Washington, D.C. (October 6, 2020) - The new H-1B rules being announced today are long-overdue moves to protect American workers. These reforms strike directly at the harmful staffing-company model of employment that has commodified these visa workers, displaced qualified Americans, and undermined the integrity of employment visa programs.

By making it harder to exploit the H-1B program to replace Americans, and by creating a more realistic yardstick for wages that must be paid to foreign workers, the administration will be taking a big step toward implementing the president's Hire American pledges. By adjusting wages upward and squeezing out H-1B "body shops", the reforms will likely raise the skill levels of the H-1B and employment green card programs.

These new rules are an encouraging sign that we may see further reforms to the H-1B visa and other programs that import foreign labor to the detriment of American workers.

Analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies will be published once the new H-1B rules are made public. Please feel free to contact the Center at [email protected] for further details and comments.