Lutnick: H1B Visas Should Favor Doctors, Educators Over Low-Cost Tech Consultants

India-West News Desk

WASHINGTON, DC – Objects of focus in the coming overhaul of the H1B visa process will be technology workers and the system that has enabled companies to bring in large numbers of lower-paid consultants. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said sweeping changes are on the horizon before a $100,000 application fee takes effect in February 2026.

“This procedure and process goes into effect in February of 2026,” Lutnick told NewsNation on September 28. “So my guess is going to be, there are going to be a significant number of changes between now and 2026.”

The Trump administration announced the $100,000 hike for H1B work visas earlier this month, a move that has hit Indian professionals particularly hard.

Lutnick stressed that reform is overdue. “Everyone agrees that the H1B process, which was set up in 1990 and sort of butchered along the way, needs to change,” he said.

He noted that visas are currently oversubscribed by seven to ten times, with 74 percent going to tech consultants. “H1B visas are for tech consultants? Like, somehow, that’s important—that tech consultants are onshore versus offshore? They’re all in other countries anyway,” he remarked. By contrast, he said, only about four percent of the visas go to educators and doctors.

Lutnick drew a sharp distinction between those groups: “Doctors and educators with high degrees should be able to come in. But if companies want to hire engineers, they should employ only the highly paid ones.”

The secretary was emphatic in rejecting the current practice of importing lower-paid contractors. “The idea of having tech consultants and trainees who are inexpensive should be eliminated,” he said. “I think the President’s right with me on those same topics… I am completely of the view that this idea that inexpensive tech consultants should be coming into this country and bringing their families—I find it just wrong, and so it sits wrong with me.”

And with the looming fee increase, Lutnick suggested fewer applicants would flood the system: “At least it shouldn’t be overrun with these people.”