The Trump administration is warning of a "big week" on the foreign labor visa front, with the US Department of Labor's Inspector General signaling intensified enforcement against employers who sponsor foreign workers — the latest escalation in a crackdown that now includes calls from Vice President JD Vance to scrap the H-1B visa programme entirely.
"Big week ahead on the foreign labor visa front. We're taking LFG to a whole new level. American jobs. American workers," Inspector General Anthony D'Esposito posted on X on October 4, tagging President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and federal fraud-enforcement officials.
Vance: "completely broken"
D'Esposito did not identify a specific visa programme, employer or investigation in his post. But his warning follows a blistering intervention from Vice President JD Vance, who in a video posted October 1 called the H-1B system "completely broken" and said he would support eliminating it altogether.
"If you're going to bring in an accountant making $45,000 a year to replace an accountant who is an American making $60,000 a year, that's not you using the programme to bring in a genius. That's you destroying American jobs and defrauding the American people."
— US Vice President JD Vance, October 1, 2026
Vance argued the programme had been "totally taken advantage of" by technology companies, accounting firms and other businesses using it to cut labour costs rather than to hire exceptional overseas talent.
The $100,000 fee hits a court wall
The administration's most contentious measure — a $100,000 payment requirement for certain new H-1B petitions involving workers outside the US — has just been blocked by a second federal court. The judge ruled that US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department failed to follow necessary rule-making protocol before imposing the fee.
The fee was introduced in September 2025 and extended for another year in September 2026, remaining in force through September 21, 2027 unless the legal challenges prevail.
Meanwhile, a September 18 executive order directed the Department of Labor to review previously filed labour-condition applications for possible violations, and to examine whether employers sponsoring H-1B workers had carried out or planned layoffs affecting similarly situated US workers.
Why it matters for global workers
The stakes are highest for Indian professionals: according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services data, beneficiaries born in India accounted for 71% of all approved H-1B petitions in fiscal 2024, by far the largest share.
The administration has also shifted H-1B selection from a purely random lottery to a wage-weighted model that favours higher-paid and higher-skilled positions — a change likely to hurt entry-level, lower-paid and outsourcing-linked applications while rewarding highly specialized professionals.
Supporters of the crackdown say companies have for years used the programme to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labour. Critics counter that the H-1B pipeline supplies the STEM talent American universities and tech firms depend on — and that courts keep striking down the administration's measures as overreach.
What the "big week" will actually bring remains unknown: D'Esposito named no targets, and the administration has not said which companies could face scrutiny. But with the Labor Department, the White House fraud task force and the Justice Department all tagged in the warning, the crackdown is clearly entering a new phase.
Reel soundtrack: Kevin MacLeod - Hitman (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
Sources: Hindustan Times, News18, The Financial Express, The Times of India, The Daily Jagran