A Friday proclamation from President Trump has become the latest policy change to scramble colleges’ assumptions about international education and finance.
The new rule will require employers to pay the government $100,000 to sponsor a highly skilled employee from abroad with an H-1B visa. For higher education, this means added challenges — in hiring international talent that has long been a backbone for research universities, and more potential difficulty for students seeking visas for post-graduate employment.
“This weekend was complete chaos in the immigration world,” said Josh Wildes, an associate attorney at Wildes & Weinberg, P.C., a firm that specializes in immigration law. But at least one thing has become clear since the initial confusion: “What we’re telling the universities is that their current H-1B visa holders should be OK to continue working.”
An H-1B visa allows non-American citizens to work in the United States for up to six years in a job that requires specialized knowledge and skills. The program allows companies to hire highly skilled international workers in jobs that can’t be filled by Americans, but Trump has been harshly critical of it. American employers “have abused the H-1B statute and its regulations to artificially suppress wages, resulting in a disadvantageous labor market for American citizens,” he wrote in his proclamation.
Many large research universities have grown to rely on H-1B visas. Among academic employers, Stanford University hired the most people on H-1B visas in the current year, with 500 approved workers. The University of Michigan employed 359, and eight other large research institutions employed more than 200.
In a statement, Michigan called the program “an essential tool for maintaining global competitiveness in research and education,” because it allows the university to “attract and retain the world’s top talent.”
International students make up particularly large proportions of science and engineering fields. Data from the National Science Foundation shows that 41 percent of Ph.D. students and 58 percent of postdoctoral researchers in science, engineering, and health fields are temporary visa holders.
Some initial fears about the rule change have already been assuaged. For example, some employers thought that the fee would be levied annually for each existing visa holder. For Stanford, this would mean $50 million each year to keep their 500 H-1B visa employees. But over the weekend, the Trump administration clarified that the change “applies only to new visas, not renewals, and not current visa holders.” Even so, some universities have told H-1B visa holders to avoid international travel.
Another concern is whether the new rule will affect employers that are currently exempt from the cap on the number of H-1B visas companies can use. Colleges are typically exempt from this cap.
Jeremy Neufeld, director of immigration policy at the Institute for Progress, shared his interpretation on social media that, based on an FAQ page from the White House, the $100,000 fee does apply to cap-exempt organizations.
Miriam Feldblum, president and co-founder of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, said that if the fee is enforced, it will be disastrous for higher education’s ability to hire essential talent.
“This fee — if enacted and applicable for cap-exempt employers — will mean that many colleges and universities will not be able to hire needed international researchers and faculty that contribute to campuses, teaching, research and our national innovation,” Feldblum wrote in an email to The Chronicle.
Confusion also remains over how the change will affect international students who currently hold F-1 student visas. The section of the Immigration and Nationality Act cited in Trump’s proclamation governs entry into the country, so students who remain in the United States and transfer their F-1 visas to H-1B visas through employer sponsorship might be able to avoid the fee, said Wildes, the immigration lawyer.
“Many international students are worried that the $100,000 fee will deter companies from sponsoring them for an H-1B,” he said, “thereby minimizing their job prospects in the United States.”
Many students who are on F-1 visas are able to stay in the United States through the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program for up to 12 months of employment after the completion of their undergraduate degree but before entering the H-1B visa lottery. Students who earned degrees in STEM fields are eligible to extend their OPT authorization by 24 months. In light of the new H-1B fee, this 24-month extension for STEM degrees might be the only option for students hoping to stay in the United States.
Feldblum thinks the new fee won’t affect just institutions of higher education but also the broader economy.
International students and graduates “already make outsized economic contributions on campus, in local communities and to the local, state and the national economy,” she wrote in an email. “We should be facilitating their postgraduate options into the workplace and not creating insurmountable barriers for employers seeking to hire them.”
It remains to be seen if businesses, possibly including colleges, will mount a legal challenge. If they do, action from the courts might change what the new rule means for higher education.
“This is developing in real time, and the courts are most likely going to have a say,” Wildes said. “So we’re telling everybody to take a deep breath and sit tight.”
