Texas pauses H-1B visas for high-skilled workers at colleges and state agencies
CORRECTION: This article has been updateed to correctly reflect the number of H-1B petitions issued in Texas and several businesses and higher eduation institutes. An earlier version of this article included incorrect information about the number of H-1B employees.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is directing state agencies and public universities and colleges to hit pause on new federal H-1B visas — temporary work visas that are reserved for high-skilled immigrant workers.
In a Tuesday letter, Abbott said the higher education institutions and state agencies led by governor appointees shouldn’t initiate or sponsor any new H-1B visas until the end of the next year’s Texas legislative session, unless given written permission from the Texas Workforce Commission. State lawmakers from Jan. 12 through May. 31, 2027.
The directive includes university-affiliated medical centers, such as UT Southwestern in Dallas and the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Abbott cited “recent reports of abuse” in the federal program, as well as an ongoing federal review of the program “to ensure American jobs are going to American workers,” as the basis for the new directive.
“State government must lead by example and ensure that employment opportunities — particularly those funded with taxpayer dollars — are filled by Texans first,” Abbott said in a Tuesday statement.
Abbott also told the state agencies and universities and colleges to collect data about existing H-1B visas, including how many of the visas are sponsored, the countries of origin for the visa holders, the types of jobs held and anticipated expiration dates.
The agencies and higher education institutions should identify documentation of efforts to give “qualified Texas candidates with a reasonable opportunity to apply for each position filled by a H-1B visa holder before a new petition was submitted for that position.”
The information gathering and pause on new H-1B visas will give the Texas Legislature time to create “guardrails” for future employment practices for federal visa holders in state government, Abbott said.
It will also allow Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration time to carry out changes, Abbott said.
The governor teased the announcement in a Monday episode of “The Mark Davis Show.”
In fiscal year 2025 across all sectors, Texas had about 41,600 H-1B visa petitions approved, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data. Tech-related companies like Cognizant Technology Solutions, Infosys Limited, Oracle and Tesla were among the top approval recipients in the state. The number of petitions approved does not reflect the number of people who received an H-1B visa.
UT Southwestern employed 228 H-1B petitions approved that year, and MD Anderson had 171. Texas A&M University had 214 petitions approved, the University of Texas at Austin had 169 and Texas Tech University had 143, according to the USCIS figures.
Closer to home, UT Arlington had 57 H-1B petitions approved and the University of North Texas had 42 in fiscal year 2025.
The Texas House’s Mexican American Legislative Caucus warned that Abbott’s directive could exacerbate staffing shortages at state agencies and public universities.
“Public universities and state agencies rely on lawful hiring pathways to recruit the specialized talent they need to serve our students and communities across Texas,” said Rep. Ramon Romero Jr., a Fort Worth Democrat and caucus chairman. “H-1B visa professionals who work hard, follow the rules, and contribute to our economy are Texans in every way that matters. Freezing those pathways makes it harder to staff classrooms, research centers, and hospitals across our state, raising costs, straining public services, and hurting Texans in every corner of our state.”
Texas State Employees Union board member Anne Lewis, sees Abbott’s directive as targeting people for deportation.
When looking at H-1B employees, you’re dealing with a pool of people who want to come to the United States and are very committed and dedicated workers. The level of skill, training and education possessed by international workers is underestimated, said Lewis, who is also a professor of practice in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at UT Austin.
“I really think that notion of international relationships is tremendously important, and what better way than a worker that will interact at base level with other workers, and other researchers, and other intellects, and other ideas,” Lewis said. “I think it’s the only way we maintain... intellectual vitality.”
Lewis said that in her line of work, she more often interacts with students, educators and artists on different types of visas, other than H-1B. But she recalled the case of a former student who became a H-1B visa employee, after being hired to do work at a very high technical level as a cinematographer and editor. The former student’s language skills aided the project and was a distinguishing factor over Texas candidates, Lewis said.
“We’re getting international students with really strong abilities, qualifications, merits and so forth, and we know them,” Lewis said. “We know them over a period of three or four years, so when they do graduate with higher level degrees, there’s all the reason in the world to hire them into capacities at the university. And I think that holds true of engineering or... high level tech jobs.”
This story was originally published January 27, 2026 at 12:34 PM.
