The Department of Labor is cracking down on companies abusing H-1B visas, investigating wages and working conditions.

The Department of Labor announced it will investigate employers and businesses that “abuse” H-1B visas to hire skilled foreign nationals to work in the United States.

The Washington Post reported on the 23rd that this is part of the Department of Labor’s broader effort to prioritize American workers over foreign workers in the U.S. labor market.

The Trump administration recently announced it will charge a $100,000 fee to foreign nationals applying for new H-1B visas to work in the United States. This policy change does not affect existing visa holders or those renewing their visas.

The Department of Labor posted on its “X Platform” on the 22nd, “High-skilled jobs should be prioritized for Americans. We are launching Project Firewall to eliminate the abuse of H-1B visas and ensure that employers prioritize American workers in the hiring process.”

Before the new measures were implemented, employers using H-1B visas to hire skilled foreign workers paid less than $5,000 in visa application fees per worker.

The Trump administration’s tightening of H-1B visas is expected to face legal action, a move that not only limits legal immigration but also impacts the technology, finance, higher education, and healthcare industries. Some experts say the Department of Labor’s “Firewall” enforcement policy marks the federal government’s first attempt to enforce the H-1B visa program to address labor shortages since its inception in 1990.

Previously, Department of Labor officials only enforced H-1B visa regulations when they received complaints from individual workers.

The Firewall program allows the Department of Labor to proactively investigate employers to ensure that wages and working conditions for foreign workers comply with legal standards. If not, companies could face penalties, including back pay and civil penalties.

The Department of Labor stated that companies that violate the law could also be temporarily banned from using the H-1B program for a period of time.

Ron Hira, a political science professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C., noted that “the H-1B firewall program has never actually been implemented.”

“They can investigate wages, working conditions, review records, and verify whether workers are misclassified,” said Hira, who has defended allegations of employers abusing the H-1B program.

Major outsourcing companies, such as Infosys, Tata, and Cognizant, use H-1B visas extensively to hire foreign workers; experts say they could be the subject of a Labor Department investigation.

Cognizant spokesman Jeff DeMarrais issued a statement saying that Trump’s new policy raising H-1B visa fees “will have a limited impact on our operations. We have significantly reduced our reliance on this visa in recent years and now only use it to fill specific skilled positions in the U.S. workforce.”

Approximately 500,000 people come to the U.S. on H-1B visas, primarily from India, but also from China, the Philippines, and Canada. Most renew their status every three years.