by Ben Whedon
Walmart confirmed this week that it had paused hiring employees with H-1B visas in the wake of President Donald Trump’s reforms to the program.
“Walmart is committed to hiring and investing in the best talent to serve our customers, while remaining thoughtful about our H-1B hiring approach,” the company confirmed to multiple outlets.
Walmart currently has more than 2,000 employees with H-1B visas, CNN Business reported.
The visa program has long been in the crosshairs of conservative immigration hawks, with many pointing to alleged rampant fraud and its use by tech employers to replace American workers with less expensive foreign labor.
Trump imposed a $100,000 fee on H-1B applications in September, saying the program “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.”
Throughout the first three quarters of fiscal year 2025, Walmart has sponsored 2,390 foreign nationals through the H-1B visa program, ranking 9th among companies. The top three are Amazon, Tata Consulting Services, and Microsoft. In fiscal year 2024, Walmart ranked 11th for using the H-1B visa program, with 2,904 foreign nationals being sponsored through it.
According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, workers sponsored through the H-1B visa program were paid assigned wage levels that are well below the local median wage. The study also found that the top 30 companies that apply for an H-1B visa are the sponsors of over 25 percent of the visa applications.
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Ben Whedon is a reporter for Just the News. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
Photo “Walmart Store” by JJBers. CC BY 2.0.
