Montana Senator Tim Sheehy is cooking up legislation that would basically put the H-1B visa program in timeout for three whole years, like a misbehaving toddler who keeps replacing American workers with cheaper labor. According to The American Tribune, the bill would then bring the program back with some serious strings attached, including an annual limit of just 25,000 visas and a minimum salary requirement of $200,000. That's right, companies would need to pay H-1B workers at least two hundred grand a year, which is hilarious when you consider the whole point of the abuse was finding cheaper labor.
Sheehy is calling his creation the End H-1B Abuse Act, which is about as subtle as a sledgehammer but at least tells you exactly what it says on the tin. The senator argues that the original program was meant to fill highly specialized positions that Americans couldn't handle, not to give corporations a discount code for their entire workforce.
But wait, there's more! The bill goes way beyond just tinkering with H-1B visas. It would eliminate work authorization for certain foreign students and exchange visitors, block people with temporary non-immigrant status from upgrading to permanent residency while living in the country, ban federal agencies from hiring non-immigrants either directly or through contractors, and prevent people from switching between different non-immigrant classifications. So basically, every loophole gets the door slammed shut.
The legislation also takes the current six year duration for H-1B visas and chops it in half to three years. Employers would need to certify that no qualified American workers exist for the role, that bringing in a visa holder won't tank wages or working conditions for domestic employees, and that they haven't laid anyone off in the twelve months before applying and won't do so for twelve months after. Oh, and companies would need to fork over a cool $100,000 fee just to file the petition. Nothing says "we really need this foreign worker" like writing a six figure check.
The random lottery system that currently determines who gets selected would also get tossed out in favor of a priority system that rewards petitions offering the fattest paychecks. So instead of pure luck, it becomes a competition to see who can pay the most.
The bill has backing from the Immigration Accountability Project and the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance recently revealed that the Department of Labor has been busy firing off dozens of subpoenas and launching multiple investigations into alleged H-1B fraud. The agency's Office of Inspector General is also ramping up enforcement efforts, looking into fraudulent applications, shady wage kickback schemes, worker exploitation, and other creative ways companies have been undercutting American employees with below market labor.
Whether this bill actually makes it through Congress remains to be seen, but at the very least, it should make for some entertaining lobbying battles between Silicon Valley and, well, everyone else.
Read more American news stories at: The American Tribune
