The lede: USCIS's H-1B regime just got more expensive and less predictable, and that is a labor-cost shock dressed up as immigration enforcement. The FY2025 rule overhaul moved the cap lottery to a beneficiary-centric (one entry per person, not per employer filing) system to kill multiple-registration gaming, while fee schedules — including the Asylum Program Fee and higher base/premium-processing costs baked into recent USCIS fee-rule adjustments — have pushed all-in per-hire costs meaningfully higher. Processing timelines remain volatile with consular backlogs and administrative-review holds. For Big Tech, H-1B is not a side program — it is the pipeline for mid-to-senior software engineers, and a tighter, pricier, slower cap effectively taxes the companies most dependent on domestic H-1B hiring versus those who already built the offshore-capacity workaround.