The University of California paid millions to let American workers go – then made them spend their final weeks on the job teaching their foreign replacements how to do the work they'd just lost.
Disney ran the same play, and the workers had no choice but to comply if they wanted their severance.
Now Ron DeSantis just made sure Florida taxpayers never fund that racket at their own state universities.
Florida Universities Freeze H-1B Hiring Through 2027
The Florida Board of Governors voted 14-2 on Monday to ban all 12 state universities from hiring new employees through the H-1B visa program – effective immediately, through January 5, 2027.
DeSantis had been pushing this for months, and he wasn't subtle about why.
He stood at a Tampa press conference in October and read off a list of H-1B workers employed at Florida universities – coaches, marketers, data analysts, professors from China, Spain, the West Bank – and asked a question every taxpaying Floridian deserves an answer to.
"Are you kidding me, we can't produce an assistant swim coach from this country?"
https://twitter.com/RightScopee/status/2018487387496587714?s=20
The board followed his lead and voted.
Current H-1B holders keep their jobs.
The ban covers new hires only.
And if a genuine medical emergency creates a hiring crisis, officials say they can process an exception within 72 hours.
Texas Already Did It — Now Two States Have Banned H-1B University Hires
Texas got there first.
Governor Greg Abbott ordered all state agencies and public universities to freeze new H-1B petitions back in January – a ban running through May 2027.
Abbott's letter was direct: "State government must lead by example and ensure that employment opportunities – particularly those funded with taxpayer dollars – are filled by Texans first."
Two of the biggest red states in America. Two governors. Same conclusion.
And they're not acting alone.
Trump hit new H-1B applicants with a $100,000 fee last September – a direct shot at the outsourcing firms that had been gaming the visa system for decades to undercut American wages.
The White House made the case plainly: companies had been using H-1B to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor, and that abuse had undermined both economic and national security.
The H-1B Abuse Was Real — and DeSantis Has the Numbers to Prove It
This isn't about hating immigrants.
It's about a broken program that corporate America and university administrators turned into a cheap labor machine.
Heritage Foundation analysts found that 80 percent of H-1B visas go to wage Level I and Level II workers – the bottom rungs of the pay scale.
The program sold to America as a way to recruit the world's best and brightest became, in practice, a tool for hiring the world's most compliant.
https://twitter.com/AndrewIrelandIN/status/2022333502424007106?s=20
Federal data confirmed it: one study of tech workers showed H-1B positions at the entry level came in 36 percent cheaper than the equivalent American hire.
Florida universities weren't immune.
DeSantis said it out loud – these schools were bringing in foreign workers at lower cost instead of investing in American graduates who were qualified and ready.
The University of Florida alone had 253 H-1B employees last fiscal year.
Florida State had 110. South Florida had 107.
Now the state is going to audit those numbers, ask hard questions about whether the program served Floridians, and decide what comes next.
The 2026 H-1B State Freeze Movement Is Just Getting Started
Critics on the board claimed even a temporary pause would permanently damage Florida's reputation.
But here's what they're actually admitting: if schools can only compete for talent by offering cheaper terms to foreign workers, they were never recruiting on merit in the first place.
DeSantis called H-1B positions at universities a form of "indentured servitude" – workers locked to a single employer, unable to leave, unable to negotiate, kept in line through visa dependency. That's not talent recruitment. That's leverage.
https://twitter.com/DOGEQEEN/status/2019123946692522210?s=20
And the university lobby knew it.
Florida and Texas represent the first coordinated state-level pushback against a visa system that federal agencies left unreformed for thirty years – even as documented abuse piled up at Disney, the University of California, Southern California Edison, and dozens of others.
Other Republican governors are watching.
When two of the biggest states in America shut the door in the same month, that's not a coincidence.
That's a movement.
Sources:
- Ron DeSantis, Official Statement, Governor's Press Office, October 29, 2025.
- Greg Abbott, Letter to State Agencies, Office of the Governor of Texas, January 27, 2026.
- Donald Trump, "Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers," White House Presidential Proclamation, September 19, 2025.
- Alexander Frei, "Rethinking the H-1B Visa Program: A Data-Driven Look at Structural Failures," The Heritage Foundation, 2025.
- "The H-1B Visa Needs Drastic Reform to Put Americans First," The Heritage Foundation.
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, H-1B Employer Data Hub, FY2025.
- Alan Levine, Florida Board of Governors Meeting Remarks, March 2, 2026.
