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Perhaps Miles was the architect, but the person who crafted the policy was Harris Nathan Miller. And you're right, it is not being abused. The H-1B is doing what it was designed to do: replace American white-collar professionals the corporatocracy viewed as expensive,… https://t.co/ln8DlIXXBv pic.twitter.com/PFtfPAefDb

— U.S. Tech Workers (@USTechWorkers) October 2, 2026

On September 19, 2025, President Donald Trump shocked American businesses and the world when he announced a $100,000 fee for the H-1B visa, accompanied by a scathing critique of the program. The announcement upended U.S. skilled immigration policy in a way that no other recent administration (including his first one) has done. The White House clarified the next day that the fees would only apply for new applications for the lottery next year and for those applying from outside of the United States. Still, the impact of the change has been immense, with companies, particularly in the tech sector, and prospective applicants from India and elsewhere scrambling to adapt to the new landscape.

The H-1B visa program had already become controversial in the years preceding this announcement. This visa was supposedly designed to attract the best and brightest workers in fields such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). But the H-1B has instead been wielded as a tool by firms to displace American workers and depress wages in the information technology (IT) labor market, while bringing in large numbers of ordinary professionals from abroad to take their place, with only the most limited government oversight. In order to understand how the United States got to this moment of reckoning, it is worth revisiting the origins of the H-1B as a long-term project of business interests.

The negative consequences of the H-1B can be traced back to its conception and design; the story of who crafted the visa, which firms and lobbies pressed hardest for its passage into law, and how it became Big Tech’s preferred option has largely gone untold. And while it is, of course, a natural feature of American life for businesses to lobby the government for policies that would benefit their bottom lines, what stands out about the emergence of the H-1B is the sheer ease and lack of skepticism its advocates encountered as they made their case before lawmakers.

What follows is a story not so much of a struggle between employers and workers but of a steady advance by the business community against the backdrop of politics in the 1990s and 2000s, characterized by peak globalization, in which the maxim that markets, including labor markets, must be borderless was widely embraced. Assertive private sector associations campaigned for the H-1B while trumpeting slogans about “competitiveness” and “efficiency” over the muted resistance of labor groups, constantly claiming labor shortages (with little evidence) as their rationale and assailing American workers as just somehow not up to the task. All the while, an excessively deferential political establishment in Washington proved only too eager to give tech and business lobbies everything they had asked for and more.

Corporate Lobbying and Policy Formation
Newly uncovered documents from the 1990 House and Senate Immigration Subcommittee, found in the National Archives, reveal how major American multinationals, acting through lobbying groups such as the American Council for International Personnel (ACIP) and the Business-Immigration Coalition (BIC), worked to transform the original H-1 visa, a temporary work permit for foreign nationals of distinguished merit and ability, into what became the H-1B. At the turn of the millennium, Silicon Valley continually lobbied to expand the program, preventing or weakening reforms that would have benefited American workers.

The story of the H-1B visa begins with Congressman Bruce Morrison, who played a pivotal role in driving its creation through Congress. As the chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee in 1989, the Connecticut Democrat worked to reform the H-1 visa program. There were pressing labor issues to address. By the 1980s, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had diluted the meaning of “exceptional ability,” allowing almost any professional worker to qualify for the H-1 visa. Employers took advantage of this by bringing in entry-level workers, causing the number of H-1 visas to skyrocket. The H-1 category, which stayed at 20,000 visas per year until the 1980s,1 surged to over 60,000 by the late 1980s and reached 65,000 in fiscal year 1987.2 The afl-cio raised concerns that the visa was driving down wages for American workers. Without a cap, the visa’s popularity seemed poised to grow.

Multinational corporations quickly embraced the H-1 visa program for its ability to bring in foreign scientific research and engineering professionals. Employers had three main issues they wanted changed with the H-1 visa: (1) They disliked that it was shared between entertainers and professionals. The organization proposed creating an “H-1A for entertainers and H-1B for professionals.” Congress would ultimately separate nurses into the H-1A visa and entertainers into their own category. (2) They objected to the 1987 rule by the INS that imposed a five-year time limit on the H-1 visa, with the possibility of a sixth year only in extraordinary circumstances. They proposed a seven-year work visa instead. (3) They wanted to eliminate the “temporary intent” requirement, which mandated that foreign guest workers return home after their visa expired, and to replace it with “dual intent,” allowing workers to seek permanent residency while on a temporary visa.

read more:

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2025/11/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-h-1b-visa/