Trump Administration unveils weighted H-1B visa selection system

The Trump Administration has announced sweeping reforms to the H-1B visa system, replacing the random lottery with a weighted selection process that favours higher-skilled and higher-paid foreign workers. The new rules will take effect from February 27 and apply to the fiscal year 2027 H-1B cap season.

Washington: The Trump Administration on Tuesday announced sweeping changes to the H-1B work visa selection process, replacing the long-standing random lottery with a weighted system that prioritises higher-skilled and higher-paid foreign workers.

The move, Department of Homeland Security said, is aimed at better protecting the wages, working conditions, and job opportunities of American workers, while strengthening the integrity of the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program.

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“The existing random selection process of H-1B registrations was exploited and abused by U.S. employers who were primarily seeking to import foreign workers at lower wages than they would pay American workers,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Matthew Tragesser said.

“The new weighted selection will better serve Congress’ intent for the H-1B program and strengthen America’s competitiveness by incentivising American employers to petition for higher-paid, higher-skilled foreign workers,” he said.

Under the new regulation, H-1B visas will no longer be awarded through a purely random draw, as has been the practice over the past two decades. Instead, registrations will be ranked and selected through a weighted process that increases the probability that visas go to higher-skilled and higher-paid foreign nationals, while still allowing employers to petition for workers across all wage levels, DHS said in a media release.

The change is intended to curb what they described as systemic abuse of the lottery system, in which some employers allegedly flooded the registration pool with lower-skilled, lower-wage applications, crowding out higher-value petitions and disadvantaging American workers, it said.

The annual number of H-1B visas remains capped at 65,000, with an additional 20,000 visas reserved for applicants holding advanced degrees from U.S. institutions. The new weighted selection rule will apply beginning with the fiscal year 2027 H-1B cap registration season, it said, adding that the final rule will take effect on February 27.

DHS said the reform is a key step in aligning the H-1B program more closely with congressional intent, while addressing long-standing concerns raised by labour advocates and policymakers about wage suppression and misuse of the visa category.

Officials stressed that the rule does not eliminate access to the H-1B program for employers offering lower wages, but shifts the balance toward petitions that reflect higher skill levels and compensation.

The change is part of a broader push by the Trump administration to overhaul the H-1B system, which has been a flashpoint in U.S. immigration and labour policy debates for years.

“It is another crucial step to strengthen the integrity of the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program,” DHS said, pointing to other recent measures aimed at discouraging misuse of the visa category.

Among those measures is a Presidential Proclamation that requires employers to pay an additional $100,000 per visa as a condition of eligibility, a move the administration says is designed to ensure that employers turn to foreign labour only when they genuinely need highly skilled workers.

“As part of the Trump Administration’s commitment to H-1B reform, we will continue to demand more from both employers and aliens so as not to undercut American workers and to put America first,” Tragesser said.

The H-1B visa program allows U.S. employers to temporarily hire foreign workers in speciality occupations that typically require at least a bachelor’s degree or equivalent expertise. The program is heavily used by the technology sector and has significant implications for skilled professionals from countries such as India.

For years, critics of the lottery-based system have argued that it failed to distinguish between high-value and low-value petitions, encouraging gaming of the system and eroding public confidence in the program.

Supporters of reform have said changes such as weighted selection are necessary to restore credibility to the H-1B program, even as business groups have warned that overly restrictive policies could hurt innovation and competitiveness in the U.S. economy.

The H-1B program has long been central to U.S. efforts to attract global talent, while also remaining one of the most politically contentious legal immigration pathways.