According to the latest federal data, 479 employees in New Mexico have H-1B visas. The biggest H-1B employer is Triad National Security, which is Los Alamos National Laboratory’s primary contractor, but many rural school districts in New Mexico all have one or more H-1B employee. (Westend61/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump recently announced a new, huge fee for H-1B visa applications, making it far more expensive for employers to hire skilled, foreign workers in a variety of industries.
In a proclamation Sept. 19, Trump justified the new $100,000 fee for H-1B applications as a way to “address the abuse of that program while still permitting companies to hire the best of the best temporary foreign workers.”
Particularly in tech, Trump wrote, companies have used H-1B visas to replace American workers. According to the White House, the number of foreign STEM workers in the United States more than doubled between 2000 and 2019 to almost 2.5 million. Employers, Trump said, have brought in so much low-wage, high-skilled foreign tech labor that “a disadvantageous labor market for American citizens” has resulted.
But data Source New Mexico reviewed paints a different picture, at least in New Mexico, and suggests that rural school districts, educational institutions and hospitals might take a big hit if prospective foreign employees have to pay $100,000 to apply to work here.
According to the latest data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, 479 H-1B employees received approval to work in New Mexico at 104 different employers. The figure includes those whose employers approved their applications this fiscal year, as well as cases in which employers allowed applicants to work in different positions or for new employers.
While 30 of the employers can reasonably be categorized as “private,” including at tech or engineering firms in New Mexico, the vast majority of employees work in the healthcare, government or education sectors.
Triad National Security LLC, Los Alamos National Laboratory’s primary contractor, stands out as the state’s biggest H-1B employer. The contractor employs 69 H-1B visa holders, according to the USCIS data for this federal fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
A Triad spokesperson declined to comment.
The other biggest H-1B employers include Presbyterian Healthcare Services, which has 62 H-1B employees, and the University of New Mexico, which has 50.
Rural school districts across New Mexico have one or more H-1B visas, according to the data. Forty-seven of the state’s 104 H-1B employers are educational institutions or school districts, according to Source’s review.
That includes 19 public school districts in New Mexico that each have one H-1B employee in rural areas all over the state, including in Zuni, Hobbs, Dexter, Cuba and elsewhere.
In a statement to Source New Mexico this week, Stacy Johnston, a spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions, said H-1B visas are essential for a state with recent significant job losses, including during the recession that began in 2007 and the COVID-19 pandemic. According to DWS data, the state lost about 50,000 jobs between August 2008 and September 2010, then about 100,000 jobs at the onset of the pandemic.
“Even with all the incredible efforts going on in our state to train our homegrown talent, we know we need more people to make our economy thrive,” Johnston said. “H-1B is a long-established tool for businesses to meet their workforce needs, whether it’s world-class physicists and engineers for our cutting-edge tech industries; doctors and dentists to meet our urgent health care needs; or K-12 teachers in rural districts facing severe recruitment challenges.”