The Donald Trump administration is considering introducing a new process for H-1B hiring under the capped part of the system. The Department of Homeland Security sent the proposal to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review. The capped part of the system means the statutory cap decided by Congress for every year. The cap is 85,000 slots, including 20,000 reserved for workers who have a master’s degree. Universities and research institutions are eligible for cap-exempt visas. For 2026, the USCIS has already closed the process as they announced Friday that enough petitions had been submitted to reach the annual cap, which means there will be no lottery for FY 2026. In the present system, there’s a random lottery each year for visas subject to the cap. After the lottery, employers with winning entries submit petitions to sponsor workers who will join their companies around October. In Donald Trump’s first term, the DHS came up with a selection process based on the wage offered for a position instead of the random lottery so that companies hire more high-skilled workers instead of filling their positions with low-wage foreign workers.That rule, one of several offered as part of a “Buy American, Hire American” initiative, was later shelved by the Biden administration in 2021. The draft regulations drew more than 1,000 public comments, including many that argued it would drastically reduce the number of available H-1B workers, Bloomberg reported.

H-1B: Lottery versus weighted selection process

The lottery system was brought in so that no company or applicant would get any favor. But larger companies can apply for more visas resulting in such companies getting more H-1Bs. In January, the Institute for Progress, a nonpartisan think tank examining innovation policy, floated the idea of eliminating the H-1B lottery. It argued that the economic value of the visa program could be increased by 88 per cent of applicants were evaluated based on seniority or salary.