Fewer US companies are willing to hire foreign grads

US companies are less willing to hire international workers or sponsor their visas, another sign that President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is reshaping corporate hiring policies.

Twenty-nine percent of American companies said they were open to hiring foreign business school graduates in 2026, down from 33% last year and 55% in 2022, according to a survey of corporate recruiters by the Graduate Management Admission Council.

US employers including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have long been willing to pay large sums to obtain immigration lawyers and visas for top foreign-born talent. Applications for three-year visas start around $8,000 a pop, said Anne Walsh, an attorney at Corporate Immigration Partners. But some of the surveyed recruiters said changing federal immigration policies have forced them to reconsider. A quarter said that they are still planning to hire foreign workers and base them out of overseas offices instead of in the US.

The Trump administration last year expanded the vetting processes for new visa applicants and introduced a new selection process that favors higher earners for the popular H1-B visa for specialized workers. It also announced an indefinite pause on immigrant visas to nationals of dozens of countries and terminated a program that granted amnesty to migrants from countries including Haiti and Venezuela. The president has said that the restrictions will free up jobs for American workers.

Bloomberg reported in October that Walmart Inc., the country’s largest private employer, had paused offering corporate office jobs to candidates who needed sponsorship for H1-B visas. “Walmart is committed to hiring and investing in the best talent to serve our customers, while remaining thoughtful about our H-1B hiring approach,” a spokeswoman for the retailer said at the time.

Other employers followed suit. The number of employers filing H1-B visas has fallen by nearly 40% in the last fiscal year, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Walsh, the immigration attorney, said that the financial, professional services, and technology firms she represents still need to hire foreign-born workers and are finding the new restrictions “enormously frustrating.” Those barriers pushed 68% to consider nearshoring or offshoring their foreign-born recruits, according to a survey by Envoy Global, a immigration services provider affiliated with Walsh’s firm. She suspects most are going to Latin America or India.

“This is what they need to grow their business and thereafter contribute to the US economy, create more jobs,” she said. But “they're just being met with these barriers.”