After months of campaigning against the H-1B visa program through social media polls, posts and commentary, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis asked the Florida Board of Governors to pull the plug on the use of the H-1B visas in the state colleges and universities. At a press conference, he said the positions can be filled with Americans and if they can’t be filled, then the problem lies somewhere else. The Republican leader asked why a Florida university would need to bring someone from China to talk about public policy. “We can do it with Florida residents or Americans! If we can’t? Then man, we need to really look deeply at what’s going on with this situation!” he said, dropping the bombshell announcement that would impact several state colleges and universities.According to USCIS data, as of June 30, 2025, there were more than 1900 Florida employers sponsoring over 7,200 H-1B visa holders. In the education sector, there are 78 employers and 677 beneficiaries.
Top H-1B recruiters in Florida
- University of Florida: 156
- University of Miami: 90
- University of South Florida: 72
Though H-1B visa program is primarily used by tech companies, higher education sector in the US also employs H-1Bs in medical programs. DeSantis said assistant professors, coaches, data analysts, coordinators, marketers, and more university workers on H1-B visas from areas like the United Kingdom, China, Spain, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, Russia, Poland, Albania, Argentina, and the West Bank — as he questioned how these positions are high-skilled that got them H-1Bs and could not be filled with Americans.
Global elites vs national elites
Ron DeSantis drew criticism for his diktat on social media as someone pointed out that if he bans H-1B in the education sector, colleges and universities will have to choose from the pool of national elites instead of the pool of global elites. DeSantis shot down the apprehension and said the H-1B positions that he found out in audit were not even elite — they were for assistant athletic coaches and media relations specialists, for example.
