Trump admin approves over 120,000 H-1B visas for 2026 as tech industry lays off thousands of US workers

According to data published by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), there have been 120,141 H1-B visas granted to foreign workers. The data was shared in a chart by the account "US Tech Workers," which posted alongside the data, "Despite mass tech layoffs and voter backlash—especially after the Christmas H-1B uproar—the Trump team stays hands-off."

"120,141 NEW H-1Bs selected for FY2026. Demand remains high despite layoffs—a clear sign U.S. workers are being replaced," the account added.

So far in 2025, there have been mass layoffs at different tech companies across the nation, according to Tech Crunch. January saw over 2,400 layoffs in tech, February had over 16,000, nearly 9,000 in March and over 23,000 in April.

After Trump’s election but before he assumed his role as president, the topic of the H-1B visa program and how it connects to immigration was a hotly debated topic between the tech crowd in the Republican Party as well as the America First crowd.

According to the USICS website, visa registration applications "opened at noon Eastern on March 7 and ran through noon Eastern on March 24."

Vivek Ramaswamy spoke highly of the program while Human Events Daily Host Jack Posbiec and others in the America First wing of the party slammed the program, with the main criticism being that foreign workers are able to take the jobs of Americans in the tech industry.

"America first means the American people first," Posobiec said at the time. "I want to be very clear about that, because it seems like some people still do not get this, even after all these years, America first means the American people first. We are not vaccine first. We are not tech company first. We are not military-industrial complex first. No, we are American people first. That is what the nationalist populist movement underpinning MAGA is all about.”

However, the data USCIS shows that the granting of the over 120,000 H-1B visas is right in line with rates of approved visas in past years, with 135,137 visas getting approved for 2025, 188,400 approved for 2024, 127,600 approved for 2023, and 131,924 approved in 2022.

When the topic was being debated in December, Elon Musk wrote on X that the program should be kept, but that it would need reform and said it would be “Easily fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically.”

Ramaswamy had said of the program, “The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH.” Ramaswamy at the time went onto say that American culture needs to change to celebrate the “math olympiad champ” instead of the “prom queen” and the valedictorian over the jock athlete.