Vice President JD Vance doubled down on White House’s recent action against H-1B visa abuse and put out a message to corporate America: “We’re not going to let you lay off American workers so you can replace them with cheap foreign labor.” The message was linked to White House’s fact sheet on what the Trump administration has done so far to protect American jobs. The message was nothing new, as the administration recently issued an executive order in which companies sponsoring H-1B petitions will be scrutinized for their employment history — if they fired Americans and replaced them with H-1B visa holders.Department of Labor’s inspector general Anthony D’Esposito shared JD Vance’s warning and added: “Lay off Americans to hire cheaper foreign labor? Expect us to come knocking.”
What has the administration done to combat H-1B abuse?
- Companies sponsoring H-1Bs will be under scrutiny. The administration will be checked if the companies fired equally skilled Americans and then hired cheaper H-1B visa holders.
- Last year, the administration imposed a $100,000 fee requirement for some H-1B visa applications. This was struck down by the court but the administration again renewed the requirement.
- The DHS proposed another H-1B fee that is separate from the $100K fee and this fee is $103, 265. This is not yet implemented.
- According to White House data, before the 2025 proclamation on H-1B fee, unemployment among recent computer science graduates reached 6.1% and 7.5% for computer engineering graduates – more than double the rates for biology or art history majors. Since the 2025 Proclamation took effect, H-1B registrations filed by the largest IT outsourcing firms have been reduced by 92%, it said.
- The Proclamation has also caused a nearly 97% decrease in consular processing requests and a shift from lower-paid foreign labor toward higher-skilled and higher-wage workers. The administration also replaced the random H-1B lottery with wage-based lottery.