Anti-H-1B moves like Project Firewall seem popular: They may even help Trump win back some voters

It’s rare for the federal government to systematically target companies for immigration enforcement; usually, the consequences fall on immigrant workers, not their employers. It shows the depth of Trump’s intention to curb all forms of immigration. It could also re-establish his populist bona fides.

Voters under 30 continue to worry about the economy. Some young male voters critical to Trump’s 2024 victory are drifting away. His signature legislative achievement, a mix of tax and benefit cuts called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, remains unpopular.

Trump needs to regain some lost ground to retain Republican Congressional majorities in midterm polls. Casting corporations as villains that are depriving skilled American workers of six-figure jobs by hiring foreigners—H-1B workers have a median wage of $108,000—neatly fits his persona as a hero for “forgotten men and women."

Yet, it remains to be seen how vigorously the administration will go after the firms that employ hundreds of thousands of foreign workers through various temporary visa programmes. The president has a complex relationship with the business community. He has invited billionaires and tech titans to dine with him at Mar-a-Lago and attend his inauguration, but has also feuded and fallen out with some of them. And the largest corporations will have armies of lawyers ready to challenge any attempts to rein in H-1B visas.

But that’s a fight Trump might relish. No president has ever launched a programme quite like Firewall, which the US Labor Department said could be “the first time the federal government has sought to broadly enforce H-1B legal standards" in the programme’s 35-year history. Until now, suspected non-compliance has been largely based on worker complaints, investigated on a case-by-case basis.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who will lead the project, said she will personally certify investigations, which will draw on data and resources from multiple agencies, including the Justice Department, US Citizenship and Immigration Services and others.

The goal, she said, is to “end practices that leave Americans in the dust." Eliminating fraud and abuse, she said, “will ensure that highly skilled jobs go to Americans first." An online ad campaign has already begun, with Labor Department posts saying, “End H-1B abuse. Hire American," with a picture of Trump saluting.

This issue does not fall along strict party lines. Labour leaders have complained for years that the programme was being used not to hire uniquely talented workers from around the globe, but to obtain cheaper foreign labour that suppresses wages, particularly in the US tech sector.

In 2021, an Economic Policy Institute report found evidence of widespread wage theft, with thousands of H-1B subcontractors at companies such as Disney, FedEx, Google and others underpaying by some $95 million. The Labor Department “has done virtually nothing to ensure programme integrity by enforcing the wage rules," the report said. It recommended, ironically, that feds conduct “a sweeping investigation into whether companies are systematically underpaying H-1B workers in violation of the law," with heavy fines for violators and closure of existing loopholes.

Democrats—who are probably kicking themselves for not having gotten there first—have wasted little time boarding the H-1B reform train. Last Wednesday, Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, a member of the Judiciary Committee, teamed up with Judiciary Chairman Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa in firing off letters to Amazon and other users of H-1B users to ask why they hired H-1B workers while cutting other jobs.

The senators want details on the number of H-1B workers the companies employ, at what wages, and whether American workers have been displaced. Amazon alone was approved to sponsor an estimated 14,000 such visas in fiscal 2025.

Should Trump succeed in opening more high-paying jobs to younger American workers, the payoff could be big. But corporations may also think they could just ride out this storm, perhaps betting he will lose interest. They could try to fight Trump to a legal draw, or risk his wrath and offshore more jobs.

Trump is a disruptor. He favours big, bold strokes and high drama, but often moves on quickly to the next issue on his ever-expanding agenda. Weaning corporations off foreign workers, though, may take persistence. ©Bloomberg

The author is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy.