Labor and human capital
2026-04-26
10 minute read
18 sources
US H-1B and High-Skill Immigration Reform 2026: Wage-Based Selection Lands, Talent Strategy Resets
The FY2026 cap season runs under USCIS wage-based selection rather than a random lottery, registrations are still recovering from the FY2025 fraud crackdown, and Trump 2.0 executive orders have stacked the deck against entry level filings.
The US high-skill immigration system entered 2026 in the middle of its largest rule shift since 2004. USCIS finalized a beneficiary-centric registration process for FY2025, which cut total registrations from 758,994 in FY2024 to 442,000 in FY2025 by squeezing out multiple-registration fraud. The Trump administration then issued executive ...