Nathan Patel

On March 27, 2026, the Department of Labor published a proposed rule that would raise the minimum wages employers must pay H-1B workers, in some cases by more than a third (+33%). Entry-level positions, which make up the majority of H-1B filings, would see their wage floor jump from the 17th percentile of market wages to the 34th. In dollar terms, that is an increase from roughly $73,000 to nearly $98,000 for a typical Level I role. This is not a minor compliance adjustment. If finalized, it...

Every month, thousands of employment-based applicants scan the Visa Bulletin looking for a sign that their wait is finally getting shorter. The April 2026 bulletin brought some of that, India's EB-2 Dates for Filing advanced two months to January 2015, and EB-3 moved forward five months to the same date. China's unreserved EB-5 Final Action Date ticked forward another month to September 2016. On the surface, that sounds like progress. But zoom out, and the picture looks very different. The...

70,000 waitlist signups. 80,000 card purchases. Those are the numbers the Trump administration has publicly claimed for its Gold Card visa program since it launched in December 2025. Not a single one has been publicly verified as approved. Not one. Out of a claimed 80,000 purchases. At $1 million each, that would represent $80 billion in commitments to the federal government. And yet there is no confirmed approval, no public record, no independent verification that anyone has completed the...