‘Take a hard look’: Florida universities weigh pause on hiring foreign workers

Florida’s politically appointed university leaders are moving toward a temporary freeze on hiring skilled foreign workers — a step critics warn could cost the state top research talent and further politicize the workforce at its public universities.

The proposal, discussed Thursday by the State University System’s Board of Governors, would direct Florida’s 12 public universities to stop hiring new employees through the federal H-1B visa program until January 2027.

The public now has 14 days to weigh in before the measure goes to a final vote at the board’s next meeting in February.

The move comes amid growing conservative opposition to the program, including from U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds — the Trump-backed frontrunner in Florida’s gubernatorial race — and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has criticized the visa system as a pipeline for employers to hire foreign workers at unreasonably low salaries.

The Republican governor is railing against the program as amounting to “indentured servitude,” arguing it allows universities to undercut qualified American workers. After the Trump administration dramatically increased H-1B visa fees to $100,000 in September, DeSantis directed the Board of Governors to “pull the plug” on new H-1B hires.

But the governor’s university board appointees on Thursday urged caution, describing the moratorium as a temporary pause intended to allow a systemwide review of how Florida universities use the visa program — including whether H-1B employees are paid less than their colleagues.

State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues said the pause would not affect workers already employed under H-1B visas. It also would not apply to other work visa programs, according to newly seated Board of Governors Chairman Alan Levine, who said colleges in high-demand fields like medicine and engineering should raise concerns during the review.

“The goal here is not to preclude the ability to hire people that are needed in certain areas,” Levine said. Instead, he said, the board’s aim is to “get the information we need to then make reasonable policy decisions about the use of this program.”

‘We don’t want you’

Academic leaders say the damage could come quickly — and last long after the one-year pause ends.

The president of University of Florida’s faculty union, Meera Sitharam, told the Herald/Times that the hiring freeze would give peer institutions — particularly outside the United States — an opening to recruit high-caliber scholars whom Florida universities would otherwise land.

“Top candidates aren’t going to wait around,” Sitharam told the Herald/Times. “Florida is taking itself out of the running.”

Sitharam, who came to the United States from India in part through the H-1B program, said the state’s political leadership is sending an unmistakable message to foreign faculty: “We don’t want you.”

“If they know this type of thing happens in Florida, they will just stop applying,” she said.

The union president also questioned the practical need for a freeze at all, arguing most universities would struggle to afford a $100,000 visa fee for a new hire — even in cases where the worker fills a high-skill, hard-to-replace role.

A small share of workers — but a big impact?

H-1B employees make up a relatively small portion of Florida’s higher education workforce.

The University of Florida, the state’s flagship institution, employs more than 33,000 faculty and staff; roughly 250 employees are on H-1B visas, along with an additional 16 at the university’s teaching hospital, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data.

Florida State University employs 110 H-1B workers, the second-highest total in the system. Other universities’ H1-B employee counts include:

• 107 at University of South Florida
• 47 at University of Central Florida
• 27 at Florida International University
• 21 at Florida Atlantic University

Still, critics worry that even a modest hiring freeze can hit disproportionally hard in research and medicine, where Florida universities compete on a global scale for scarce expertise.

At an October press conference, DeSantis said his Department of Government Efficiency had identified H-1B positions he argued should be filled by American workers. He rattled off more than a dozen unnamed examples of university employees hired through the program, including math, engineering and computer science faculty from China; an engineering professor from Russia; an athletics operation and communications coordinator from Trinidad and Tobago; and a food scientist from Argentina.

“This is not like you’re taking an Einstein from a foreign country to teach all these great things,” DeSantis said.

Faculty and student reps push back

The Board of Governors’ student and faculty representatives raised concerns Thursday that the proposed pause could erode Florida’s reputation as a serious research hub and weaken the state’s ability to compete for talent at a moment when its universities have been climbing in national rankings.

One of two dissenting board members, FSU Student Body President Carson Dale, said he sympathized with concerns that taxpayer dollars should prioritize American workers and that the visa system can be abused. But he cited data showing foreign-born scientists and engineers make up nearly half of the U.S. research workforce — and warned that Florida would lose candidates to other states by stepping away for an entire hiring cycle.

“There is a timing reality that we cannot ignore,” Dale said. “Top-tier candidates are not going to pause their careers to wait on a single state when Florida removes itself from consideration for an entire hiring cycle.”

He invoked Elon Musk, the South African-born tech mogul who entered the United States as an international student before building companies that helped reshape American aerospace and electric vehicle industries.

“I cannot support a regulation that undermines merit, limits Florida’s competitiveness for top-tier talent, prevents universities from making rare-but-necessary investments and truly exceptional lives at a moment of research growth,” Dale concluded.

Faculty representative Kimberly Dunn, an FAU accounting professor, said the H-1B program is often “the only viable way” to recruit world-class surgeons and cancer researchers who can benefit Florida’s economy and healthcare system.

Even if the moratorium is temporary, Dunn warned, “the reputational damage could be long-lasting and weaken our ability to attract exceptional faculty.” She voted against advancing the measure, but supported the systemwide H1-B study.

The H-1B proposal is the latest example of how Florida Republicans have accelerated immigration-related restrictions across the state’s higher education system, echoing priorities of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.

State lawmakers have pushed policies that include deputizing campus police departments to assist federal immigration enforcement, restricting partnerships with institutions tied to countries such as China and Venezuela and increasing scrutiny of foreign students.

In 2025, Republican lawmakers repealed a decade-old law that had allowed undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at Florida public colleges and universities — a policy once championed by U.S. Secretary of State Sen. Marco Rubio, then a U.S. Senator, and FIU President Jeanette Nuñez, a former Miami-area Republican lawmaker.

Other recent proposals include a GOP-backed bill that would cap foreign student enrollment at 10%.

Chancellor Rodrigues, in a post-meeting interview with the Herald/Times, tied the proposed H-1B pause directly to the Trump administration’s astronomical fee hike.

“You’ve got to take a hard look and ask, ‘Can we justify $100,000 per visa?’” he said. “Are these in areas of strategic emphasis where we should move forward with that in the future?”

The chancellor added that the recent conservative backlash is “largely fueled by the perception that employers have used this to import workers whom they can pay less to.”

“A study will give us a final determination on that,” he said. “But we don’t think that’s happening in our system.”