Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) has introduced a bill to pause new H-1B visas for three years, escalating a widening congressional clash over whether the high-skilled worker program should be reformed, restricted, or ended.
Crane announced the End H-1B Visa Abuse Act of 2026 on April 22, proposing a temporary halt on H-1B issuances followed by sweeping changes to the program when it resumes.
Among the bill’s proposed reforms are cutting the annual visa cap from 65,000 to 25,000, eliminating exemptions, replacing the lottery with a wage-based system, imposing a $200,000 minimum salary, ending the Optional Practical Training pipeline, and barring H-1B holders from adjusting to permanent residency.
“The federal government should work for hardworking citizens, not the profit margins of massive corporations,” Crane said in his statement. “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 H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa category that allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ alien workers for white-collar jobs that typically require at least a bachelor’s degree.
Crane’s Proposed H-1B Three-Year Freeze Joins Crowded Field of Reform Bills
The proposal enters an already crowded field of competing H-1B legislation in the 119th Congress.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, measures range from Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi’s (D-IL) proposal to double the visa cap to 130,000, to Senator Jim Banks’ (R-IN) restriction-focused overhaul, to legislation from former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Representative Gregory Steube (R-FL) that would phase out or effectively eliminate the program.
Crane’s bill appears to go further than several restriction proposals by combining a temporary freeze with structural changes aimed at permanently shrinking the system.
“I am proud to cosponsor Rep. Eli Crane’s efforts to reform and tighten our H-1B visa system, ensuring that our immigration system serves American workers first before foreigners,” Gill said.
Four Texas Republicans signed on as original cosponsors: Representatives Brian Babin, Brandon Gill, Wesley Hunt, and Keith Self.
While the reaction from congressional Democrats and immigration advocacy groups has been muted, some interested parties have expressed concern.
“Let’s be clear: this is not normal reform. This is an attempt to dismantle the high-skilled immigration system piece by piece,” Immigration attorney Rahul Reddy wrote on the blog for his firm Reddy Neumann Brown PC. “‘If you want to stop abuse, punish the abusers — don’t burn down the whole system.’”
Critics, however, have increasingly pointed to wage concerns. “On average, H-1B workers earn 16 percent less than comparable natives,” according to a February working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research and Harvard economist George J. Borjas, previously cited by The Dallas Express.
The program is also heavily concentrated in a small number of countries. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data, roughly 72% of H-1B visas are awarded to workers from India, while about 12% go to workers from China.
Crane’s bill would prohibit third-party staffing firms from employing H-1B workers, require employers to certify they could not find qualified American workers, and bar federal agencies from sponsoring non-immigrant workers.
The legislation arrives amid continued scrutiny over whether the visa program suppresses wages for domestic workers. Supporters of the H-1B system, including Ohio Republican gubernatorial contender Vivek Ramaswamy, have argued the program serves economic needs. Ramaswamy previously argued on X that “American culture has venerated mediocrity,” while suggesting foreign workers often better fit the demands of some employers.
The measure faces uncertain odds. Like other major H-1B proposals introduced this Congress, it has been introduced into a legislative environment in which no major reform bill has advanced to a floor vote in the full U.S. House of Representatives, DX reported.
