The Layoffs Congress Blames on H-1B Visas Were Caused by AI

On September 19, 2025, the Trump administration proclaimed a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications ^[1]. On February 10, 2026, Representative Greg Steube introduced the EXILE Act to eliminate the program entirely ^[2]. The tech layoffs that now provide the political justification for both measures did not arrive until May. The chronology is not a matter of interpretation. The AI-driven layoff wave that saw 87,714 workers cut in the first five months of 2026 — more than all of 2024 and 2025 combined — crested in late spring ^[3]. By then, the administrative and legislative machinery of the H-1B crackdown was already in motion. The layoffs are being invoked as retroactive justification for an agenda that preceded them. What the companies said about those layoffs, and what legislators heard, are two different things. Meta cut more than 8,000 jobs. The company's stated reason was a reorganization around artificial intelligence.

The changes we are implementing vary by team and include layoffs, open role closures and moving thousands of employees to business critical priorities across the company. — Meta

Intuit eliminated 3,000 positions — 17% of its workforce — while simultaneously increasing its AI investments ^[4]. Acrisure eliminated 2,250 positions and stated the reason plainly.

As we look ahead, we are further scaling our growth engines and architecting an organization that operates with greater velocity to deliver durable long-term growth. — Intuit

Not one of the companies whose layoffs these bills cite — Meta, Intuit, Acrisure — attributed the reductions to foreign workers on H-1B visas. The cause was automation. The stated purpose was restructuring around the technology doing the automating. What legislators heard was displacement. Representative Eli Crane, whose End H-1B Visa Abuse Act would pause the program for three years and slash the annual cap to 25,000, framed it this way:

We owe it to the American people to prevent the broken H-1B system from boxing them out of jobs they are qualified to perform. — Eli Crane

Steube's EXILE Act went further, explicitly citing corporate layoffs — 16,000 at Microsoft, plus cuts at Disney, FedEx, and Southern California Edison — as evidence that the visa program must be eliminated ^[2].

Our workers and young people continue to be displaced and disenfranchised by the H-1B visa program that awards corporations and foreign competitors at the expense of our workforce. — Greg Steube

The gap between what the companies said and what the legislation asserts is the hinge the entire crackdown turns on. The layoffs were caused by AI. The bills treat them as proof of foreign-worker displacement. The diagnosis does not match the disease. Steube's bill is not alone. At least four other Republicans have introduced legislation targeting H-1B: Marjorie Taylor Greene's bill to phase out the program entirely arrived in January 2026 ^[5]; Crane's followed in April ^[6]; Chip Roy's American White-Collar Worker Jobs Act, capping H-1B workers at 5% of a company's workforce, landed in June ^[7]; and Senator Tim Sheehy introduced his overhaul bill in the Senate on July 25 ^[8]. Together they form a legislative barrage, not a single bill, and the displacement framing — that H-1B workers box out Americans — runs through all of them. The same companies cutting H-1B petitions at home are building the AI engineering base abroad. Amazon's H-1B filings dropped 34% in the first quarter of fiscal 2026; Google and Meta each fell roughly 50% ^[9]. Meanwhile, Amazon is investing $48 billion in Indian AI infrastructure by 2030, Microsoft $17.5 billion, and Google $15 billion ^[10]. India is offering tax holidays through 2047 and retains 10.5 gigawatts of land-banked data-center capacity. The scale has no equivalent in the West.

India retains over 10.5GW of capacity at the land-banking stage. This ensures long-term room to expand that European and American cities physically cannot match — ICICI Securities

These are parallel developments — the same companies, the same period, two directions of travel — not a causal chain the data can prove. But the direction is unmistakable: the high-skill engineering work that H-1B visas once brought to American offices is increasingly being done in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. The selectivity of the restriction sharpens the picture. While H-1B faces a multi-bill legislative assault, the administration doubled the cap on H-2B seasonal guest-worker visas — landscaping, construction, hospitality, seafood processing — from 66,000 to 131,000 ^[11]. The Immigration Accountability Project named the contradiction:

In these unprecedented times, there are simply not enough workers to meet the seasonal workforce needs of U.S. employers. — AmericanHort

H-2A agricultural visa rules were also eased, with minimum wages lowered by $1 to $7 per hour ^[12]. The administration is restricting the visa category for engineers and expanding the categories for farmworkers and landscapers. Whatever principle is at work, it is not a uniform commitment to protecting American labor. The courts have now twice blocked the administrative pillar of the crackdown. A district court struck down the $100,000 fee as an unlawful tax on June 8 ^[13], and the First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling on July 24 ^[14]. Representative Kennedy responded by introducing the PROTECT Act to codify the fee into law — the fight has moved from the executive branch to Congress, where it now spans at least five bills and counting. The Republican Party is not unified behind this approach. At a Joint Economic Committee hearing in March, Chairman David Schweikert — a Republican — made the opposite case from his own caucus's bills:

Today, the population of retirees is booming while that of prime working-aged adults is flat. — David Schweikert

Schweikert's argument was demographic, not ideological: the retiree population is booming while the prime working-age population is flat, and talent-based immigration is the only lever that addresses the math. His dissent, from the chair of the committee, reveals that the restrictionist agenda is a factional position, not a party consensus — but it is the faction setting the agenda. The high-skill visas that brought the engineers who built the AI now causing the layoffs are being eliminated. The AI engineering base is migrating to Bengaluru and Hyderabad.