H-1B Filings Drop Sharply at Walmart, Goldman as New Fees Bite

The Trump administration's imposition of a $100000 fee on new H-1B visas has produced an immediate and uneven upheaval in the three-decade-old program that supplies skilled foreign workers to American employers. Data from the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 show major retailers and Wall Street banks sharply reducing their use of the visas while nonprofits and smaller institutions find themselves priced out entirely leaving critical services understaffed.

At the Wayside Youth and Family Support Network a Massachusetts nonprofit that operates a private special-education school the new cost has proven prohibitive. President Sara McCabe said the organization has five open teaching positions it would normally fill with educators from Brazil Mexico and Germany. Instead the school has turned away a dozen students whose needs cannot be met. The one-hundred-thousand-dollar fee has closed the door for us McCabe told The New York Times. Wayside's experience is not isolated. Rural hospitals schools and other nonprofits that have relied on the program to fill roles difficult to staff locally are absorbing the heaviest blows according to reporting from Washington.

The fee introduced in September has fundamentally altered who can participate in the H-1B system. Once a pipeline for a wide range of employers from technology giants and consulting firms to medical facilities the program now favors those with the deepest pockets. Smaller organizations without the resources to absorb the added expense have been effectively locked out producing gaps in services that directly affect American families and communities. Special-education students turned away from enrollment are only the most visible example. Hospitals that depend on foreign nurses and technicians to maintain staffing levels in underserved areas face similar constraints though comprehensive data on those sectors is still emerging.

Corporate America is also retrenching though the pattern is more mixed. Walmart the nation's largest retailer submitted just 312 certified H-1B applications during the final three months of 2025 according to Department of Labor figures. That represents a drop of more than fifty percent from roughly 860 applications in the same period a year earlier and forty percent below the level from two years ago. The decline coincides with broader tech-sector hiring slowdowns that have reached even non-technology companies like Walmart. Yet the timing of the reduction aligns closely with the rollout of the Trump administration's changes which raised application costs and added new compliance burdens.

Wall Street tells a comparable story. Major banks that once filed large volumes of H-1B petitions to expand their technical and analytical teams filed ten percent fewer applications overall in the first quarter of fiscal 2026 compared with the prior year. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase both recorded noticeable year-over-year declines. Citigroup was an exception increasing its petitions while its peers pulled back. Financial institutions have historically used the visas to import talent in software development quantitative analysis and cybersecurity. Whether artificial intelligence will reduce future demand for such roles remains an open question but the immediate catalyst cited across the industry is the higher price tag attached to each new visa.

The Trump administration has framed the changes as necessary to protect American workers and raise revenue from a program it has long criticized as prone to abuse. Yet the early evidence suggests the policy is disrupting operations far beyond the tech sector that draws most public attention. Nonprofits like Wayside lack the profit margins to treat the fee as a routine business expense. A rural hospital administrator quoted anonymously in reporting on the changes described the decision as binary either absorb an unsustainable cost or leave positions vacant and reduce services. The result is a quiet erosion of capacity in sectors that serve vulnerable populations rather than the high-profile technology firms often associated with H-1B hiring.

Advocates for immigration reform note that the H-1B program was never intended solely for Silicon Valley. Its original purpose included filling specialized shortages across the economy. By pricing out schools hospitals and smaller businesses the new fees have narrowed that purpose in practice even if the statutory framework remains. Larger corporations may eventually adapt by shifting more work to artificial-intelligence tools or domestic hires but the transition is unlikely to be seamless. In the meantime students without teachers and patients without adequate staff bear the immediate consequences.

Department of Labor statistics for subsequent quarters will clarify whether the first-quarter drop represents a temporary reaction or a lasting restructuring of the program. What is already clear is that the cost increase has produced a sorting effect. The employers best able to pay the new fees continue to participate while those with tighter budgets are forced to withdraw. For a nonprofit in Massachusetts trying to educate children with complex needs that withdrawal is not an abstract policy outcome. It is five empty classrooms and a waiting list of families turned away.

The broader economic implications remain subject to debate. Proponents of tighter controls argue that higher barriers will encourage companies to invest in American training programs. Skeptics counter that many of the roles in question have gone unfilled for years despite repeated recruitment efforts. What cannot be disputed is the human cost already visible in places like Wayside where the promise of specialized education has been curtailed by a policy advertised as protection for American labor. As more employers release their hiring numbers the full scope of that trade-off will come into sharper focus.