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The Walt Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company

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The end of the H-1B lottery

Rule Changes

Faced backlash and lawsuit over 2015 H-1B layoffs

On December 29, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security formally published its final rule replacing the H-1B lottery with wage-weighted selection in the Federal Register. Starting February 27, 2026, a software engineer offered $150,000 (Level IV wage) gets four entries in the pool; one offered $65,000 (Level I) gets one entryβ€”an 8.5% selection chance versus the prior 25% random odds. The change targets fraud: 758,994 registrations competed for 85,000 slots in FY 2024, with 408,891 duplicate submissions for the same people, up 140% from the year before. Shell companies flooded the system; Disney laid off American IT staff and made them train H-1B replacements paid 40% less. On December 24, a federal judge upheld the separate $100,000 H-1B fee Trump imposed in September, rejecting a U.S. Chamber of Commerce lawsuit.

Updated Dec 29, 2025