H-1B Visa Filings Drop After Trump’s Crackdown

Stricter immigration rules and exorbitant hike of fee led to a steep decline in the number of H-1B visa filings by the US tech giants.

According to federal data, H-1B visa filings by tech goliaths Amazon, Meta, Google, Apple and Microsoft sharply fell late last year as layoffs and Trump administration’s crackdown on the program increased. The tech giants filed significantly fewer H-1B visa applications in the first quarter of 2026 than they did the last year.

Amazon had the highest number of certified applications and saw a steep decline, in the filings to 3,057 in Q1 2026 (October-December 2025) from 4,647 in Q1 2025. Certified H-1B applications are those picked and reviewed by the Labour Department to ensure that a prospective immigrant worker would be paid similar to others working in similar roles, so that it would not have an adverse effect on the employment of those workers.

Other tech giants — Apple, Google, Microsoft and Meta, known as biggest H-1B sponsors, witnessed a decline in the number of certified applications compared to the year earlier. According to a report by Business Insider, the applications by Meta and Google dropped by nearly half.

Apple and Microsoft also reported fewer filings. Applications by IBM, Salesforce and Tesla also dropped in the same period.

Nvidia is the only company that registered a rise in the number of H-1B filings year-over-year, from 369 in Q12025 to 434 in Q1 2026. The company CEO Jensen Huang, a native of Taiwan, said they would keep hiring immigrants despite the hike in the visa fee.

The drop in the H-1B filings by Big Tech is mainly due to the Trump administration’s policy changes, introduced in September last year and layoffs. The H-1B visa fee was hiked to $100,000 on new petitions.

With the tech giants spending heavily on AI, the companies are downsizing the workforce and trimming head count, to concentrate on specialized teams. Amazon fired 16,000 corporate jobs in January, after removing 14,000 in October last year. Meta also laid off hundreds of employees in March. Google too laid off employees in the recent past.