U.S. Scraps H-1B Lottery, Adds $100k Entry Fee After Court Win

Washington has oscillated between courting and curbing skilled immigration since at least the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1924 national-origins quotas, and the 1990 Immigration Act that created today’s 65k H-1B cap. The new wage-weighted draw echoes the 1917 literacy test: a filter that professes neutrality but in practice favors wealthier, better-credentialed migrants and the deep-pocketed firms that hire them. It also extends a century-long trend of presidents stretching emergency or economic powers—think Carter’s 1980 grain embargo or Obama’s 2012 DACA memo—to achieve immigration goals that Congress sidesteps. On a 100-year horizon, this moment matters less for its immediate tech-sector pain than for normalizing executive-level price tags and performance metrics on entry: a template future administrations could apply to other visa classes or even green cards, gradually shifting U.S. immigration from statutory quotas toward market-priced auctions.