 2025
The White House has released a proposal that would rework the H-1B visa selection process to favour higher-skilled and better-paid workers, according to a Federal Register notice.
The new proposal released on Tuesday followed a White House proclamation on Friday introducing a $100,000 fee for the visas.
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The new process, if finalised, would give heavier weight to applications by employers who pay high wages if annual requests for the visas exceed the statutory limit of 85,000, the notice said. The move aims to better protect US workers from unfair wage competition from foreign workers, it said.
United States President Donald Trump launched a wide-ranging immigration crackdown after taking office in January, including a push for mass deportations and trying to block citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants born in the US. In recent days, his administration has intensified its focus on the H-1B programme, popular with technology and outsourcing companies for hiring skilled foreign workers.
The administration said on Friday that it would ask companies to pay $100,000 per year for each H-1B visa. Some big tech companies warned visa holders to stay in the US or quickly return, sparking a chaotic scramble to get back to the US. The White House later clarified the fee would apply only to new visas.
On Wall Street, tech company stocks have not responded well to the looming changes. Shares in Amazon, which sponsors the most H-1B visas of any company, have tumbled by almost 5 percent over the past five days.
The planned regulation posted on Tuesday would change an existing lottery process to obtain the visas if demand surpasses supply in a given year, creating wage tiers through which higher-paying jobs would have a better chance of being selected.
The process to finalise a regulation can take months or even years. The notice suggested that the new rules could be in place for the 2026 lottery, meaning before a March registration period.
The total wages paid to H-1B workers were expected to increase to $502m in fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1, the notice said, citing US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates.
Those wages would increase by $1bn in fiscal 2027, $1.5bn in fiscal 2028 and $2bn in fiscal 2029-2035, it said.
An estimated 5,200 small businesses that currently receive H-1B visas would suffer a significant economic impact due to loss of labour, DHS said.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which issued the proposal, will give the public 30 days to comment starting on Wednesday, the notice said.
Slowing job market
The heightened requirements were proposed as a new AP-NORC poll was released that suggested about six in 10 US adults think companies see a major benefit from immigrants entering the US workforce, up from four in 10 in March 2024.
According to the poll, 51 percent of US adults said a “major” benefit of legal immigration is that US companies get the expertise of skilled workers in fields like science and technology.
The new proposal comes as job growth stalls in the US.
In August, the economy added only 22,000 jobs, according to the most recent jobs report released by the Department of Labor.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell cited Trump’s hardline immigration policy as a reason for a slowdown in the jobs market and part of the central bank’s rationale for cutting interest rates by 25 basis points last week, the first cut since December.