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 US economy.
United States 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 abandon the current lottery system and adopt a weighted selection process. DHS stated, “The goal is to ensure H-1B visas are available to high-skilled and highly paid foreign workers, while also providing employers at all salary levels with the opportunity to secure H-1B workers.”
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 US economy.
“With this, an engineer offered a $150,000 salary at Meta could receive multiple lottery entries, while a junior developer offered $70,000 at a startup could receive only 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.”
Furthermore, this rule could fuel a shift toward higher-paid senior tech employees 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 with a higher salary level may receive multiple entries into the lottery, while an entry-level salary 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 gave companies a way to recruit skilled foreign workers in fields like tech and engineering to the US through a lottery system.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers clarified, “President Trump promised to put American workers first, and this common-sense move 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.”
When signing the proclamation, Trump said, “The incentive is to hire American workers.”
According to data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, 71 percent of all approved H-1B applications are from Indians.
White House Staff Secretary Will Sharp stated that the H-1B non-immigrant visa program is currently one of the “most abused visa” systems in the US.
Indian IT giants such as TCS, Infosys, and Wipro rely heavily on H-1B visas, and the new fees could cost companies billions. This could directly result in lower hiring or jobs shifting back to India.
This comes amid the visit of External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal to the US, who met Trump administration officials in New York on Monday.
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