For generations, the United States has been the world’s top destination for ambitious students, pioneering scientists, and entrepreneurial risk-takers. Global talent has powered American progress and prosperity, but the foundation of that success is cracking.
We have failed to modernize our immigration system for decades – since before the end of the Cold War, modern biotechnologies, semiconductor manufacturing, the internet, and our connected global economy. With the demolition of our ability to attract and retain people from around the world, America is no longer the default destination for the best minds.
Today, an international student who comes to the United States faces an improvised, fragile pathway, often from a student visa to Optional Practical Training, then to the H-1B visa, and finally — if they are lucky — to a green card and citizenship. This patchwork system has supported American innovation, but it works in spite of federal inaction. Now, unprecedented political attacks threaten to sever that pipeline entirely.
The threat escalated dramatically when the Trump administration announced a $100,000 fee on certain new H-1B filings. Falsely framed as a measure to protect American workers, the fee prices out the employers who rely most on specialized talent — universities, research labs, rural hospitals, startups, and small businesses — while encouraging our competitors to welcome the highly trained individuals we are pushing away. There’s broad agreement that the H-1B program needs modernization, but a six-figure tax accomplishes none of that.
Lawsuits have already been filed, ranging from labor groups and educators to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and leading universities. These suits correctly argue such an outrageous act is clearly unlawful, in addition to the massive harm. This illegal fee functions as an innovation ban at the very moment when America’s economic and national security depend on outpacing other nations.
At the same time, we have seen Members of Congress announce plans to introduce legislation effectively eliminating the H-1B program, or even to end all legal immigration.
Eliminating H-1B visas would dismantle a primary pathway through which universities retain graduates and employers hire the researchers and specialists who have helped drive American innovation and prosperity. When skilled workers trained in the U.S. cannot stay after graduation, the consequences ripple outward. Universities lose top students who drive research breakthroughs, something we are already witnessing. Employers lose access to highly trained workers who help create jobs, raise productivity, and drive down costs for Americans.
More than half of all U.S. startups valued over one billion dollars were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants, and H-1B holders play an outsized role in building these companies. Communities lose taxpayers and consumers whose spending supports small businesses and local services. The nation loses its edge in fields where global competition is intensifying, from quantum computing to battery technology to medical research. These losses translate into fewer inventions, fewer companies, and fewer high-wage jobs created on American soil.
So where are the attacks coming from? Tragically, from an administration contradicting itself. President Trump himself recently acknowledged that the U.S. will benefit if we attract people with specialized talents, saying, “You don’t have certain talents… people have to learn!”
The H-1B solution is not to crack down on misuse, but to modernize the system by raising wage standards, prioritizing truly high-skilled roles, streamlining permanent residency for U.S.-educated talent, and protecting all workers. Reform should strengthen the pipeline, not destroy it.
The newly imposed fee and efforts to end H-1B altogether would instead shut that pipeline down. Asking a five person startup to find an extra $200,000 to pay for two of its founders to try to create jobs in America is nonsensical. Rural hospitals cannot pay their way out of staffing shortages. Denying top talent to universities means, after a century, we won’t have the best universities anymore - period. There is no realistic mechanism for institutions to determine which candidates are “worth” an additional $100,000 when their budgets are already stretched.
Other nations understand this moment. Canada, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, and Germany are rolling out new initiatives to attract the highly skilled workers the United States is now disincentivizing.
We have big challenges to face as a country. The people telling you that purging our schools and economy of immigrants will fix these problems are wrong. If we dismantle the pathways that connect education to opportunity, we will lose a generation or more of innovators trained here at home. We have a choice: keep the world's best minds in America, or drive them toward our competitors. There's no middle ground and the answer is clear.
Todd Schulte is president of FWD.us, a leading immigration and criminal justice reform policy organization.
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