Bill would bar hiring of H-1B workers from ‘foreign adversaries’

DES MOINES — A proposal to bar Iowa’s public universities from hiring Chinese citizens on H-1B visas — or any person holding those visas from countries the federal government has designated as a “foreign adversary” — passed out of the House Higher Education Committee this week.

House Study Bill 536 passed along party lines — seven Republicans supporting and four Democrats opposing. An amendment struck original language that banned the universities from contracting with anyone on an H-1B visa who is a citizen of China.

In its place, the amendment bans H-1B workers from any nation “designated as a foreign adversary by regulation of the United States secretary of commerce.”

The foreign adversaries, according to the Department of Commerce, have “engaged in a long-term pattern or serious instances of conduct significantly adverse to the national security of the United States or security and safety of U.S. people and, therefore, constitute foreign adversaries.”

The list includes The People’s Republic of China (including Hong Kong), Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela.

An Iowa Board of Regents tally — provided to lawmakers upon their request Wednesday morning — indicates Iowa’s public universities have 117 employees on H-1B visas from those countries: 104 from China, nine from Iran, three from Russia, one from Venezuela, and none from Cuba or North Korea.

The University of Iowa has the most with 69, followed by Iowa State University with 42, and the University of Northern Iowa with six — plus one more from Russia that’s pending.

‘Safety,’ impact

“Since 2020, the University of Michigan, University of Kansas, Ohio State University, Harvard, the University of Florida, and Texas, and Texas A&M have all had security-related issues related to Chinese H-1B visa holders,” Andy Conlin, a lobbyist for State Shield — an organization “on the front lines of countering Chinese Communist Party influence in state and local governments” — told Iowa lawmakers at a subcommittee hearing Wednesday.

“I'm sure all of these universities, before the incident popped up, believed they had appropriate safety measures in place,” Conlin said. “Turns out they didn't. And the best way to address this problem is what’s in this bill.”

Conlin told lawmakers his organization had done “some extrapolation, and we think that there are probably between 350 and 500 H-1B visa holders from China who are employed by the Board of Regents. Those numbers may be wrong, but that was our extrapolation.”

Speaking at the same hearing, regents lobbyist Jillian Carlson — who did not provide the accurate numbers — said the board was registered “undecided” on the bill.

“We do have concerns that this violates state and federal civil rights code, which says that we can't discriminate based on national origin,” she said.

Tom Cope, lobbying on behalf of the Iowa Society of Anesthesiologists, raised concerns with how the bill might affect UI Health Care — given state efforts to attract and retain more physicians and medical professionals, including those from other countries.

“If the bill applies not just to the regents, but also to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, you could have some impact there,” Cope said.

Unlike the F-1 student visa or J-1 exchange visitor visa, H-1B status allows for the “temporary employment of individuals who perform services for a specific employer in a ‘specialty occupation.’”

Trump proclamation

On Sept. 19, 2025, President Donald Trump issued a presidential proclamation requiring anyone wanting to enter the country on an H-1B visa to pay $100,000. The rule was not retroactive to existing visa holders or those wanting to renew.

“The H-1B nonimmigrant visa program was created to bring temporary workers into the United States to perform additive, high-skilled functions, but it has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor,” according to the proclamation. “The large-scale replacement of American workers through systemic abuse of the program has undermined both our economic and national security.”

In the proclamation, Trump reported foreign STEM — science, technology, engineering, math — employees working in the United States more than doubled from 2000 to 2019 — jumping from 1.2 million to nearly 2.5 million, while overall STEM employment only increased 45 percent.

“The key facilitator for this influx of foreign STEM labor has been the abuse of the H-1B visa,” according to the proclamation.

Earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., introduced legislation to eliminate the H-1B program altogether.

"Prioritizing foreign labor over the well-being and prosperity of American citizens undermines our values and national interests," Steube said in a news release.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com