Texas Gov. Greg Abbott late Tuesday issued a sweeping directive ordering all state agencies and public universities to immediately suspend new H-1B visa petitions.
The move, aimed at prioritizing domestic workers for taxpayer-funded roles, marks a significant escalation in the Republican-led effort to tighten control over high-skilled immigration programs.
The freeze is scheduled to remain in effect until May 31, 2027, providing the Texas Legislature time to establish “statutory guardrails” for future employment practices. Abbott’s order mirrors a broader federal review by the Trump administration intended to reform the H-1B program, which critics argue has been abused to displace American workers with cheaper foreign labor.
“State government must lead by example and ensure that employment opportunities — particularly those funded with taxpayer dollars — are filled by Texans first,” Abbott said in a statement.
While the H-1B visa was created in 1990 to help U.S. companies fill technical gaps, it has faced increasing scrutiny. While tech giants Oracle Corp. and Tesla Inc. remain top employers of visa holders in the private sector, Abbott’s focus remains firmly on the public purse.
The directive hits Texas’s robust public university system particularly hard. Unlike private corporations, universities and non-profit research institutions are often exempt from the federal 85,000-person annual cap on H-1B visas, making them frequent users of the program to staff specialized research and medical roles.
The governor has granted the Texas Workforce Commission the authority to provide rare exceptions to the freeze, but for now, the message to state recruiters is clear: look within state lines before looking abroad.
Data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) highlights the scale of the program within the state’s public sector: UT Southwestern Medical Center (228 visa holders), Texas A&M University (214), MD Anderson Cancer Center (171), and UT Austin (169).
Under the new order, these institutions must not only halt new petitions but also conduct an exhaustive audit of current H-1B staff. This includes reporting countries of origin, job titles, and providing documentation that “qualified Texas candidates” were given a reasonable opportunity to apply for those roles before a foreign worker was sponsored.
“This directive sends a chilling signal to the tech sector, particularly in a state that has aggressively positioned itself as a magnet for innovation and high-growth companies. H-1B workers are deeply embedded in critical functions across AI, cybersecurity, semiconductors, and university research, and the domestic workforce to fully replace that talent simply does not exist yet,” Joseph Hoefer, principal and chief AI officer at Monument Advocacy, said in an email. “An abrupt suspension introduces real uncertainty into workforce and R&D planning at a moment when global talent mobility is already tightening and other states, and countries, are actively courting the same engineers and researchers.”
Texas is not alone in its skepticism of the H-1B program. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has previously called for similar restrictions, and the Florida Board of Governors is expected to discuss its own pause on H-1B hiring this week.
