Companies need ‘plan C’ to navigate Trump’s visa policies—or risk employees getting stuck overseas

That month, as part of a wider crackdown in immigration, the Trump administration added new criteria for foreign workers seeking visas, including requiring H-1B applicants and dependents to adjust their social media privacy settings to “public” for official review. The extra screenings prolonged the processing and approval of visa appointments, heaping uncertainty onto employees’ travel and work plans.

Speaking at Fortune’s Workforce Innovation Summit on Wednesday, Hiba Mona Anver, partner at the Erickson Immigration Group, warned companies need to have a plan for employees vulnerable to hiccups in the visa approval process, lest those workers become stranded overseas.

“The issue now is whether or not there is the possibility that this individual will run into some sort of interruption in their ability to remain in the United States and continue working for the company that is sponsoring them,” Anver told Fortune senior writer Phil Wahba. “There have been instances where changes in policy have resulted in employees getting stuck in India and separated from their families for months, many of which have still not been able to make their way back to the United States, and this happened barely six months ago.”

Foreign-born workers make up nearly 20% of the U.S. civilian workforce, with about 1% of U.S. workers requiring temporary visas. These contributions in the labor market, as well as in consumer spending, generated about $1.7 trillion in economic activity in 2023. 

President Donald Trump has sought to reduce the number of foreign workers, claiming the U.S. would be unable to increase wages for American employees if it continued accepting immigrant workers. However, in some cases, the administration’s messaging around foreign labor has been muddied: Last year, Trump slapped a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applications for highly skilled workers, but later said the U.S. lacked the domestic-born labor supply to fill certain specialized roles.

Immigration experts said companies must now not only tackle stricter visa procedures, but also the risk that these procedures could change or be delayed. Anver said the most important way for companies to protect themselves from uncertainties in visa processing is to develop holistic policies that ensure the firm and its employees are not just complying with visa and immigration policies, but also that include contingency plans should an employee be stuck with a lapsed visa or stranded overseas. 

“What companies are really having to do again is ensure that they have not just a plan A, but a plan B and a plan C,” Anver said.

Stakes are high for companies with foreign employees

David Bier, director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute who spoke alongside Anver, framed companies’ preparedness around visas as not just a way to protect individual employees, but as a way to address a widespread problem of workforce stability.

“It’s very important to understand that many of the people who are going through this process are already employed by your company,” Bier said. “Talent retention is really the new recruitment.”

U.S. companies spent almost $900 billion in addressing employee turnover in 2023, according to an analysis from immigration legal services platform Alma, with high-skilled foreign workers twice as likely to leave a role compared to less specialized roles. Skilled foreign workers are particularly important to retain because of the leadership roles they play in businesses, Bier argued. He noted 80% of companies have an immigrant or H-1B visa-holder in a CEO, chief technology officer, or vice president of engineering role; more than half of billion-dollar startups in the U.S. have an immigrant founder or cofounder.

The cost of losing specialized talent should be an incentive for companies to have an increased awareness of changing immigration policies to stay on top of the procedures needed to retain foreign-born workers, Bier suggested.

“You have to focus on making sure you keep these people in house on the right side of the wall in status going through this process,” he said. “Because if you lose them, you might not ever get them back, and there might not be another person behind them waiting in the wings to fill that role.”