For companies that depend on foreign workers, getting someone into the United States is becoming only one part of the immigration challenge.
The bigger problem is uncertainty.
How much will a visa cost? How long will it take? Will the application attract additional scrutiny? Can an employee travel and return to the US? Will the rules change before a company can execute its hiring plan? And, increasingly, is it easier to employ the same worker somewhere outside the US?
These questions are reshaping corporate immigration in 2026.
“The major changes in legal immigration during the last half of 2025 – particularly the $100K fee for H-1B consular processing, which practically eliminated offshore hiring, the travel and entry restrictions for nationals of dozens of countries, the indefinite pause on immigrant visa options at U.S. consulates abroad for nationals of 75 countries and the new wage-weighted H-1B cap selection system – will continue to have a ripple effect throughout 2026,” said Sherry Neal, partner at Envoy Global.
For many employers, the $100,000 H-1B fee has become a stark symbol of this cumulative risk, as a previously common fix of departure and re-entry to the U.S. can require a $100,000 payment.
Policy uncertainty is making workforce planning harder
The first challenge is not necessarily knowing what the immigration law says today. It is knowing whether the rules will still look the same when a company needs to hire, transfer or retain an employee months from now.
Some 15.8% of employers identified potential US government policy changes as their biggest anticipated challenge for 2026–27. Another 15% pointed to increased costs associated with certain visa categories, while 14.8% cited more frequent audits and higher denial rates.
The report said changes in agency interpretation, enforcement priorities, processing standards and adjudication guidance can materially affect eligibility and timelines even without statutory reform.
For employers, that makes long-term planning particularly difficult.
A company planning to hire a specialist may have to make decisions about location, compensation and project timelines without knowing exactly what the immigration environment will look like when that worker needs to enter or remain in the country.
The problem is compounded by the speed at which policy changes can be introduced. The report notes that some changes have been implemented with little or no transition period, increasing the difficulty of planning for critical-skill positions.
Immigration is becoming significantly more expensive
Cost is emerging as a challenge in its own right.
The report highlights the $100,000 fee associated with H-1B consular processing as one of the major changes from the second half of 2025. It says the fee has effectively eliminated offshore H-1B hiring in many situations and has made what was previously a common departure-and-reentry strategy dramatically more expensive.
That changes the calculation for employers.
Previously, a company might have been able to recruit a worker abroad and use an H-1B route to bring that person to the US. Under the new cost structure, the employer may instead decide to hire the worker in another country or redistribute the role to an existing overseas operation.
The report shows how a visa fee can have consequences far beyond the immigration budget.
It can influence **where the job itself is located**.
Tougher scrutiny is turning compliance into a business risk
The third challenge is enforcement.
Employers report more Requests for Evidence, narrower interpretations of eligibility, visa denials and increased workplace audits involving areas including I-9, H-1B, PERM and wage compliance.
The report found that **81% of employers said RFEs for the visa petitions or applications their companies file have increased over the past four years**.
This creates a different kind of cost.
A company may have to devote more HR, legal and mobility resources to documentation, audit preparation and responding to government queries. A delayed or denied petition can also disrupt projects and hiring plans.
The exposure increases with the size of an immigration programme. The report says H-1B compliance concerns rise from 61% to 75% as foreign-national headcount increases, while I-9 concerns particularly spike among employers with 250 or more foreign nationals.
In other words, immigration compliance is increasingly being treated as an operational risk rather than simply an administrative function.
The visa process itself is becoming harder
Even when an employer is willing to pay the costs and comply with the rules, the process can still be difficult.
The report records a 5% year-over-year increase in employers saying the US employment-based visa process has become more difficult over the previous 12 months.
But the impact is not uniform across industries.
Healthcare and life sciences employers reported the greatest difficulty: **51.2% said the immigration process had become more difficult since 2025, the highest among the sectors examined.
That has particular consequences for healthcare because immigration pipelines can take years to build.
Some healthcare workers had already been recruited, credentialed, passed US licensing examinations and waited years for their priority dates to become current. Travel restrictions and the immigrant-visa pause then created additional delays, according to the report.
For an employer struggling to fill a critical healthcare position, an immigration delay is therefore not simply an immigration problem. It can become a staffing problem.
The H-1B shortage remains the biggest sponsorship barrier
Despite the availability of other employment-based immigration routes, the H-1B remains central to corporate hiring.
The report calls the limited number of H-1B visas the **most significant barrier to sponsorship in 2026**.
That is important because the H-1B is the broadest employment-based route for professional talent across industries, employers and nationalities. Other visa categories can help, but many have narrower eligibility requirements—for example, based on nationality, corporate structure or the individual’s qualifications.
The pressure is particularly acute for large employers.
Among companies with more than 1,000 foreign-national employees, the share identifying the H-1B cap as their primary sponsorship barrier rose from **26.1% in 2025 to 37.8% in 2026**—an increase of 11.7 percentage points.
The result is a more selective approach to sponsorship.
Employers are becoming more strategic about which positions they sponsor, while some smaller organisations are scaling back hiring. Larger employers are refining their H-1B strategies and looking at alternative visa routes where possible.
Visa problems are now causing companies to lose talent
Perhaps the most significant finding from an employee perspective is that immigration difficulties are translating into actual talent loss.
Sixty-five per cent of employers said foreign-national employees had left the US in the previous year because of visa-related issues**, including denials and processing delays. That was up from 53% in 2025.
The problem is even more pronounced for large immigration programmes.
Nearly seven in 10 employers with 250 or more sponsored foreign-national employees reported losing talent because of immigration challenges. Among employers with large H-1B populations, talent-loss rates reached as high as 76.5%.
That changes the economics of sponsorship.
A company can spend money recruiting, onboarding and training a highly skilled worker, only to lose that employee because of a visa problem.
For industries that rely heavily on specialised talent, that creates a double challenge: the company has to navigate the immigration system to hire the worker and then navigate it again to retain the worker.
Companies are increasingly moving the work instead of the worker
The final challenge may have the biggest long-term implications.
When bringing an employee to the US becomes too expensive or uncertain, companies have another option: move the work rather than the worker.
The Envoy report said 68% of companies expect to turn to nearshoring or offshoring in 2026 to address immigration barriers and domestic labour shortages.
The shift is particularly pronounced among companies with large H-1B populations.
Technology and financial and professional services are especially exposed because they rely heavily on specialised workers such as software engineers, data scientists, quantitative analysts and consultants. Historically, H-1B and L-1 visas have helped these industries fill gaps in the US labour market. Increasing unpredictability is now making access to that talent less reliable.
This creates an important paradox.
A policy intended to make US hiring more difficult may not necessarily eliminate an employer’s need for foreign talent. Instead, the employer may find another way to access that talent.
The job could move to another country.
The immigration challenge is no longer confined to immigration departments
The report captures this interconnectedness: employers are rarely dealing with a single immigration problem. They are dealing simultaneously with visa limits, processing delays, rising costs and uncertain outcomes.
That is also why immigration teams themselves are expanding. The report says 99% of organisations have at least two people responsible for immigration, while the average team has grown from four people in 2024 to six in 2026. More than three-quarters of organisations now place immigration within HR functions such as talent acquisition, mobility and total rewards.
What this means for foreign workers
For foreign professionals considering the US, the changing environment does not mean that American opportunities have disappeared.
It does mean that the immigration component of a job offer matters more than it did before.
A worker may need to consider not only salary and career prospects but also the visa category, sponsorship policy, processing timelines, travel requirements and the employer’s willingness to continue sponsoring them.
For employers, the calculation is equally complicated.
The question is no longer simply whether a foreign worker can legally work in the US.
It is whether the cost, uncertainty and compliance burden of putting that worker in the US makes business sense.
