Two policy changes advanced by the administration target visa-related protections for foreign workers holding H-1B status and other employment-based categories: one proposal would eliminate a practice allowing routine extensions when an applicant's circumstances remain unchanged, while a separate measure — now made permanent — ends the automatic renewal of work authorisation for H-1B spouses and others in comparable situations.
Advance copies of the two directives — one originating from the Department of Homeland Security and the other from US Citizenship and Immigration Services — were posted to the Federal Register for public inspection on Tuesday, ahead of their formal Wednesday publication date.
People from India make up the largest share of H-1B visa holders and H-4 spouses authorised to work, placing them at the forefront of those likely to feel the effects.
One of the proposed rule changes would eliminate a section of federal regulations — specifically 8 CFR 214.1(c)(5) — that has historically directed immigration authorities to honour prior petition approvals when the underlying facts remain unchanged, a protection that has applied to extension requests filed on behalf of workers holding H-1B and L-1 visas, among others. A formal rule, entered into the regulatory record during December 2024 as the outgoing administration approached its final weeks, gave the policy its official standing.
The department stated that realigning its regulations with the statute would place the burden of demonstrating eligibility on petitioners, applicants, or beneficiaries, whereas the deference regulation had in practice transferred that responsibility onto USCIS officers — who were instead left to justify any departure from a prior approval — a dynamic the department warned could allow earlier erroneous decisions to go uncorrected and leave fraudulent or unfounded petitions harder to detect, a concern it grounded in USCIS site-visit data.
Among H-1B extension petitions reviewed under deference conditions between fiscal years 2022 and 2025, site visits recorded a combined rate of either fraud or non-compliance — or both — at roughly 22.39 per cent of locations inspected. Over the three fiscal years spanning 2018 to 2020, when a no-deference policy governed USCIS adjudications, that figure stood at 16.77 per cent.
Denial rates for L-1A extension petitions stood at roughly 24.46 per cent across fiscal years 2022 through 2025, up from 18.37 per cent recorded during the fiscal 2018–2020 period. USCIS figures cited in the proposal show that roughly 208,429 extension petitions per year fell into the category where deference typically applies across fiscal years 2022 through 2025, a share representing close to 30 per cent of the 688,830 petitions submitted on an annual basis.
A 30-day window for public input opens once the document is posted.
The second measure takes the form of a completed rule, one that locks in and gives permanent standing to a temporary measure DHS had put forward on October 30, 2025. Under that rule, workers in certain visa categories who had submitted renewal paperwork on time lost the automatic extension that had previously kept their employment authorisation documents valid while those applications were pending. Upon publication, the regulation enters into force.
Under the previous rules, submitting a renewal application on time allowed a work permit to remain in force for as long as 540 days while the case remained unresolved.
The agency's statement framed the removal of automatic extensions as a measure to strengthen programme integrity and ensure applicants undergo thorough review before any new work authorisation period is approved — a position that drew pushback from numerous commenters acting on behalf of H-4 visa holders married to H-1B workers. Those commenters noted that H-4 EAD adjudication routinely stretches beyond the 180-day benchmark, leaving affected visa holders facing gaps in employment authorisation, lapses in health coverage, and the prospect of housing instability.
Commenters also pointed out that women represent the majority of H-4 EAD holders, while DHS maintained that the rule leaves intact the underlying eligibility of H-4, L-2, and other employment-based dependents to seek work authorisation, though the department noted that those affected may face gaps in that authorisation along with related effects on earnings, benefits, and career progression, and that automatic extensions for these groups raise the same security and programme integrity concerns as those applied to other categories.
Between May 2027 and roughly eighteen months later, anywhere from 20,000 to 33,000 employment authorisation documents could expire without renewal, according to department projections. Employer-side losses were broken down into two figures: roughly $138.1 million tied to reduced workforce output and a further $312.1 million reflecting the projected cost of staff turnover, with somewhere between 1,700 and 2,800 employers falling within the affected range across that timeframe.
