The US plans to make further changes to the H-1B visa program, just days after President Donald Trump significantly increased the fee to $100,000. The Department of Homeland Security plans to move away from the current lottery system and adopt a weighted selection process.
“This aims to ensure H-1B visas are available to high-skilled and highly paid foreign workers, while also providing employers at all salary levels the opportunity to secure H-1B workers,” DHS said.
According to the proposal, selection will be based on salary level. Employees at the highest salary levels will receive four entries, increasing their chances of selection. Lower-level employees will receive only one entry.
Nicole Gunara, principal immigration attorney at Manifest Law, said the new proposal could shape how global talent is absorbed into the U.S. economy.
“This means an engineer offered a $150,000 salary at Meta might get multiple lottery entries, while a junior developer offered $70,000 at a startup might only get one entry,” Gunara said. “This will tilt the system toward established companies that can pay top market rates and away from emerging companies that rely on young international talent.”
Additionally, the rule could fuel a shift toward higher-paid senior tech workers and shape how the country competes for skills globally.
He explained, “If this rule is implemented, the H-1B lottery will no longer be completely random. Instead, each applicant’s chances will be determined based on their salary level. A candidate at a higher salary level may receive multiple entries into the lottery, while an entry-level salary holder will receive only one entry. This means that higher-paying, senior positions will have a much better chance of being selected, while recent graduates and early-career workers will face a more rigorous competition.”
Last week, Trump signed a proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee for each new application. This visa gives companies a way to recruit foreign workers with skills in fields like tech and engineering to the US through a lottery system.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers clarified, “President Trump promised to put American workers first, and this common-sense step prevents companies from abusing the system and driving down wages. It also provides certainty to American businesses that genuinely want to bring high-skilled workers to our great country but have been impacted by abuses of the system.”
In signing the proclamation, Trump said the “incentive is to hire American workers.”
According to data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, 71 percent of all approved H-1B applications are from Indians.
White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf had said that the H-1B non-immigrant visa programme is currently one of the “most abused visa” systems in the US.
Indian IT giants like TCS, Infosys, and Wipro rely heavily on H-1B visas, and the new fees could cost companies billions. This could result in lower hiring or even job shifting back to India.
This comes amid the visit to the US by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, who were in New York on Monday to meet officials of the Trump administration.
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