Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) has introduced the most sweeping H-1B reform legislation ever proposed in Congress. The End H-1B Visa Abuse Act of 2026 would impose an immediate three-year freeze on the program and implement dramatic structural changes before it could resume.
"The federal government should work for hardworking citizens, not the profit margins of massive corporations," Crane said in his official announcement. "We owe it to the American people to prevent the broken H-1B system from boxing them out of jobs they are qualified to perform."
The legislation has backing from several House Republicans including Rep. Brandon Gill, Paul Gosar, Brian Babin, Wesley Hunt, Tom McClintock, Keith Self, and Andy Ogles. Rosemary Jenks, cofounder of the Immigration Accountability Project, described it as "the strongest H‑1B bill that has ever been introduced in Congress."
The reforms are extensive. The annual visa cap would drop from 65,000 to just 25,000, with all exemptions eliminated. The minimum salary requirement would jump to $200,000 per year. Visa holders would receive only a single three-year term with no extensions permitted. Dependents would be barred from accompanying workers to the United States. Most significantly, the bill would eliminate any path to permanent residency for H-1B holders.
The legislation would also prohibit third-party staffing firms from employing H-1B workers, end the Optional Practical Training program for international students, bar federal agencies from sponsoring foreign workers, and require employers to certify that no qualified American is available and that no recent layoffs have occurred.
Rep. Gosar depicted the issue bluntly. "The H‑1B program has been hijacked to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor — plain and simple."
Evidence supports the reformers' concerns. Bloomberg News obtained federal data showing outsourcing and staffing firms gamed the lottery by submitting multiple entries for the same workers. Separately, research by the Economic Policy Institute found that the top 30 H-1B employers hired 34,000 new foreign workers in 2022 while simultaneously laying off at least 85,000 employees. The Trump administration's own Department of Homeland Security concluded in late 2025 that "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."
The bill builds on executive actions already underway. DHS implemented a wage-based selection system in February 2026 to replace the random lottery. President Trump imposed a $100,000 per-petition fee on new H-1B applicants via presidential proclamation in September 2025. The Department of Labor launched enforcement investigations under "Project Firewall."
Abolishing H-1B visas is absolutely necessary for protecting workers in the United States. That, along with other hardline immigration restriction measures are long overdue if the United States is to remain a socio-economically cohesive polity.
