Trump administration announces changes to H-1B visa program

The Trump administration announced significant changes on Tuesday to the H-1B visa program for high-skilled workers, substantially raising the wages that U.S. companies must pay foreign hires and narrowing eligibility criteria for applicants.

The changes, introduced by the Departments of Labor and Homeland Security on Tuesday, will likely make it tougher to qualify for one of the coveted visas.

The DHS rule will redefine the "speciality occupations" H-1B visa holders can qualify for, requiring petitioners to prove they have a college degree in the specific field they are seeking to work in.

The changes will also expand compliance enforcement and mandate that workers hired through a third-party firm be granted one-year work authorizations, instead of the current three-year period.

The H-1B is a visa in the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 101(a)(15)(H) that allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in speciality occupations. A speciality occupation requires the application of specialized knowledge and a bachelor's degree or the equivalent of work experience. The duration of stay is three years, extendable to six years; after which the visa holder may need to reapply. Laws limit the number of H-1B visas that are issued each year: 188,100 new and initial H-1B visas were issued in 2019. Employers must generally withhold Social Security and Medicare taxes from the wages paid to employees in H-1B status.

The Department of Labor interim final rule will take effect Thursday, while the DHS companion rule is expected to be enforced in two months.

Collectively, the rules represent the broadest overhaul of the H-1B program in decades, according to experts and government officials.

The agencies have not published a copy of the new regulations, leaving hundreds of thousands of engineers, doctors and other skilled professionals mostly guessing about the scope of their impact, even as Trump administration officials described the measures in superlative terms.