Millions of Americans already play pickleball, so when news broke that companies were applying to the government for a guest-worker visa to hire immigrants as coaches — at salaries up to $95,000 — condemnation was swift and severe.

“Abuse,” said one commenter. “Beyond absurd,” said another.

It’s not just pickleball. Clubs and colleges have sought to fill dozens of tennis and soccer coach positions with foreign guest-workers through the H-1B visa program. Hundreds of news reporter positions have also been submitted to the H-1B program, including by the likes of Bloomberg and The Daily Mail.

Intended to attract skilled foreigners, the program has long come under fire for serving as a way for companies to import cheaper workers to undercut Americans. In some cases, American workers say they’ve been fired, but were still required to stick around and train their lower-wage replacements.

The Trump administration has moved to crack down.

In a new proposal Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called for rewriting the way H-1B visas are doled out, giving new preferences to the highest-wage jobs, which, the government figures, is a proxy for higher skills, or at the very least means a job that’s tough to fill using American workers.

The goal is to tamp down on so-called “H-1B mills,” which churn foreign workers into the U.S. economy.

“Ultimately, prioritizing in the previously described manner would incentivize employers to offer higher wages or higher-skilled positions to H-1B workers and disincentivize the existing widespread use of the H-1B program to fill lower-paid or lower-skilled positions without effectively precluding beneficiaries with lower wage levels or entry-level positions,” Ms. Noem said in the new proposal.

Her plan was released just days after Mr. Trump announced a new $100,000 fee he is imposing on some H-1B applicants before they’re allowed to bring in the foreign workers they want.

Taken together, they mark a significant change in how the country recruits H-1B workers.

“Employers who really, really need these highly skilled workers will be able to pay enough to get a visa. Employers who want cheap labor, less so,” said Rosemary Jenks, policy director at the Immigration Accountability Project.

Immigrant rights groups, though, were horrified at the moves — particularly the $100,000 fee Mr. Trump announced. While acknowledging some “abuses” in the program, advocates said the new changes are part of a broader nativist push.

“We urge the Trump administration to focus on real solutions for immigrants, U.S. workers, and our communities, instead of creating confusion and trying to change the immigration system into a ’pay-to-play’ mess,” said Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

The H-1B program allows 65,000 new basic visas a year, plus another 20,000 that go to foreigners who emerge from U.S. universities with a master’s or doctoral degree.

The visa lasts three years and can be renewed, but it is not an immigrant visa and workers are supposed to return home at some point. In reality, many will go on to win full employment-based green cards or marry U.S. citizens, earning a permanent place and putting them on the path to U.S. citizenship.

Nearly 480,000 registration applications were filed this current fiscal year, down from more than 780,000 in 2024.

Companies applying for H-1B visas are required to get Labor Department certification showing they are offering competitive wages, though unlike other guest-worker programs, they do not have to prove that they first made efforts to recruit Americans for the jobs.

Once they get certification, their applications are entered in the lottery, run by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Under Ms. Noem’s new proposal, jobs offering higher wages will get a better chance of being selected in the lottery. The proposal must go through the notice and comment process before being finalized.

Meanwhile, Labor Department Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said she will personally start initiating investigations into abuses of the H-1B visa.

In announcing the $100,000 fee, Mr. Trump cited one software company that was “approved” for 5,000 H-1B workers this year while announcing layoffs of more than 15,000 employees.

And in one prominent case, IT workers at Disney said they were fired but as a condition of getting a severance package were required to train their H-1B replacements. Workers sued, but courts sided with Disney, finding the company’s actions legal.

Experts have questioned Mr. Trump’s new $100,000 fee, saying he appears to have broken procedural rules by acting unilaterally. They also said the fee likely exceeds what the law allows.

Mr. Trump says he’s operating under a section of law that allows him to bar entry of any class of immigrant he deems detrimental to U.S. interests. Whether that includes imposing new fees remains to be determined by the courts.

Sam Arnold, one of the co-founders of Slate Pickleball Club in Northbrook, Illinois, said he had a particular woman in mind, which is why he applied for an H-1B visa.

“I needed coaches I could trust and develop and work with,” he said. “She’s attracted a lot of business. That’s tough to find in the rackets industry.”

He said he teaches pickleball with a “specific methodology” that not everyone would agree with, so finding the right fit was tricky.

He won Labor Department certification, meaning they approved of putting the job up for offer to a guest-worker. But he wasn’t selected in the lottery.

That wasn’t the end of the story, however. He said the woman went back to school, and then applied for what’s known as Optional Practical Training, a temporary work program for foreigners in the U.S. who have completed their student visas. So he was able to hire her after all.

“She’s young, she’s super athletic, she really wants to work. She’s willing to go all out to make things happen,” Mr. Arnold told The Washington Times.

Ms. Jenks said she would like to see the Trump administration curtail the OPT program. She also said H-1B workers shouldn’t be allowed to adjust to a pathway to citizenship.

“It should actually be a temporary visa instead of a way to stay permanently,” she said.

While they are attention-grabbing, pickleball and tennis coaches and news reporter jobs are a small fraction of the applications submitted.

IT firms dominate, with USCIS data showing Amazon.com Services LLC to be the top recipient of H-1B visas in 2025, at 10,044.

Tata Consultancy Services LLC, which has been accused of operating as an H-1B “mill,” was second with 5,505, followed by Microsoft with 5,189. Meta and Apple fill out the top five.

Despite his recent moves, Mr. Trump in the past has been bullish on the H-1B program.

For one thing, Melania Trump, the president’s wife, was here on an H-1B visa in the 1990s as a prominent fashion model from Slovenia at the time they met. Mrs. Trump would later win the EB-1 visa, which is reserved for foreigners with extraordinary ability, before becoming a citizen in 2006.

Mr. Trump has also made frequent use of foreign guest-workers in his business empire.

But by the time the 2016 campaign rolled around, he was less excited. His campaign website complained about H-1B visas because they had no requirement to seek an American worker first.

During a GOP primary debate in March 2016, however, the president went rogue on his campaign team when asked about high-skilled foreign workers.

“I’m changing. I’m changing. We need highly skilled people in this country,” he said, adding, “I’m softening the position because we have to have talented people in this country.”

Hours later, though, his campaign released a statement insisting he wasn’t actually talking about H-1B workers.

The issue flared up again last December, during the transition to his second term. Mr. Trump told The New York Post he “always liked” the H-1B program, and touted his own use of the program in his business empire.

“I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” he said.

Yet months later, he was in the Oval Office announcing his changes.

Immigration analysts suggested that Mr. Trump’s uncertain stance on the issue reflects a broader split within the GOP, and seems to depend on which side of the debate he’s listening to at the time.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.