Topic
US rules and enforcement governing entry, residence and deportation, including their effect on the size and composition of the workforce.
Applications to the March 2026 H-1B lottery fell more than 38% from a year earlier, USCIS said, while the $100,000 fee stays held up in the courts. Business Insider concludes that employers with cash and workers with scarce skills come out ahead.
Reality
DHS proposed a $70,000 fee on a student work-authorization program a day before Labor said it is investigating nine universities over postdoc visas. STAT reports that none of the changes has taken effect. The survey behind a 21% drop in international Ph.D. applications cannot attribute it to any one action.
Reality
CNBC's analysis of USCIS data finds two-thirds of Microsoft's 6,258 fiscal 2025 H-1B approvals went to existing employees. That undercuts Vance's claim that visa hires replaced laid-off staff, but the PERM suspension covers green cards, outside this count.
Reality
Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said the government will stop taking or processing PERM filings for Microsoft, Adobe and six outsourcing firms. Attorneys told Business Insider the exposure sits with H-1B staff near the six-year cap.
Perspective Coverage
25 publishersReality
Research commissioned by America's Voice says 1.2 million foreign-born workers left the US in two years, pushing up food prices and cutting housing permits. For builders and growers the labor gap is a planning problem this year, while the report's Social Security cut is a projection for 2034.
Reality
US officials have suspended Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, Cognizant, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe from PERM green-card sponsorship. For the five that Al Jazeera counts as Indian IT firms, the order as reported covers the green card that often follows an H-1B visa, not the visa itself.
Reality
The charge is 20 to 50 times current levels and is being pushed through despite adverse rulings. What it reprices is not the paperwork but where companies put the work.
Perspective Coverage
4 publishersReality
Business Insider's year-later series on the H-1B crackdown opens with a Northwestern graduate who left Chicago for Germany after her employer said it could not sponsor her visa. The sponsorship call was the employer's.
Reality
The participation rate has fallen 0.7 points since January; Morgan Stanley's trend aging covers 0.1 of that and Goldman's youth seasonal noise up to 0.2, leaving a residual of roughly 0.4 to 0.5 points that the Fed has yet to attribute.
Reality