In a welcome move, the Trump administration is advancing measures to fix America’s widely abused skilled-worker program, so-called H-1B visas.

The most attention-getting proposal would require employers to pay $100,000 for new H-1B visa recipients coming from overseas.

This, and other reforms, are steps toward law and order and fair competition in the labor market. The H-1B program justifies itself as a program to attract high-skilled labor to America. In practice, it functions as a loophole in American labor law, where foreigners are brought in to create cost savings for American firms.

Although the law already requires that employers pay H-1B visa holders the equivalent salary for Americans, this is systematically avoided. Employers have been found to routinely misclassify jobs at a lower skill or wage level. Some make illegal deductions from H-1B workers’ paychecks.

Then there are the middleman staffing firms that exist almost solely to abuse this visa. Some firms hire H-1B workers en masse and deploy them to U.S. clients at below-prevailing-wage rates. Others manipulate the H-1B lottery system, submitting multiple applications for the same worker, to increase their odds. Employers sometimes hide their job listings from Americans in an effort to prove that no Americans can fill these roles. Besides burying them in fine print in local papers rather than posting on major internet job sites, employers have even been caught blocking American IP addresses from accessing those listings.

The case against H-1B is set out at length in the president’s proclamation announcing the new fee.

The problem with the $100,000 fee is that employers will easily be able to evade it. Despite what Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said, with his typical commitment to accuracy, employers will not have to pay the fee annually. President Trump is using his authority to restrict the entry of aliens under 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to impose the fee, which means the fee can’t be levied again for workers once they are already here. Also, as the Center for Immigration Studies points out, most H-1B petitions involve aliens already here on other visas. Presumably, the fee will prompt more employers to make sure that their H-1B workers are already here.

But the fee is a step in the right direction. So is the change to the H-1B lottery system (which ideally would be abolished) to give an advantage to employers seeking to hire the highest-paid workers, and a new Labor Department initiative, Project Firewall, to better police compliance with requirements meant to protect U.S. workers.

Some will argue that any restrictions on H-1B visas hurt U.S. competitiveness against China. This is ridiculous. H-1B is notorious for bringing in semi-skilled workers, not the cream of the crop. Their presence in the tech industry discourages firms from training Americans in these skills.

The H-1B program has long been a disgrace, and the Trump administration deserves applause for working to reform it.