The Forum Daily | Thursday, October 9, 2025https://immigrationforum.org/

**THE FORUM DAILY**

For communities in rural areas of the United States who rely on H-1B visa holders to fill positions in education and health care, the new $100,000 application fee could be devastating, reports Sarah Raza of the Associated Press [link removed].  

Current shortages in these fields are significant nationwide, Raza reports. In public schools, one in eight jobs are filled by uncertified teachers or remain vacant, and the American Medical Association anticipates a shortage of 87,000 physicians by 2036.  

The challenges are especially acute in smaller, rural communities, which may have to give up on hiring immigrant applicants with the new fee.  

"It really is potentially the cost of the salary and benefits of one teacher, maybe even two, depending on the state," said Melissa Sadorf, executive director of the National Rural Education Association. "Attaching that price tag to a single hire, it just simply puts that position out of reach for rural budgets."  

A nursing staffing agency and a K-12 charter school, as well as religious organizations, are among the plaintiffs in the first lawsuit targeting the fee, reports Andrew Kreighbaum of Bloomberg Law [link removed]. The diverse mix outside the tech sector indicates the breadth of affected industries, he notes. 

And the Trump administration likely isn’t done with H-1B changes, Stuart Anderson writes for Forbes [link removed]. Revising eligibility for exemptions to the H-1B visa cap is among the facets of a forthcoming federal rule, he writes.  

Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s VP of strategic communications, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Marcela Aguirre, Masooma Amin, Jillian Clark and Clara Villatoro. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. 

**'HARD-WORKING EMPLOYEES’** — Dairy farmers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are having increasing difficulty finding workers as immigration enforcement continues to ramp up, Ruth Conniff writes in the Wisconsin Examiner [link removed]. Experts focused on labor challenges during a panel discussion at last week's World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin. "Taking hard-working employees off farms does not make communities safer," said Indiana dairy farmer Brain Rexing. The Department of Labor itself has flagged food-supply concerns stemming from migrant labor shortages, David Dayen notes in The American Prospect [link removed]. 

**RELIGIOUS FREEDOM THREATENED** — Chicago-area faith leaders have protested Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities, waving signs with slogans such as "Who would Jesus deport?" ICE has responded with violence at times, which leaders say threatens their religious freedom, reports Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service [link removed]. A lawsuit filed this week accuses ICE agents of targeting faith leaders such as Presbyterian minister David Black, who had pepper balls fired at him while he prayed in front of an ICE facility. 

**ISOLATION** — Immigrant detention centers are increasingly using solitary confinement, particularly in states including Arizona, report Steph Solis and Jessica Boehm of Axios [link removed]. Many of the confinements, which last two weeks or longer, count as psychological torture, according to a report by Harvard University researchers. Axios obtained data indicating that between April 2024 and August 2025, nearly 14,000 people were placed in solitary confinement nationwide, including about 1,500 in Arizona. 

**NOBEL PRIZES** — Not welcoming immigrants is shortsighted for America’s future prosperity and competitiveness, The Wall Street Journal [link removed] editorial board writes. The board points to the recent Nobel prize winners in science as an example: Three of the six recipients who live in the U.S. are immigrants. "Nobel prizes in the sciences are the result of intellectual capital built over decades of hard work and research," the editorial board writes. "The U.S. will get fewer in the future if the Trump administration won’t welcome legal immigrants and refugees." 

Thanks for reading,  

Dan 

 

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