The White House issued last Friday a Proclamation and an Executive Order seeking to restrict the admission and hiring of workers in the H-1B nonimmigrant category.
The Proclamation, entitled Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers, extends the September 19, 2025, Proclamation 10973 (“Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers”), which was due to expire on September 21, 2026, for an additional 12 months until 12:00 a.m. EDT on September 21, 2027. Proclamation 10973, which we reported on in our Alert of September 19, 2025, required the payment of a $100,000 fee for all “new” H-1B petitions filed after September 21, 2025.
The extension of the initial $100,000 H-1B fee Proclamation will have no immediate practical effect, since all the immigration agencies have been barred from imposing the fee through a court order issued by the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in July of this year.
The Executive Order, entitled Enhancing Program Integrity and Interagency Coordination in the Administration of the H-1B Nonimmigrant Visa Program, requires the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Labor, and the Secretary of Homeland Security to “coordinate and consult” with the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Education, and the Administrator of the Small Business Administration when adjudicating H-1B petitions, visa applications, and Labor Condition Applications (LCAs). Such coordination and consultation will undoubtedly delay the processing of these applications and petitions.
In addition, the Executive Order requires the three agencies regulating United States immigration to consider whether or not the H-1B petitioner “directly or indirectly engaged in layoffs within the previous year or plans future layoffs that negatively affect the employment of similarly situated United States workers.” The Department of Labor is required to begin reviewing data related to previously submitted LCAs within 30 days of the date of the Executive Order to determine whether further action against sponsoring employers is warranted.
The three agencies are also directed to consider “relevant wage, employment, academic, industrial, or other economic information” received from other federal agencies when processing H-1B petitions and applications.
There is no indication of how USCIS, the State Department, and DOL will implement this broad mandate in their adjudication of H-1B petitions and related applications, but it is almost certain, as noted above, that this adjudication will be significantly delayed. It is also likely that investigations of, and enforcement actions against, the employers of the largest numbers of H-1B workers will increase. We will of course report immediately on any statements made by these agencies as to how they plan to implement the Executive Order.
