BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA On September 19, 2025, Proclamation 10973 (Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers) (2025 Proclamation), was issued to address significant abuses of the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program. The restrictions enacted by the 2025 Proclamation have proven to be highly effective but the underlying conditions necessitating the restrictions persist. It is therefore in the interests of the United States to extend the 2025 Proclamation for an additional 12 months, until 12:00 a. m. eastern daylight time on September 21, 2027.
As explained in the 2025 Proclamation, the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program was created to bring temporary workers in high-skilled functions into the United States, but it has been exploited to replace, not supplement, American workers with lower-paid labor. Certain employers, including information technology (IT) staffing and outsourcing firms, have abused the system to suppress wages and displace American workers, and this has both harmed the labor market for American workers while also making it difficult to attract and retain the most highly skilled temporary workers.
IT staffing and outsourcing firms were found to supply a large volume of entry-level temporary H‑1B workers, generally at a much lower salary compared to full‑time, traditional workers, and some of these firms later outsourced IT roles to cheap labor markets overseas. This has led to a proliferation of lower-paid foreign labor flooding the American labor market and making it difficult for American workers and recent graduates, especially in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, to find employment.
To combat these abuses, the 2025 Proclamation set forth a restriction on entry of certain H-1B nonimmigrant workers, except for those petitions that were accompanied or supplemented by a $100,000 payment, subject to very limited exceptions. The 2025 Proclamation went into effect on September 21, 2025, and, since then,…