In late 2025, the United States introduced a new policy targeting H-1B visas, thereby negatively affecting one of the world’s most important channels for skilled labor mobility. For decades, the H-1B visa has allowed technology companies, consulting firms, universities, and telecommunications companies to bring in foreign, highly skilled workers in STEM fields. That mechanism is not disappearing. It is becoming more expensive, uncertain, and selective.
The requirement of an additional $100,000 payment for certain new petitions filed after September 21, 2025 (with exceptions for specific beneficiary categories and filing types) substantially increases the cost of hiring foreign STEM professionals from outside the United States. The measure does not affect those who already hold a valid visa equally, nor does it apply to all modifications or status extensions, but it does change the economic calculus for companies that depend on international talent. While intended to protect domestic workers, the policy may ultimately undermine the United States’ long‑run technological competitiveness.
For Mexico, the impact is not marginal. Historically, Mexico has not been a major user of the H-1B, unlike India and China. Its labor connection with the United States operates largely through another channel: the TN visa, created under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and preserved in the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA). This category allows Mexican and Canadian professionals to work in the United States in specific occupations, including engineering, systems, and professional services.
While the H-1B is subject to caps, lotteries, and rising costs, the TN offers a treaty-based pathway. This legal distinction reduces friction, increases certainty, and is better aligned with economic integration among the three countries. It is also important to clarify that the TN is not a substitute for the H-1B, as it has its own limitations—for example, it applies only to specific professions, and not all technology occupations qualify.
The result is the intersection of a strategic paradox and the irony of implementing this new immigration policy, which limits the entry of highly skilled foreigners into the United States. According to the Trump administration’s stated rationale, restrictions on the H‑1B visa program, by limiting the entry of highly skilled foreign workers, are intended to create opportunities for Americans, benefit the country, and generate additional revenue for the U.S. Treasury.
In practice, the early signals suggest these measures may have a positive impact primarily in countries such as Brazil and Mexico. In the latter, they could end up accelerating the relocation of technology work to Mexico. If a U.S. company concludes that bringing an engineer to Silicon Valley, Boston, or Seattle is too costly or administratively uncertain, it has options: hire more expensive local talent, move the work to India or Eastern Europe, automate processes, or relocate operations to Mexico. Given these alternatives, Mexico becomes more attractive due to its geographic proximity, compatible time zones, competitive costs, growing cultural affinity, and legal coverage under the USMCA. This is not something new, but it is amplified by the United States’ new and shortsighted immigration policy.
Mexico’s advantage does not rest solely on lower wages. It lies in the ability to integrate binational teams almost in real time. A developer in Guadalajara, Monterrey, Mexico City, Querétaro, or Mérida can collaborate with clients in California, Texas, or New York during the same workday. They can travel when physical presence is required. And in certain cases, they can access professional mobility via the TN visa without their company having to go through the same process as with an H-1 B visa. That combination—time zone, treaty, cost, and cultural connectivity—makes Mexico a natural platform for the relocation of companies to the country, a trend known as technology nearshoring.
The potential impact is greatest in software, cybersecurity, applied artificial intelligence, data analytics, digital infrastructure support, semiconductors, industrial automation, and telecommunications. U.S. companies will continue to need specialized talent—but not necessarily within their borders. This is where Mexico positions itself as the best alternative.
The technical profile of that demand requires precision. Open RAN and disaggregated network engineers need mastery of programming and virtualization, in addition to classical telecommunications knowledge. This is a hybrid profile that is scarce in any market. In cybersecurity, the ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study documents an estimated global shortfall of more than 3 million unfilled positions. Mexico has a growing community of specialists operating in time zones compatible with those of U.S. security operations centers. In semiconductors, the opportunity lies not only in manufacturing, but also in chip design and verification, where the Tecnológico de Monterrey and UNAM are already producing competitive graduates. These specializations define, with greater precision than any aggregate figure, where Mexico’s human capital strategy should focus.
The telecommunications sector also deserves particular attention. The demand for 5G networks, open network architectures, data centers, AI applied to network operations, industrial connectivity, and digital services infrastructure requires specialized engineers who are scarce in every market. At the same time, Mexico has recently undergone what many observers regard as one of the most significant regulatory reforms in its recent history: the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) ceased operations after twelve years as an independent regulator, and its functions were transferred to the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (CRT), attached to the Digital Transformation and Telecommunications Agency (ATDT). This change redefines the relationship between the state, operators, investors, and users.
The transition from the IFT to the CRT has, to date, raised widely discussed legitimate concerns among industry participants about technical autonomy, regulatory continuity, economic competition, spectrum allocation, equipment homologation, and investor certainty. For a foreign company evaluating the establishment of an engineering center, a laboratory, or a network operation in Mexico, regulatory clarity weighs as heavily as the availability of talent.
Two concrete issues concentrate that uncertainty. The first is spectrum: many frequencies have not been auctioned in Mexico, while the United States and Canada hold a clear advantage in this area. Without efficient and predictable frequency allocation, the promise of industrial connectivity remains partial. The second is effective competition: the CRT inherited the asymmetric measures imposed on dominant agents, but its ability to maintain and update them will depend on the technical independence and institutional resources that have yet to be defined.
At the same time, the arrival of companies such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure—with regions in Mexico—has dramatically expanded the cloud infrastructure offering. But this asset is fully realized only if there is a regulatory environment that provides certainty regarding cross-border data flows and digital services contracts. Without that certainty, the infrastructure exists, but the ecosystem does not consolidate.
H‑1B restrictions may push more technology work toward Mexico, but that flow will not arrive automatically nor remain by inertia; it depends on policy choices, infrastructure investment, and sustained human capital development. Canada, Germany, Eastern Europe, India, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Brazil also compete for that talent, that investment, and those contracts. Mexico has advantages that are difficult to replicate, but also well-known bottlenecks: educational inequality, limited English proficiency in part of the workforce, connectivity gaps outside major urban centers, insecurity, energy uncertainty, and regulatory changes that can be perceived as discretionary. None of these problems is new, none has been solved.
Physical digital infrastructure cannot be taken for granted either. Mexico is connected to the United States by several high-capacity submarine cables, including the Camara system and the America Movil Submarine Cable System, among others, which together provide low-latency and sufficient bandwidth for cloud services, videoconferencing, and remote infrastructure management.
Data centers in Querétaro, Mexico City, and Monterrey have attracted investment from operators, including KIO Networks and Equinix, reinforcing the foundation for colocation and hybrid cloud services. But this infrastructure is concentrated in a few urban corridors. According to the National Survey on Availability and Use of Information Technologies in Households (ENDUTIH) by INEGI, a significant share of the Mexican population—particularly outside major metropolitan areas—lacks sufficient broadband quality for productive remote work.
The USMCA is Mexico’s most important strategic asset in this context. It not only underpins trade relations with the United States and Canada but also provides a framework for digital trade, intellectual property, cross-border data flows, and professional services. In a world where STEM talent has become a geopolitical resource, Mexico’s membership in the North American block grants it an institutional advantage that no regional competitor can match. But an institutional advantage does not, on its own, translate into productive capacity. It requires public policy: more technical training, more certifications, greater professional English proficiency, more digital infrastructure, and greater coordination among universities, businesses, and government.
The H-1B visa restriction policy is harmful to the United States, as it raises the cost of attracting highly skilled foreign talent, reduces companies’ flexibility to fill critical STEM positions, and undermines long-term competitiveness. That same pressure may benefit Mexico by incentivizing the relocation of technology work to a territory with proximity advantages, compatible time zones, commercial integration, and an expanding pool of technical talent. In this sense, Mexico could attract more activity in software, cybersecurity, data, artificial intelligence, and telecommunications. But that benefit will not arrive on its own. It depends on regulatory certainty, adequate infrastructure, and sufficient professional training.
The open question is whether President Sheinbaum’s administration will be able to turn this American policy choice into a lasting strategic advantage for Mexico.
