Senator Collins Urges Sec. Mullin to Consider H-1B, H2-B Visa Exceptions

Q&A on H-1B Visa Fee Exemption

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Q&A on H-2B Visas

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Washington, D.C. - At a hearing to review the 2027 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Senator Susan Collins, Chair of the Appropriations Committee pushed Secretary Markwayne Mullin to consider H-1B visa fee exemptions for qualified medical professionals in rural areas and solutions to improve the H-2B visa program for employers in Maine.

Q&A on H-1B Visa Fee Exemption

Sen. Collins : Welcome, Mr. Secretary. I'd like to ask you about a particular kind of visa, the H-1B visa, which are for highly skilled international employees. Many rural areas in Maine face shortages of qualified medical professionals, which makes attracting them and recruiting them critical to the health of our communities.

While I can understand why the administration might consider assigning fees to H-1B visas in the tech area, or other sectors, where there's a significant domestic workforce, that's not what we're talking about when it's medical providers for rural areas. I want to give you an example of a hospital in Presque Isle, Maine, that's in northern Maine, very close to where I grew up, and recently this rural hospital was forced to pay the $100,000 H-1B fee for a much-needed surgeon. Would you be willing to consider carving out an exemption for medical professionals from this fee when a community can demonstrate that there is not a medical professional available?

Sec. Mullin: Senator Collins, thank you so much for the question. We looked into this. I was misunderstanding when you and I visited a tad bit about this. Was this doctor currently in the United States, or did you have to bring him in from outside the United States?

Sen. Collins: He had to be brought in from another country, and there did not used to be a $100,000 fee associated with that visa. The doctor qualifies for the visa, that's not the issue. The issue is the extraordinarily high fee that the hospital in Presque Isle had to pay.

Sec. Mullin: So, we do have some authority and flexibility to be able to waive some of this on case by case. We had 286,000 applicants a year to date for the H-1B visas. Out of those, over 200,000 of them paid the $100,000 to be able to come in, because it allows us to process them in a little bit faster manner. In fact, when we do that, we're able to process them in about 15 days, because we're able to throw stuff out. If people want to look for an exemption, and come in that process, which we had roughly 80,000 look for a different path forward, it takes about seven and a half months to go through that process to be able to exempt them.

We can speed that up to some degree, but to actually have a carve out, it would be difficult. We're happy to look into it, look at language, try to get it better, because I agree, from a very rural area, I understand how hard it is to get doctors, but I'd say most of them, when they need it, they need it then, and they're not willing to wait seven half months to get someone to come through, because we do still have to do our due diligence on going through their background and making sure that do qualify for it, but on these cases, and there's many several people, maybe not on this dice, but have called me since I've been in for eight weeks, has asked for me to look in some of these circumstances, and we're always happy to look into them and see how we can work with you the best possible way.

Sen. Collins: I would suggest that there's a huge difference between bringing in a computer expert from another country to work in wealthy California and Silicon Valley versus a much-needed surgeon to work at a rural hospital.

Q&A on H-2B Visas

Sen. Collins: Okay, let me switch to another kind of visa that's extraordinarily important to the state of Maine, and that's the H-2B visa. As you know, many of our communities in Maine rely heavily on H-2B visas for staff during our busy tourism seasons. Last year, just to give you an idea, more than 13 million tourists came to the state of Maine, and we're very grateful that they do, but that is 10 times the entire population of our state, and they mainly come in the summer and the fall, so employers in the hospitality sector are simply unable to hire workers to meet that demand, so that seasonal H-2B program is critical, and the workers come, they work, and then they go back home, they're not trying to stay here.

They come back year after year. There are ways that we could speed up the process for that, one idea that the Maine Chamber of Commerce recently proposed to me is that employers who have long utilized the H-2B program and have consistently followed the rules, should have an exemption for a certain number of workers from the cap for employers if they have that good five-year compliance record. Another idea would be re-instituting the returning worker exemption from the cap. That existed during President Bush's administration. It worked really well.

It was the same workers coming back to the same seasonal businesses year after year, they became like family, and in fact, a lot of times the employers would keep their belongings for them in anticipation of their return the next tourism season. Is the Administration considering ways to simplify the H-2B visa process for employers who have followed the rules for five years or reinstituting the returning worker exemption?

Sec. Mullin: We've looked at this, right now, year to day, I think we've had 170,000 or 107,000 H-2B visas that's applied for FY-26. The number, I do have some flexibility with a number, you guys gave me that authority in 2017. Well, not me, but the Department, but to raise the cap, which would mean putting the exemptions in place to the way that we understand it, we were talking to council today about this. Troy was in the room with us, and so you're welcome to correct me if I'm wrong here, but to raise the cap above a significant number, Congress will have to set that new number or give me the authority to do so, and then we'll be happy to. Listen, being from, you know, the construction background, and understanding the farming and ranching background, where it is very seasonal, we do need some flexibility there.

Returning workers, I agree, if they've been able to go through the process over and over again, they come in where they're supposed to, they leave when they're supposed to, and there's no issues here. I'd be happy to do something like that and streamline the process. We have been working with USCIS to try to streamline this. That's one of the most challenging things I have since I've walked in as secretary, is that we have handcuffed ourselves through so much bureaucracy that we're trying to cut back and get to the basics, and any way you see that a system can work better, Senator Collins, I'll be happy to work with you, but I'm limited on some of my authority.

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