Farm fields and meat packing plants may be Ground Zero for immigration crackdowns, but a quieter labor crisis is rapidly unfolding in the offices and data centers of corporate America.
Chief information officers increasingly find themselves in the crosshairs of fast-changing and aggressive federal policies that affect legal foreign-born workers. (The Immigration Policy Tracking Project maintains a searchable, annotated database of these actions. The IPTP is led by Professor Lucas Guttentag in partnership with Stanford and Yale law students and a team of leading immigration law experts.)
H1-B visa delays, worker attrition, higher costs, and a growing risk of losing valuable talent are the new normal. As hiring pipelines clog, CIOs and their companies face a chaotic and increasingly unstable IT environment.
There are growing concerns. “US dominance has always depended on tapping the best talent globally. Choking off the flow doesn’t just interrupt business and slow innovation; it hands opportunities over to our competitors,” says Jeff Le, managing principal at 100 Mile Strategies, a consultancy focused on public sector policy and emerging technology.
Sorting through the upheaval and developing a strategy is essential. CIOs face immediate and long-term risks arising from labor disruptions and talent shortages, particularly in critical areas like artificial intelligence, data science, cybersecurity, and cloud architecture.
States Julie Gelatt, associate director of the US Immigration Policy Program at the Immigration Policy Institute (MPI): “There’s a concentration of extremely smart individuals doing cutting-edge work that still draws talent to the US. But we also have policies and an environment that seem increasingly unattractive. So the question is: Which wins out?”
Borderline Chaos
The political winds have clearly shifted, and CIOs must adapt. “A fundamental problem is that the Trump administration has questioned the value of almost all immigration to the United States. At the same time, Congress has provided enormous funding to support his policies,” Gelatt says.
Immigration critics argue that an influx of foreign talent undercuts US wages and employment — and companies use the system to save money. However, many economic studies contradict this view. Research from the Economic Policy Institute, the Brookings Institution, and University of California Davis have consistently found that skilled immigrants create jobs, complement domestic talent, and boost innovation.
How Immigration Processes Have Changed
Although the fundamental immigration framework has not changed significantly since 1990 — including rules surrounding the existing H-1B program (as well as less common O-1, EB-1A, or National Interest Waivers) — how the federal government manages applicants has changed dramatically in recent months.
These include delays in processing visas and visa renewals, new interpretations of rules, a travel ban, and threats to revoke student visas.
According to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data, H1-B visa registrations dropped by 27% during fiscal year 2025 and 54% since FY 2024. In recent months, the agency has introduced new obstacles. It has raised processing fees for employment visas from $10 to $215 while requiring more documentation from applicants including letters of support, education documentation, and biometric data.
Meanwhile, the US State Department has significantly scaled back its use of mail-in renewals and interview waivers. The agency now requires in-person interviews for most new visa applications and many renewals. Scheduling delays are widespread. At some consulates, wait times stretch into weeks or months, often pushing past visa renewal deadlines.
Loren Locke, an immigration attorney at Locke Immigration Law in Atlanta, believes that the system has become increasingly hostile to foreign-born workers. “These aren’t undocumented immigrants, but the government is treating them as though they are unwanted — even when they are in full compliance,” she says.
Recently, Locke has witnessed an uptick in rejected paperwork and outright denials. “People can’t travel to their home countries. They have no assurance that they will continue to live and work in the US.” Beyond the immediate disruption, these actions could convince skilled workers and students to avoid the US altogether or forgo renewing their visas.
In July, Locke spotted another subtle but important shift in policy. “When H1-B visa holders are laid off or attempt to change from one job to another — and in the process withdraw their old petition as required by law — they are being referred to immigration court for removal rather than receiving the required 60-day grace period,” she says. “These are people who, in some cases, have been in the US workforce for decades. They have families, houses, and cars in the US, with American children attending school.”
How CIOs Can Handle Labor Pains
CIOs and other IT leaders now face the prospect of a slow but ongoing loss of talent. Some H1-B holders may find it impossible to renew their visas, while others choose to avoid the hassle or cost of verifying their eligibility. Minor glitches and missing documentation are already putting applicants at risk and forcing some to pay several thousand dollars in application costs and attorney fees.
These pressures threaten to upend the labor market. Giovanni Peri, a professor of economics at the University of California, Davis, found that US population between the ages of 18 and 65 grew by an average of 1.64 million per year from 2000 to 2005. However, from 2020 through 2023, that number had reversed to a yearly loss of 270,000. This demographic trend will accelerate over the next decade, he says.
“The US has an extremely constrained immigration policy … within an aging society where the US-born labor force is already shrinking,” Peri explains. “If you can’t find the technical expertise to spur growth and innovation, there’s a direct effect on companies and a ripple effect out to the rest of the workforce and the economy.”
Research firm IDC reported in 2024 that 90% of organizations “will feel the pain of the IT skills crisis,” amounting to $5.5 trillion in losses caused by product delays, impaired competitiveness, and loss of business. Nearly two-thirds of IT executives revealed that a lack of skills has already led to missed revenue growth objectives, quality problems, and a decline in customer satisfaction.
How can CIOs mitigate talent shortages? Steve Morris, CEO of marketing firm Newmedia.com, says that it’s essential to begin sponsoring applicants for green cards as early as the first year of an H1-B or other specialty visa. “If you wait for a probation period or a few anniversaries to start the process, your international hires are stuck in a stressful legal limbo,” Morris says. Using this approach, his firm boosted the number of international IT employees who stayed on by more than one-third.
CIOs should treat immigration risk like security or regulatory risk, Locke says. This means establishing tighter connections between IT, legal, and HR departments (as well as using outside legal expertise) to monitor visa status dashboards, grace period expirations, and renewal timelines. Keep employees in the loop and expect increased workplace inspections, she says.
Offshoring job functions can also reduce disruptions, though it isn’t a fix. To make global work viable, CIOs should develop a formal framework that addresses immigration failures, Morris says. This can include pre-vetted international payroll partners, global HR systems, secure collaboration tools, and protocols for handling sensitive data and intellectual property (IP).
Clearly, the next few years will be tumultuous and challenging for CIOs. Without fundamental reforms to the immigration system, some experts suggest the US could lose its edge on growth, innovation, and prosperity. Says Le: “If we don’t attract and keep people who are bright and talented, they will go elsewhere.”
Next week, we examine how changes in immigration policy will play out as the global race for talent grows.
