‘The H-1B cap was designed as a safeguard for American workers. Programs like Build reveal that, in practice, the cap no longer functions’
President Donald Trump’s Sept. 19 proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee on all new H-1B petitions while acknowledging that the program has unjustly displaced many American workers has put the whole H-1B visa program under sharp scrutiny. It is the first time a presidential administration has admitted publicly that the program has inflicted measurable harm on Americans.
The H-1B promise vs. reality
The H-1B visa was created in 1990 under the Immigration and Nationality Act. It was meant to let companies bring in foreign workers for “specialty occupations” when no American worker could be found. Congress set the cap at 65,000 visas per year, later raising it to 85,000.
On paper, it looked like a narrow tool for filling rare shortages. In practice, the safeguards never existed and abuse has exploded.
Employers don’t have to prove there’s truly a shortage. They only need to claim they’ll pay a “prevailing wage.” Yet in reality, those wages are often well below market pay. On top of that, spouses and dependents arrive on H-4 visas, many of them also thus eligible to work. What was sold as a limited program has ballooned into a pipeline far larger than the statutory cap suggests.