Walmart has halted job offers for H-1B visa holders.

 

File photo of a California Walmart. BBC/Reuters.

Walmart has halted job offers for H-1B visa holders after reforms to the program. BBC. President Trump increased the filing fee to $100,000 per application and Walmart made the decision in response. Walmart is America's largest retail employer and had approved 2000 H-1B visa holders in 2025 alone. The move won't affect visa holders that are already employed at Walmart. India dominates the source of H-1B visas, with more than 70% of them hailing from India. 

My Comment:

I am glad that Walmart is making this move but why on earth were they ever hiring H-1B visa holders in the first place? Walmart is America's biggest employer, so why weren't they hiring American citizens? I can't imagine there are that many jobs at Walmart that requires hiring from the world's pool of workers. Indeed, I would think that Walmart, being such a huge employer, could find people within their organization to promote, instead of hiring from India. 

This is exactly what I wanted to see through when Trump modified the H-1B system. I'd prefer if we ended it entirely, and have a moratorium on immigration from countries like India entirely, but this is a good first step. Like I said, I don't believe that Walmart, or most of these other companies, don't have talent available in America to fill these positions, they just don't want to because H-1B's are cheaper. 

Raising the fee made that statement no longer true. $100,000 is a very high initial cost for someone that might not work out in the end. Though you might save some money hiring an H-1B at a lower salary, that initial hit makes it a lot harder to stomach. If it's a big hit to a company as big as Walmart it's going to have major knock off effects on smaller companies that are doing the same thing. 

I do wonder if political considerations were at play here as well. Nobody in America, outside of the Indians that take advantage of the programs, and the big businesses that want to drive down wages, likes this program and almost everyone wants it to either be majorly reformed or ended entirely. Though there hasn't been major protest movements against the program, I would not be surprised if one arrives soon, the program is that unpopular. 

Will there be other dominos that fall too? I hope so. Like I have said, I don't believe that there really is a worker shortage in America. I think the big tech companies will continue to hire these people, but I am thinking the days of retail outlets like Walmart doing this are probably over, at least in the short term.