News Americas, Washington, D.C., Weds. Dec. 24, 2025: The DHS announced on Dec. 23, 2025 that it is amending regulations governing the H-1B work visa program, replacing the long-standing random lottery system with a weighted selection process designed to prioritize higher-skilled and higher-paid foreign workers.
The change, which USCIS says is intended to better protect the wages, working conditions, and job opportunities of American workers, will take effect February 27, 2026, ahead of the FY 2027 H-1B cap registration season.
Under the new rule, H-1B visas will no longer be awarded solely through random selection. Instead, greater weight will be given to registrations for foreign nationals with higher skill levels and higher wages, while still allowing employers to seek workers across all wage levels.
“The existing random selection process of H-1B registrations was exploited and abused by U.S. employers who were primarily seeking to import foreign workers at lower wages than they would pay American workers,” said Matthew Tragesser, a spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, (USCIS). “The new weighted selection will better serve Congress’ intent for the H-1B program and strengthen America’s competitiveness by incentivizing employers to petition for higher-paid, higher-skilled foreign workers.”
Each year, the H-1B program is capped at 65,000 visas, with an additional 20,000 visas reserved for foreign nationals holding advanced degrees from U.S. institutions. Critics of the lottery system have long argued that it enabled some employers to flood the registration pool with lower-wage applications, disadvantaging both U.S. workers and higher-skilled foreign professionals.
DHS said the updated selection process aims to curb those practices while improving the overall integrity of the program.
The rule also aligns with other H-1B reforms introduced by the Trump administration, including a presidential proclamation requiring employers to pay an additional $100,000 per visa as a condition of eligibility.
“As part of the Trump Administration’s commitment to H-1B reform, we will continue to demand more from both employers and aliens so as not to undercut American workers and to put America first,” Tragesser said.
DHS said additional regulatory changes may follow as part of its broader effort to modernize and enforce the H-1B program.
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