H-1B University Hiring Freeze: DeSantis Urges States to Act

Florida’s public universities cannot sponsor new H-1B hires until Jan. 5, 2027, and Texas has frozen new petitions through May 31, 2027. Gov. Ron DeSantis wants other states to follow.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is urging other states to adopt an H-1B university hiring freeze like the one that has kept Florida’s 12 public universities from sponsoring new H-1B workers since March. In a post on X on Oct. 24, he wrote that Florida had “stopped H-1Bs at our universities and other states should follow suit,” and added, “Get rid of these programs that bring in foreign workers at the expense of young Americans,” according to Business Today. Both existing state freezes expire in 2027, so the next decisions belong to Florida’s board and the Texas Legislature.

The stakes are larger than the headcounts suggest. Universities are exempt from the annual H-1B cap and can file at any time without entering the lottery, which makes them one of the most dependable routes into H-1B status for foreign-born researchers, faculty and physicians. Because federal law never requires an employer to sponsor anyone, a state can stop its own institutions from filing without touching the federal program.

How the Florida and Texas H-1B freezes differ

Texas moved first: on Jan. 27, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state agencies and public universities to stop filing new petitions without written permission from the Texas Workforce Commission, The Texas Tribune reported. Florida’s Board of Governors followed on March 2 with a 17-2 vote, Florida Trend reported, after DeSantis asked it to “pull the plug” on the program.

	Florida	Texas
Ordered by	Board of Governors, at the governor’s request	Gov. Greg Abbott, by directive
Covers	12 public universities	Public universities and state agencies
Runs through	Jan. 5, 2027	May 31, 2027
Way around it	None in the board’s action	Written approval from the Texas Workforce Commission
Current H-1B workers	Not affected; renewals allowed	Directive targets new petitions

Sources: Central Florida Public Media, Inside Higher Ed and Florida Trend (Florida, March to June 2026); The Texas Tribune (Texas, January 2026).

In Florida, current H-1B employees can stay and renew, according to Central Florida Public Media and Inside Higher Ed. One gap is unresolved: Florida Trend reported that the pause appears to block hiring someone who already holds H-1B status with another employer, and that the board had not clarified the point.

Who universities sponsor on H-1B visas

Public universities accounted for about 6 percent of the more than 10,000 H-1B approvals for Florida employers in the most recent fiscal year, Florida Trend reported, citing USCIS data. The people they sponsor are highly credentialed. Records obtained by the Institute for Progress, a Washington policy research group, showed that about 76 percent of first-time H-1B workers at Florida public universities from 2017 to 2022 held doctorates, and at least 315 of roughly 1,300 approved first-time petitions were for physicians, Ph.D. scientists or STEM faculty, Florida Trend and Central Florida Public Media reported.

In Texas, UT Southwestern Medical Center had about 220 H-1B workers and Texas A&M University about 210 as of Sept. 30, 2025, The Texas Tribune reported, citing federal data. Medical centers matter because H-1B is one of two main routes for foreign medical graduates entering residency; the other, the J-1 exchange visa, was not frozen.

Supporters say taxpayer-funded jobs should go to residents first; “State government must lead by example,” Abbott said in January, according to the Tribune. Critics in academia say the freeze hurts recruiting in hard-to-fill fields. David Simmons, faculty senate president at the University of South Florida, called Florida’s moratorium “really a tragedy for the state of Florida,” Florida Trend reported.

Decisions due before the freezes expire

Florida’s choice comes first. The board framed the pause as time to study H-1B costs and use, so the Jan. 5 end date forces a decision to extend, end or make it permanent. DeSantis’s post points toward keeping it.

Texas could write it into law. The Texas freeze runs to the end of the 2027 legislative session, giving lawmakers the chance to turn a directive into statute. Teaching hospitals hiring residents for July 2027 will feel the timing most, since those petitions would typically be filed in spring, while the freeze is in force.

The federal backdrop is already tight. H-1B visa issuance fell 52 percent from October 2025 through February 2026 compared with a year earlier, according to an analysis of State Department data by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, part of a broader drop in US visa issuance. State freezes add an employer-level barrier on top of the federal changes congressional researchers have tallied and a proposed USCIS rule ending deference on H-1B extensions, and they feed the concerns about Indian workers that Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded to this month.

For foreign-born scholars on this season’s academic job market, the practical effect is that public universities in Florida and Texas cannot offer a new H-1B until 2027 at the earliest. Florida’s board chair, Alan Levine, has said other visa programs remain available, Florida Trend reported, leaving routes such as O-1 or J-1 status for candidates who qualify.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

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Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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