Trump administration plans H-1B visa rule changes, focusing on higher wages, potentially disadvantaging early-career foreign workers.
President Donald Trump’s administration wants to overhaul the nation’s visa programme for highly skilled foreign workers.
If the administration does what one official described, it would change H-1B visa rules to favour employers that pay higher wages. That could effectively transform the visa into what one expert called “a luxury work permit” and disadvantage early-career workers with smaller salaries, including teachers. It could also upend the current visa programme’s lottery system used to distribute visas to eligible foreign workers.
“This shift may prevent many employers, including small and midsize businesses, from hiring the talent they need in shortage occupations, ultimately reducing America’s global competitiveness,” said David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association whose practice includes representing employers in the H-1B process.
It’s hard to find US workers in certain types of specialty fields, including software engineers and developers and some STEM positions.
