President Trump’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions has effectively ended the program as a route for new foreign workers. According to the White House’s proclamation, employers paid the fee for only about 700 workers in the year after it took effect, and consular processing requests fell nearly 97 percent.
State Department data show that H-1B visa issuances fell 74 percent between February 2025 and February 2026, while visas for H-1B spouses and children fell 81 percent. On September 18, Trump extended the fee through September 2027. A federal judge had already ruled the fee an unconstitutional tax, and the First Circuit refused to reinstate it while the government appeals.
The H-1B restrictions are part of a broader tightening of legal and illegal entry. At the southern border, encounters fell to about 8,900 in August 2026, 96 percent below the December 2023 record of 249,700. DHS reports 16 straight months in which the Border Patrol released no illegal aliens into the interior.
On legal entry, Trump’s December 16, 2025, travel proclamation took effect on January 1, 2026. It fully restricted visas for nationals of 19 countries and partially restricted visas for nationals of 19 more, including Nigeria, Cuba, and Venezuela. In May 2025, the State Department under Secretary Marco Rubio announced that it would aggressively revoke visas of Chinese students with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.
By August 2026, the department had revoked more than 175,000 visas of all types. Consulates issued 26 percent fewer nonimmigrant visas and 48 percent fewer immigrant visas in February 2026 than in February 2025. Active international student records fell by more than 70,000 between August 2025 and August 2026.
This tightening matters for American workers. Despite liberals’ claims, employers do not hire H-1B workers because Americans cannot do the jobs. They hire them because they can pay less.
Indian nationals received 71 percent of the 399,395 H-1B petitions approved in fiscal 2024. Labor Department rules allow employers to offer H-1B workers wages below the local median. In fiscal 2019, 60 percent of H-1B positions were certified at those lower wage levels. For a software developer in Washington, D.C., the lowest level allowed pay about $41,746 a year, or 36 percent below the median. Trump’s 2025 proclamation cited that same figure.
The Labor Department’s March 2026 proposed rule found that 63 percent of certifications used the two lower wage levels. Offered wages averaged $10,191 less than the government’s survey average for the same jobs.
In a free market, supply and demand set wages. The H-1B program lets employers use government-certified wages below the local average, giving them a reason to hire foreign workers for less. American job seekers must then compete with people willing to accept much lower pay, putting downward pressure on wages for everyone.
Usually, Democrats and liberals argue that there is no evidence that increased immigration or illegal immigration suppresses wages. When they are forced to acknowledge that legal and illegal immigrants can suppress wages, they say the effect is limited to the lowest-paying jobs. Ironically, many of those jobs did not use to pay so little before illegal immigration increased.
Liberals claim to want to help minorities, yet Black workers are among those most affected by wage suppression in lower-paying jobs. During the June 27, 2024, presidential debate, Trump said illegal immigrants were “taking Black jobs.”
Democrats mocked him on social media. Rep. Gwen Moore posted, “Hello from my office at my Black job!” Others shared photos of Black physicians, astronauts, fighter pilots, and professors under #BlackJobs. They missed his point: Black workers can be disadvantaged by competition for lower-paying jobs.
In 2010, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that illegal immigration tended to reduce wages and employment among low-skilled American citizens, a disproportionate share of whom were Black men. Economists George Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, and Gordon Hanson found that a 10 percent immigrant-driven increase in the supply of workers in a skill group reduced Black wages by 2.5 percent and the employment rate of Black men by 5.9 percentage points.
The National Academies of Sciences also identified native-born high school dropouts and prior immigrants as the workers most likely to see their wages reduced by new immigration.
Immigration increases the number of workers in the labor pool. As the labor pool grows, wages fall. The effect on U.S. wages is amplified by the much lower incomes in immigrants’ countries of origin.
Consider people arriving from countries where $10 a day would be a dream salary. In America, even $15 or $20 an hour is far more than they could earn at home. The IMF projects 2026 GDP per capita at $94,430 in the United States, compared with $15,779 in Mexico, $14,874 in China, and $2,813 in India. The figures are $2,902 in Cambodia, $5,115 in Vietnam, and $1,556 in Nigeria.
A retail salesperson in California earned an average of $20.07 an hour. At that rate, one hour’s pay exceeds a week’s minimum wage in Nigeria. A day and a half of pay equals a month’s average income per person in India or Cambodia, and two weeks of pay exceeds a month’s average income in Mexico or China.
An immigrant from India, Vietnam, Cambodia, or Nigeria offered $5 an hour to work illegally would earn more than they could earn at home. If employers can find workers willing to do a job for $5 an hour, they will not hire Americans who demand $15. So anyone who says immigration does not suppress wages is insane.
The second claim is that immigrants do jobs Americans do not want to do. That is not exactly true, either. There is no job Americans refuse to do. What Americans may refuse is a dirty or difficult job at a low wage.
Americans work as garbage collectors. The job is smelly, physically demanding, and starts early, but municipal sanitation workers can earn good wages and benefits. Cut that pay to $5 an hour, and Americans would have little reason to take the job. Immigrants willing to work for that rate could then fill it.
Wage suppression also affects workers beyond the lowest-paying jobs. When employers fill jobs at the bottom with people willing to work for $5 an hour, workers who would otherwise have held those jobs compete for positions in the next wage bracket. That increases the labor pool there and puts downward pressure on those wages. The same pattern can continue up the ladder.
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