How the U.S. crackdown on skilled migrant workers could hurt its economy

The U.S.’s move to suspend several firms including Indian IT companies from the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) programme is the latest in the Donald Trump administration’s crackdown on employment-based immigration.

While the U.S. has reasoned that its crackdown, including the proclamation signed by Mr. Trump last year to raise the H-1B visa fee to $1,00,000, is an attempt to persuade companies to hire more U.S. workers, data show this will significantly affect the U.S.’s access to skilled workers, and prove counterproductive in the long run.

Employment-based migration to the U.S., particularly the H-1B programme, allows highly skilled immigrant workers to take temporary employment in the U.S. Later processes such as employer-sponsored PERM certification and Form I-140 can pave the way for permanent residency through a green card. However, applications under these categories have already been on a decline under the Trump administration.

First, the number of H1-B registrations have taken a hit after the $1,00,000 fee was imposed in September 2025. This fee was later struck down by federal courts in June 2026.

Second, while temporary workers depend on the employment route for green cards, their share is quite low. More than 10 lakh people obtained permanent residency in the U.S. each year. However, the share of those utilising the employment route for green cards has been decreasing in recent years.

Green cards were largely obtained by immediate relatives of U.S. citizens and family-sponsored preferences.

The recent move suspending several firms — Microsoft, Adobe, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL (America/Tech), Cognizant, Capgemini — from applying for PERM may have limited impact as well. These companies have already been filing fewer applications since Mr. Trump came to office. These companies together accounted for less than 10% of all PERM applications filed.

Their share had already dropped to a mere 4% in 2025, the first year of the second Trump administration. So far this year, these companies filed about 2,000 PERM applications, less than 2% of all applications filed by various employers.

While Indians accounted for more than half of these PERM applications, a breakdown of I-140 preferences illustrates the extent of skilled labour migration. An analysis of the I-140 visa applications, filed with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to classify workers for employment-based immigration, shows that more than 20,000 Indian professionals with advanced degrees applied for citizenship in the U.S. each year since 2014.

This eligibility criteria requires that the applicant either have a U.S. master degree or higher (or a foreign equivalent) or a U.S. bachelor degree (or foreign equivalent) followed by at least five years of work experience in the specialisation. In the process of merely qualifying for the eligibility itself, these applicants contribute to the U.S. economy as both students and employees.

Much of the debate on immigration crackdown also ignores the benefits they bring to the economy. According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis in July 2024, the immigration surge was estimated to add $1.2 trillion in federal revenues over the 2024-2034 period, largely due to their income and payroll taxes.

In the long term, an increased crackdown on migrant workers could risk investments and activities by corporations outside the U.S.

The data for the charts were sourced from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Congressional Budget Office

Gandla Sneha is interning with The Hindu Data Team