Trump Plans H-1B Lottery Overhaul to Prioritize Higher Earners

The Trump administration is proposing major changes to the selection process for H-1B visas heavily used by the tech industry, basing allocation on skill-level required and wages offered for a position instead of the current randomized lottery.

The proposal, released Tuesday, is the latest effort by President Donald Trump to overhaul the H-1B program, which has become a lightning rod in conservative circles as critics argue that recipients displace American workers. The proposal wouldn’t base visa allocation strictly on highest wages offered, instead it would assign each prospective worker to four wage bands based on Labor Department surveys.

Their odds of selection would be based on the wage level to which they are assigned. Workers in the highest of the four wage levels—earning an average annual salary of $162,528—would be entered into the selection pool four times; those in the lowest tier would be entered only once.

That process “would favor the allocation of H-1B visas to higher skilled and higher paid aliens, while maintaining the opportunity for employers to secure H-1B workers at all wage levels,” the proposal said.

The administration, which made a mass deportation campaign its priority in its first months, is now pursuing major overhauls of the employment-based visa programs.

Late last week, the White House issued a proclamation slapping a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions as a condition of entry to the US. The proclamation initially created panic among employers and workers before the administration clarified that it would only be imposed on new petitions.

Both that fee, which took effect Sept. 21, and the new wage-based visa selection process are likely to face legal challenges.

The visa program is limited to just 85,000 new slots each year although higher education and research-based organizations are exempt from that cap. Employers with online registrations selected in the annual lottery can move forward with filing a petition.

H-1B regulations finalized near the end of first Trump administration, but later withdrawn by President Joe Biden, would have prioritized selection of H-1B entries based on four tiers of wage levels to discourage using the visas to fill lower-paid, less-skilled positions. The Department of Labor also attempted to narrow occupations that qualified for the specialty occupation visas among other regulatory changes under a “Buy American, Hire American” agenda in the first Trump administration.

Business groups warned that the first Trump wage-based proposal would eliminate prospects for employers to hire early-career professionals who’ve recently graduated from US colleges and universities. They also objected to use of DOL wage levels as a proxy for a worker’s skill level.

Many attorneys also warned the proposal was unlawful, regardless of the wisdom of tying H-1B selection to wages, because the Immigration and Nationality Act calls for issuing visas in the order in which petitions are received.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services overhauled the lottery process last year, giving each sponsored worker equal odds of selection—no matter how many employers made registrations on their behalf. It made that change after finding that some employers were likely gaming the lottery system by colluding to submit multiple entries without any connection to a legitimate job offer, fueling a massive surge in registrations.