The Most Detailed Maps of H-1B Visa Holders Joining America's Top Research Institutions
- Alex Ip
- Sep 25
- 3 min read
It’s not a secret that immigrants and foreign nationals have played a crucial role in powering the U.S.’s latest innovations and scientific advancements.
A new analysis by The Xylom shows for the first time just how much America’s top research institutions have grown to depend on the specialized knowledge of H-1B skilled workers — of which 71% of approved beneficiaries last fiscal year were from India, followed by 11.7% from China — and how this delicate balance might be disrupted by U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on legal immigration.
The Xylom’s analysis of data from the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) identified more than 13,000 H-1B workers who have joined over 200 four-year or postgraduate-only land-grant, sea-grant, and R1: Very High Spending and Doctorate Production institutions so far this fiscal year.
USCIS has long collected the information on which our analysis is based. The H-1B Employer Data Hub includes hundreds of thousands of downloadable entries dating back to the twilight of the George W. Bush administration, which can be filtered by fiscal year, employer name, industry code, and petitioner address. But the agency has never released this data in a way that allows the public to understand the precise geographical distribution of skilled workers in higher education, as well as the types of institutions where they are most sought after.
The H-1B system was thrown into a tailspin when President Trump signed an executive order on Sept. 19th, hiking the fee for new applicants of H-1B visas to $100,000, as part of his wide-ranging crackdown on immigration. Although White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified on the social media platform X hours before the executive order took effect that the one-time fee applied only to new applicants, not to holders of existing visas or those seeking renewals, widespread panic was reported among workers. Some paid $3,800 for flights in a race against time to return to the United States; others deboarded flights home for fear of not being able to return stateside.
The Department of Homeland Security followed up Sept. 23rd by proposing a rule to replace the current lottery-based allocation system of H-1B visas with a weighted selection process that would generally favor higher-skilled and higher-paid petitioners. Combined with legislation introduced by Republicans Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin to eliminate an exemption of petitions filed by U.S. institutions of higher education from the congressionally mandated annual cap of 65,000 H-1B visas, it will be significantly more difficult and expensive for America’s top research institutions — which already cannot keep up with industry compensation — to continue to attract skilled workers from across the world.
Using the reports submitted in the 2025 fiscal year (up to quarter 3), we calculated the financial burden for these top research institutions across the entire country to maintain the current level of H-1B hiring, relative to the amount of federal funding they receive for research and development, and mapped it all.
Spoiler alert: we found that public institutions in large, Republican-leaning states are disproportionately affected by the policy.
With the exception of a handful of small institutions participating in the New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium, which operates on a unique, low-barrier membership model not reliant on federal funding, all but two of the 20 most burdened institutions are located in states that voted for Donald Trump in 2024, or, in Virginia’s case, have a Republican governor. All but three in the top 20 are public universities.
Browse the map below to learn more about the skilled worker distribution there, or look up your nearest institution in our searchable database. Request a free dataset here.
