AMERICA FIRST: Trump Signs Order Cracking Down on Companies That…

President Trump signed an executive order Friday that puts employers on notice: lay off American workers and then turn to H-1B visas, and the federal government will take a hard look at it. He also signed a proclamation the same day, and the White House says both aim to protect American workers from abuses of the H-1B program.

The order directs the Departments of Labor, Homeland Security and State to coordinate more closely on H-1B administration and to consider employers’ recent or planned layoffs. It is a practical fix for a gap in how the program has operated.

Agencies must determine whether a sponsoring employer has directly or indirectly laid off similarly situated U.S. workers in the past year, or plans to, before approving H-1B applications. The standard applies across labor condition applications, petitions, visas and admission requests.

The State, Labor and Homeland Security secretaries must also consult the Commerce and Education secretaries and the Small Business Administration for data on wages, industrial conditions and employment specialization. Better data should make it harder for bad actors to hide.

The Labor Department must begin reviewing previously filed labor condition applications within 30 days to decide whether enforcement action against sponsoring employers is warranted. That is a short clock, and it signals the administration wants results quickly.

The accompanying proclamation renews the $100,000 fee requirement for certain H-1B applications, first imposed on September 19, 2025. The fee has been the administration’s main tool for pricing out abuse.

The order’s own findings are blunt. It says many employers have laid off large numbers of highly skilled American workers only to promptly hire H-1B workers who are often lower-skilled and lower-paid, and it calls systematic abuse of the program a national security threat.

The order also targets the outsourcing model. The White House says the business model of certain H-1B sponsors means many jobs held by H-1B workers eventually leave the United States entirely.

The White House points to results from the earlier crackdown. Registrations from the largest IT outsourcing firms are down 92% since the 2025 proclamation, and consular processing requests fell nearly 97%. These are administration figures, but they point in one direction.

Wage-based selection is another piece. In December 2025 DHS finalized a rule replacing the randomized lottery with a system weighted by wage level. Fiscal 2027 was the first year the lottery was decided by wage, and registrations dropped by almost 40%.

The concern about American job seekers is real. Before the 2025 proclamation, unemployment among recent computer science graduates reached 6.1%, and 7.5% for computer engineering graduates, more than double the rates for biology or art history majors.

The White House also notes that the share of IT workers holding H-1B visas rose from 32% in fiscal 2003 to more than 65% in recent years before the proclamation. Young Americans have been told to study technology, and many have struggled to find entry-level work.

Enforcement was already underway. The Labor Department launched Project Firewall in September 2025, and by November it had at least 175 ongoing H-1B investigations. The department said those investigations account for over $15 million in calculated back wages.

Investigators found foreign workers with advanced degrees paid far less than job descriptions promised, and employers failing to notify USCIS promptly when an H-1B worker was terminated. Fox News also reported instances of benching, where H-1B holders go unpaid between projects.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said the department is using every resource to stop H-1B abuse and to make sure high-skilled jobs go to Americans first. The new order gives her department more data and a clearer mandate.

The order turns a familiar corporate move into a liability. Conservative commentators noted that a layoff followed by H-1B hiring is now something Washington will examine rather than ignore after the pink slips go out.

It is worth being precise about what the order does not do. It does not end the H-1B program or ban every employer that has had layoffs. It tells agencies to weigh layoffs in their reviews, and it says implementation must follow existing law and available appropriations.

The order also does not include independent analysis of the labor-market claims it cites. Those are the administration’s findings and rationale. Employers and immigration lawyers will surely test them.