Trump's Gold Card idea reminds us why the H-1B isn't cutting it for the American economy

One of the biggest challenges American employers face when hiring international graduates from top U.S. universities is uncertainty. If a brilliant foreign student earns a degree from Harvard, Stanford, or MIT, it should be a no-brainer that American companies like Apple or Google would want to hire them. But the immigration system doesn’t always make that easy.

As an immigration attorney, I work with businesses every day that want to hire highly skilled foreign professionals—but face obstacles in securing long-term work authorization. The system is outdated, unpredictable, and often limits American businesses from hiring the best and brightest.

Fortunately, there are legal pathways to bring in top talent—you just need the right strategy. Let’s break down the process, the challenges, and how Locke Immigration Law can guide your business through it successfully.

The Challenge: Navigating the H-1B Visa Process

The most common work visa for skilled professionals is the H-1B, but its availability is far from guaranteed. Here's how it works:

• International students graduate and typically begin working under OPT (Optional Practical Training), which allows them to work in their field for one year after graduation.
• If they have a STEM degree (science, technology, engineering, or math), they can extend that OPT period by two more years, giving them up to three years of work authorization.
• During these three years, their employer must apply for an H-1B visa, the most common work visa for skilled professionals.
• The problem? The H-1B visa is subject to a strict lottery. Every March, employers enter their candidates into the lottery, and only a fraction wins the opportunity to apply.

This system isn't designed to allow for highly qualified foreign graduates to be able to stay in the U.S. long term. A company can invest years training someone, only to lose them because their H-1B registration wasn’t selected in the lottery. That’s bad for businesses, bad for innovation, and bad for America’s economy.

The Reality: An Unbalanced System

One of the most frustrating aspects of our immigration system is its disconnect from reality. U.S. universities actively recruit foreign students, granting thousands of spots each year—but there's only a meager 20,000 H-1B visas per year set aside for them post-graduation (and those are only for graduates with at least a master's degree). There’s a massive mismatch between the number of highly trained graduates and the number of available work visas.

Alternatives, like the O-1 visa for aliens with extraordinary ability, are unrealistic for most recent graduates. Why? Because O-1 approvals rely on a long track record of demonstrated excellence—something unrealistic a young professional just starting their career. By the time someone has built up a robust work history and amassed a fortune to afford a $5 million gold card, they've probably also burned through most of their best working years.

Our current H-1B systems leaves many talented, hardworking, and educated young professionals stuck in limbo, unsure if they can continue their careers in the U.S.