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New US H-1B visa rules: Trump govt pushes for ‘higher-skilled’, ‘higher-paid’ workforce to prevent ‘exploit & abuse’

US H-1B Work Visa New Rules, H-1B Visa Lottery Scrapped: The Trump administration plans to replace the H-1B visa lottery with a weighted system favouring higher-paid and skilled workers, a move likely to impact Indian professionals and entry-level applicants.

3 min readUpdated: Dec 24, 2025 11:17 AM IST

The change in the H1-B is likely to make it far difficult for entry-level workers, including a large number of applicants from India, to secure employment visas in the United States (Representative Image).

US Trump H-1B Visa New Rules: The United States’ new visa rules are likely to severely impact H-1B applicants from India. The US administration under President Donald Trump is set to scrap the decades-old lottery-based H-1B work visa system and replace it with a weighted model that favours higher-paid and more skilled foreign professionals. The move is likely to make it far more difficult for entry-level workers, including a large number of applicants from India, to secure employment visas in the United States.

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The US Department of Homeland Security said that it is amending “regulations governing the process by which USCIS selects H-1B registrations for unique beneficiaries for filing of H-1B cap-subject petitions”. “The rule implements a weighted selection process that will favor allocating H-1B visas to higher-skilled and higher-paid aliens while maintaining the opportunity for employers to secure H-1B workers at all wage levels. This final rule is effective February 27, 2026, and will be in place for the FY 2027 H-1B cap registration season,” the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a notification.

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Impact on 85,000 visa applicants

The scrapping of the lottery rule is part of the wider push by the Trump administration to reshape the H-1B programme. The DHS said the new rule will apply to around 85,000 H-1B visas issued each year, starting with the fiscal 2027 registration cycle.

Explaining the rationale behind the shift, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesperson Matthew Tragesser said in a statement: “The existing random selection process of H-1B registrations was exploited and abused by US employers who were primarily seeking to import foreign workers at lower wages than they would pay American workers,”

A press release announcing the overhaul said the policy aligns with other recent measures introduced by the administration, including a presidential proclamation that requires employers to pay an additional $100,000 per visa to be eligible.

Trump’s Gold Card Visa programme

Earlier this year, President Trump signed a proclamation imposing a $100,000 annual fee on H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, a move that is currently being challenged in court. He also unveiled a $1 million “gold card” visa programme offering a pathway to US citizenship for wealthy individuals.

Currently, the annual cap on new H-1B visas stands at 65,000, with an additional 20,000 reserved for applicants holding a master’s degree or higher.

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