Plain-language takeaways computed directly from the latest available data — each one sourced and labelled reported, projected, or estimated. We state direction and magnitude, never causation.
Amazon, Infosys, Cognizant together filed 23,726 of 399,395 H-1B approvals in FY2024 — a small group of firms drives a large share of the program.
H-1B is often debated as if usage were spread evenly. In reality a handful of large employers dominate filings, so policy changes land hardest on them.
283,397 of 399,395 approvals went to India nationals — more than 6.1× the next country (China, 46,680).
Because the program is so concentrated by nationality, any change to H-1B rules falls disproportionately on one country's applicants.
Nationwide CBP encounters dropped from 3.2M in FY2023 to 691.9K in FY2025.
Encounters are the figure most often cited in border debates. They are now at multi-decade lows — an encounter is an event, not a person, and is not a deportation.
The point-in-time detained population is up ~94% from the FY2024 average daily count (37,684).
Detention capacity is a concrete, fundable constraint on enforcement — it tends to move before removal totals do.
At the current pace, FY2026 would finish near 256.9K issuances vs 372K in FY2025.
International students are a leading indicator for universities and the future skilled-worker pipeline — they often respond to policy faster than employment visas.
Tracked layoffs and H-1B sponsorship at the same firm, shown side by side. This does NOT prove anyone was replaced — layoffs and sponsorship are separate events.
This is the comparison that fuels the loudest claims online. Seeing both real numbers together — with the causation caveat — is more useful than either in isolation.
Real layoff notices filed with the Texas Workforce Commission, fetched live. For context, Texas employers filed 26,606 layoffs across 287 notices in all of 2025.
WARN notices are the earliest official signal of large layoffs. Texas is one of the few states publishing them as live structured data — a direct read on local labor stress, separate from visa policy.
National seasonally-adjusted unemployment (June 2026), fetched live from the BLS Public Data API when this site was last built.
Arguments about immigration and jobs depend heavily on the underlying labor market. This is the one figure here that is genuinely near-live.