The Trump Administration’s plan to revamp the H-1B visa system for skilled workers by prioritizing those who earn higher wages, as well as make U.S. citizenship tests more difficult, signals a new direction in immigration policy and an admission that the domestic workforce isn’t large enough to support America’s ambitions in artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technology.
“I really do think that the way H-1B needs to be used, and this is one of my favorite phrases, is to, along with a lot of other parts of immigration, supplement, not supplant, U.S. economy and U.S. businesses and U.S. workers,” Joseph Edlow, the new head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), told the New York Times last week.
The government issues about 85,000 new H-1B visas through an annual lottery system that lets U.S. companies employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require technical or theoretical skills. Some 20,000 are reserved for individuals with advanced degrees from U.S. institutions.
Edlow insists the current randomized lottery process should be replaced with a system that prioritizes employers offering higher wages. Prioritizing higher-paid positions, he argued, would help the program better serve the national interest and reduce criticism from Republican hardliners who claim it suppresses American wages.
But the proposed changes have sparked sharp criticism from immigration policy experts, who contend the H-1B program is essential to ensure American companies hire the best and brightest international graduates of U.S. universities.
The sweeping changes reflect “a belated recognition of what’s been obvious to industry and many policymakers for years: the domestic workforce simply isn’t large enough to support America’s ambitions in AI and emerging tech,” AI consultant Joseph Hoefer said.
The Biden administration acknowledged the issue with an executive order mandating agencies to ramp up AI hiring only to find the talent pipeline wasn’t enough.
The citizenship test, however, is another matter. While framed as a quality-control measure to support a high-skilled economy, Hoefer sees it as a “red herring.”
“If this were really about global competitiveness, we’d be focused on expanding access to talent – not raising new barriers,” he said.
Under the current testing system, applicants must study 100 civics questions and correctly answer six out of 10 in a test. Edlow is proposing a return to tougher standards set during Trump’s first term that include more questions (128) and a higher passing threshold (12 out of 20 correct answers).
Revamping the H-1B visa program has been a priority of President Donald Trump since he returned to office in January. The Department of Homeland Security wants to replace the lottery system with a wage-weighted model that would favor higher-paying job offers. The proposal is currently under review by the Office of Management and Budget.
Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, have introduced legislation that would eliminate long-standing exemptions allowing universities and non-profit research institutions to bypass the H-1B visa cap. This would lead to foreign academic staff facing the same restrictions as those in the private sector.
