Trump Tightens H-1B Scrutiny Over US Layoffs, Renews $100,000 Visa Fee

Employers seeking H-1B workers while cutting comparable American jobs face closer scrutiny under new measures announced by the Trump administration, which has also renewed a $100,000 fee requirement for certain H-1B visa petitions.

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order and a proclamation on Friday, September 18, directing federal agencies to tighten oversight of the programme and address what the White House describes as practices that displace American workers.

The executive order requires the Departments of State, Labour and Homeland Security to consider an employer’s recent or planned layoffs of “similarly situated” US workers when reviewing H-1B applications. It makes such layoffs a factor in the review process; the supplied fact sheet does not describe an automatic rejection of applications from those employers.

Separately, the proclamation renews the $100,000 fee requirement first imposed on September 19, 2025. The requirement applies to certain H-1B applications, rather than every petition under the programme.

Layoffs Under the Lens

The administration is seeking closer coordination among agencies assessing employers’ demand for foreign workers.

The three departments have been directed to consult the Commerce and Education secretaries and the Small Business Administration to obtain information on wages, industry conditions and employment specialisation.

“More work must be done to improve interagency coordination in the assessment of H-1B visa petitions,” the White House fact sheet said.

The administration alleged that some companies had dismissed highly qualified American employees before recruiting H-1B workers at lower wages.

“Many employers have laid off large numbers of highly qualified, highly skilled American workers, only to promptly hire large numbers of H-1B workers who are often lower-skilled and lower-paid,” it said.

The White House also argued that access to lower-paid foreign labour could depress domestic wages, and criticised outsourcing arrangements under which some jobs held by H-1B workers eventually move overseas.

Outsourcing Firms Feel the Squeeze

The White House claimed that the earlier fee measure had sharply reduced participation by major IT outsourcing companies.

“Since the 2025 Proclamation took effect, H-1B registrations filed by the largest IT outsourcing firms have been reduced by 92%,” the fact sheet said.

It also reported a nearly 97 per cent decline in consular processing requests following the measure. According to the administration, the changes have shifted the programme towards higher-skilled, higher-paid workers.

Those figures and assessments were presented by the White House as evidence supporting the renewed restrictions.

Wages Shape Selections

The latest measures follow a December 2025 rule that replaced the randomised H-1B lottery with a selection system weighted by wage levels, according to the fact sheet.

The White House said fiscal year 2027 marked the first use of the wage-based system. It also reported that registrations had fallen by almost 40 per cent.

To support its case for tighter controls, the administration cited unemployment rates of 6.1 per cent among recent computer science graduates and 7.5 per cent among recent computer engineering graduates before the 2025 proclamation.

It also said the number of foreign STEM workers in the US more than doubled between 2000 and 2019, while total STEM employment grew by 44.5 per cent.

The administration said it was continuing H-1B fraud investigations and examining practices that allegedly give visa holders an unlawful advantage over American workers.

For employers, the latest directive puts workforce decisions under greater scrutiny: applications for overseas talent will be assessed with closer attention to whether comparable US employees have recently lost their jobs or face planned layoffs.

With inputs from ANI