OPINION:
After passing a $70 billion bill to fund ICE and the border patrol through the rest of President Trump’s second term, Republicans in Congress have another chance to pass a party-line funding package before the midterm elections.
“Reconciliation 3.0” is a prime opportunity to revisit an idea that didn’t get done in the border funding bill fight: ending the H-1B visa as a source of cheap labor.
The price tag for another reconciliation bill could be high — House Republicans passed a $95 billion budget reconciliation blueprint — and including something that would help the American economy and grow American jobs can help pay for that.
Here’s how it would work. Congress can replace the H-1B visa lottery with a system that allocates these visas to whichever immigrants would likely pay the most in taxes. This would raise tens of billions of dollars in tax revenue from foreign workers and their employers.
Congress originally intended for H-1B visas to be issued on a first-come, first-served basis, but when the number of applications began to dwarf the number of available visas as soon as the filing window opened, the federal government improvised, establishing a lottery.
The Trump administration has taken steps to improve the lottery, giving more senior and experienced workers more lottery tickets.
The Department of Homeland Security has shied away from getting rid of the lottery entirely. But Congress never asked DHS to issue these visas using a lottery, and it doesn’t have to be this way.
As explained in detail in a 2025 Heritage Foundation report, IT outsourcing firms and staffing companies have exploited the lottery to import cheap labor from overseas, flooding the system with mid-skilled workers earning below market salaries, rather than top talent.
Mr. Trump’s $100,000 fee for H-1Bs blocked many of the outsourcers from the lottery, but with the fee stymied in court, foreign outsourcers could flood the lottery again in 2027.
Congress should instead direct DHS to prioritize H-1Bs for those foreign workers who will pay the most in taxes. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, this would increase the pay of H-1B holders each year from an average of $121,863 to $166,778, generating tens of billions of additional dollars in payroll taxes within the next decade alone.
Higher-paid H-1B holders are less likely to compete with middle-class American workers for jobs, less likely to take benefits, and more likely to bring rare, special talents. This change could break the corrupt business model of outsourcing companies and restore the program to its original purpose as a vehicle for exceptional talent.
Crucially, directing DHS to issue H-1B visas in the order that maximizes long-term tax revenue likely complies with the strict rules that govern Congress’s reconciliation process, including the Senate’s so-called “Byrd Rule.” The White House has already formally requested that the Senate add more committees to the reconciliation blueprint, so this could be a natural addition.
If added to a Reconciliation measure, this H-1B fix can pass along with the other provisions with just 51 votes. Congress may not agree on the long-term future of the H-1B program, but they should agree that priority goes to those workers who add the most to federal coffers.
By raising standards in the H-1B program, congressional leaders can address longstanding critiques of the visa program.
For years, companies have used H-1B visas to sponsor workers at lower wages than similarly qualified Americans, in part because the system has historically done nothing to give the highest-paid workers priority for visas.
Young Americans in particular are frustrated at the state of the job market. For the first time on record, they are more pessimistic about their job market prospects than older adults. At the same time, the unemployment rate for young college graduates has ticked up to levels not seen since 2013. Fixing H-1B selection would provide some relief, cutting off employers who simply use the program for cheap labor that unfairly competes with fresh American graduates.
Republicans in Congress have a chance to finally crack down on outsourcers and boost the value of the program, all while paying for a massive investment in Mr. Trump’s priorities. They should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good and pass up this opportunity.
• Jeremy Neufeld is the director of High-Skilled Immigration Policy at the Institute for Progress. Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center and author of “The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey)” from Academica Books.
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