The Current Immigration Reality for Academic Institutions: Compliance, Cost, and Continuity

The Trump Administration has fundamentally reshaped the US immigration landscape for employers, institutions, and organizations across sectors, with higher education squarely in the crosshairs. Universities and colleges are confronting these challenges from two angles: the impact on the international student pipeline and the repercussions for recruiting foreign faculty. With the Departments of Homeland Security and State engaged in “enhanced vetting,” higher education institutions face stringent compliance expectations, adjudication restrictions, and processing delays that affect how they recruit and support international students and how they sponsor and retain foreign national faculty and staff.

With a reported 17% decline in new international student enrollment in 2025, recent policy shifts have introduced operational risks, delays, and costs—while raising the stakes for strategic workforce planning and student services in a globally competitive academic market. Below we highlight the top issues that have emerged for academic institutions and provide practical strategies to navigate the current and evolving environment.

I. Admissions Under Scrutiny: Fraud Prevention, Revocations, and the Expanded Role of Schools

In November 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched an initiative to train school officials, including Designated School Officials (DSOs), on detecting and preventing student visa fraud. The initiative signals heightened expectations for institutional screening and Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) oversight to ensure “admissions processes remain secure and compliant.” This increased focus on the DSO’s role to identify, document, and report fraud rachets up the pre-admission vetting of student applicants. The training requires DSOs—who are responsible for issuing documentation that facilitate the student visa process—to identify red flags that may indicate fraudulent activity, such as inconsistent academic records or forged financial documents, to engage in careful document review and information verification, and to rely on additional tools and resources for the review.

“Enhanced vetting” extends beyond the DSO’s expanded role in the pre-admissions process. DHS has intensified vetting of foreign students, from expanded social-media screening during the visa adjudications process overseas to visa revocations after admission. The Department of State recently reported that 8,000 student visas have been revoked since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, part of a broader visa-revocation effort representing a notable increase from 2024.

Additional changes further restricting student visas are on the horizon, with DHS proposing a new rule to replace “duration of status” with four-year fixed admission periods for F‑1 students and J-1 exchange visitors. Under the proposed rule, students who cannot complete their programs within the initial fixed time period—from Ph.D. candidates to those pursuing joint degrees or medical training—must apply to US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) to request an extension of student status. This would shift immigration status maintenance from an institution‑managed, SEVIS‑anchored model to a time‑limited, application‑driven model. Increased USCIS touchpoints inherently raise the risk of application denials.

Taken together, these changes will likely continue to shrink the pipeline of new international students and jeopardize the start and timely completion of degree programs for students impacted by adverse adjudications and visa revocations.

II. Hiring at Risk: Navigating the $100,000 H-1B Fee

Universities and colleges that rely on the H-1B visa category to employ foreign faculty and staff must now navigate the new $100,000 fee announced by presidential proclamation in September 2025. With professors, lecturers, researchers, and other scholars impacted by the fee, institutions have sought clarity as to when and how the fee affects hiring and retention. Subsequent agency guidance has provided some parameters. For example, the fee does not apply to a lecturer already holding H-1B status in the United States as of the proclamation’s effective date, including when the university petitions to extend that lecturer’s H-1B status. In contrast, a university seeking to hire an overseas researcher who requires new H‑1B sponsorship would be required to pay the fee.

Given the financial impact of the fee, the availability of an exception can be critical. Although the proclamation references exceptions for employment in the national interest that poses no threat to US security or welfare, such exceptions are described as “extraordinarily rare” and subject to a “high threshold.” The Secretary of Homeland Security must also determine that no American worker is available to fill the role, and that requiring the petitioning employer to make the payment would significantly undermine the interests of the United States.

At the time of this writing, the proclamation is the subject of multiple legal challenges. The Association of University Professors is a plaintiff in the suit pending before the Northern District of California, while the Association of American Universities is a plaintiff in the suit filed in the DC District Court. Even with these suits pending, the $100,000 fee has already constrained the H-1B as a viable sponsorship option for certain recruiting and hiring decisions. Moreover, use of the H-1B in higher education is further challenged by state actions, such as the proposal in Florida to prohibit public universities from hiring H-1B faculty and staff, and the directive by Texas Governor Greg Abbott to state agencies and universities “to freeze new H-1B visa petitions and launch a review of current H-1B visa program use.”

III. Action Plan for Universities: Enrollment Stability and Talent Retention

As policy changes accelerate, the following actions translate risk into concrete operational steps for admissions and HR, enabling proactive case triage, earlier student support, and more predictable hiring outcomes.

• Prepare for Heightened Vetting: Leverage ICE training resources on detecting student visa fraud to update internal protocols and staff training. Document DSO and staff training to enhance the school’s compliance record. Anticipate expanded USCIS, consular, and SEVP scrutiny. Conduct audits that test data integrity and document compliance at the program and institutional levels.
• Plan for Fixed-Term Admissions of International Students: In anticipation of a final rule, build processes to track student admission periods and deploy notification mechanisms at multiple intervals before the end of the admission period. Develop resources to guide students on extension of status applications. Assess misalignment between program lengths and immigration timelines, and communicate proactively with impacted students.
• Diversify Employee Sponsorship Pathways: Evaluate alternative visa options in cases where the H-1B $100,000 fee applies, including the O-1 for extraordinary ability, TN for professionals from Canada and Mexico, the H-1B1 for citizens of Chile and Singapore, and the E-3 for Australian citizens. While some visa options are nationality-specific, others—such as the O-1—impose eligibility criteria that may apply to renowned scholars and researchers.
• Monitor H-1B Litigation and Advocacy: Track legal challenges to the H-1B fee and any clarifying guidance from relevant agencies. Monitor how exceptions are applied in practice for potential applicability to specific faculty profiles or research areas.
• Coordinate Cross-Functional Response: Establish a joint working group among admissions/DSOs, international student services, HR, and counsel to triage high‑risk cases and standardize communications. Create decision trees and escalation protocols for visa revocations, fixed‑term extension denials, and H‑1B fee scenarios, including when to pivot to alternative visa categories or adjust hiring timelines.

Executing this roadmap will strengthen compliance posture, reduce adjudication surprises, and keep academic programs and research on track—even as federal screening, timelines, and costs continue to evolve.

How Mayer Brown Can Help

Mayer Brown’s Chambers-ranked Global Mobility practice brings extensive experience guiding universities, colleges, and affiliated entities through today’s high-stakes immigration compliance and enforcement environment. We manage interconnected legal and regulatory risks by pairing deep immigration-law expertise with robust public policy and advocacy capabilities. As part of Mayer Brown’s Higher Education Task Force, we provide strategic, cross-practice guidance at every stage of policy change and implementation affecting international students, scholars, and faculty. As government priorities evolve, institutions of higher education and related entities benefit from the experienced counsel Mayer Brown provides to navigate a changing immigration landscape.