The winners and losers of the new H-1B era

Rob Dobi for BIThe new H-1B reality is beginning to produce clear winners and losers.The Trump administration has introduced proposals that target various legal immigration pathways, from the H-1B visa for highly skilled foreign workers to the OPT student work authorization for foreign students who have graduated from a US university.On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance announced a crackdown on the pathway to green cards for workers at some tech firms, including Microsoft and Adobe.Business Insider has been covering how skilled foreign workers navigate the changing immigration policies through our ongoing H-1B fallout series, launched one year after Trump first introduced the $100,000 fee on some H-1B applicants. We have examined where foreign talent is heading and the hidden sacrifices of those who opt into the H-1B system. We've also spotlighted stories from individuals at different stages of the visa pipeline.To understand who is better and worse off in the new H-1B system, Business Insider spoke to immigration lawyers and academics and analyzed H-1B application data from the first three quarters of the last three fiscal years.Ted Chiappari, head of immigration law at law firm Duane Morris, told Business Insider there is nothing in any of the changes in H-1B rules or policies that "would favor one company over another."Instead, what's emerging is that employers with cash and employees with in-demand skills are seeing a relative advantage from the increasingly uncertain H-1B regime.The US issues 85,000 H-1B visas a year. Demand still outweighs supply, even as applications in the March 2026 H-1B lottery dropped more than 38% from the year before, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services said.Trump's proposed $100,000 H-1B fee for new applicants is held up in the courts. It is "probably the main reason" those applications fell, Chiappari said.The administration has previously said its changes are intended to curb misuse of the H-1B program and protect American workers, a sentiment echoed by USCIS. Spokesperson Zach Kahler said the goal is to have employment-based visas "supplement, not supplant American workers."The White House and the Department of Labor did not respond to requests for comment.Winner: High salary, high specialization workersA regulatory change that favors one group of workers over another is the wage-weighted H-1B cap selection. It replaced the randomized lottery earlier this year and gives applicants in higher wage bands a greater chance of being selected. This story is part of Business Insider's "H-1B Fallout: 1 year later" series.Read more of our coverage of how the Trump administration's H-1B visa changes affect workers:The new lands of opportunityThe hidden sacrifices of chasing an H-1B career in AmericaI missed out on the H-1B lottery 3 times. I wasn't ready to give up on my career in the US.Watch: I gave up on getting an H-1B visa because of the $100k fee. I'm optimistic about my future outside the US. They get another boost by simple arithmetic. If you're going to potentially pay $100,000 more than someone's salary in order to hire them, you likely would only do it for someone who is making quite a bit above $100,000.It's evident in some of the largest hiring increases in the data, which are directly tied to generative AI trends. Data scientists saw the number of certified H-1B applications go up by nearly a quarter year-over-year in 2026, the largest of any other job category with more than 5,000 applications. The smaller category of computer and information research scientists saw their applications go up nearly 40%. These are high-paying occupations: As of May 2025, data scientists earned a median annual salary of $120,230, and computer and information research scientists made $140,300, both well above the overall median annual wage of $50,980.Certified applications are not the same as visas issued and may include updates to information on existing employees, but the data can provide insight into the state of the H-1B system. Data that shows the full scope of the fiscal year's H-1B hires is expected to be released later this year.Catherine Macris, a partner at the immigration law firm Fragomen, said that employees in highly specialized, high-demand fields — like tech — might be better positioned because recent changes have placed increased emphasis on "specialization, compensation levels, and employer compliance readiness."Specialized roles don't just command higher salaries; they also "align more readily with evolving H-1B eligibility and wage considerations," Macris said. It's easier to show that they're actual specialists who need to be hired internationally rather than domestically.Winner: Tech employersTech employers rapidly building out generative AI have been one of the biggest pillars of the economy in the last couple of years. The story is no different with H-1B visas.Tech companies are among the top employers that recruit hig

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