On January 27, 2026, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced an immediate freeze on new H-1B visas by all state agencies and universities and an investigation into “H-1B visa abuse.”
In a letter to state agency heads, Gov. Abbott said, “No state agency controlled by a gubernatorially appointed head or public institution of higher education shall, without the written permission of the Texas Workforce Commission, initiate or file any new petition to sponsor a nonimmigrant worker under the federal H-1B visa program until the end of the Texas Legislature’s 90th Regular Session on May 31, 2027.” Although the freeze only affects new applications and thus is not expected to affect current H-1B workers in Texas, Gov. Abbott also ordered the state agency and university heads to provide various pieces of information, including the numbers of H-1B visa holders the entity currently sponsors, and job classifications and descriptions, by March 27, 2026.
Reaction. Although H-1B workers make up a relatively small percentage of the workforces in Texas agencies and universities, some argue that closing that pathway could have a negative impact on several sectors. Jason Finkelman, an immigration attorney in Austin, Texas, said that researchers, professors, physicians, engineers, and others in Texas will be affected. “Those researchers and professors are just going to go to other U.S. universities. So we’re going to lose the talent we need here for universities, which is going to contribute to our downfall as being leaders in … higher education.” He noted that the H-1B visa “is the most regulated visa in our whole immigration system.”
Kathleen Campbell Walker, a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, objected to the freeze. Among other things, she noted that Texas medical education institutions rely on foreign physicians “to fill critical shortages in healthcare in rural areas of the state as well as in Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) and Medically Underserved Areas (MUAs).” Ms. Walker warned that “Texas universities will be severely hampered in the current global race for highly talented educators and researchers as well as for physicians at its medical schools.” She noted similar efforts in Florida, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.
