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The University of Michigan filed a notice of intent to hire a foreign worker to coach women’s golf starting this September, furthering the higher ed practice of bypassing local talent in favor of foreign guest workers.
UMich filed the notice of intent to hire an E-3 worker as a women’s assistant golf coach on Aug. 3. The golf position is set to pay $62,500 and last a total of two years, from September 2026 until August 2028.
While the golf coach request falls under an E-3 program for hiring “Australian workers,” the university is no stranger to hiring from outside America’s borders.
During the first two weeks of August, the university also filed nine notices of intent to hire H-1B workers for “assistant professor” positions.
Katie Miller, conservative podcast host and wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, an “America First” proponent, took notice of the golf coach hiring tactic. In an X post, Katie Miller called the filing an “abuse of the immigration system.”
Several other universities, including Notre Dame and Purdue, filed similar H-1B notices of intent earlier this year for assistant professor and coach positions.
The University of Michigan did not return The College Fix’s request for comment.
Over 114,000 H-1B petitions for initial employment were approved in fiscal year 2025, according to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services data. Out of those, 9,908 petitions were listed under “Occupations In College And University Education.”
“While supporters of the H‑1B visa program argue it attracts global talent and fuels innovation, critics assert the system enables employers to hire foreign workers for lower pay than their American counterparts would earn,” Time reported.
Colleges and universities are “cap exempt” from a federal policy that limits how many foreign workers a company or organization can hire.
An effort by President Donald Trump to curb abuse of the H1-B system by imposing a $100,000 regulatory fee on employers — including universities — was stopped by a U.S. district court judge in June, who ruled the fee was an unauthorized tax the president did not have the authority to impose.
After the ruling, a Department of Homeland Security said the effort sought to “ensure that employers prioritize hiring U.S. workers, particularly in high-skilled fields.”
According to George Fishman, senior legal fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, hiring foreign professors is “a standard use of the H-1B program.”
Roughly nine percent of petitions “were for occupations in college and university education,” Fishman told The Fix. “It’s a standard, long-standing use of the H-1B program.”
While the university’s use of the system may be bad, it is nonetheless “perfectly consistent” with the program itself, he said.
“It’s an abuse of American workers, I’d say, an abuse of American students, but it’s perfectly fine under the H-1B program,” he said.
“It doesn’t seem like there’s fraud or an abuse of the H-1B statute. The problem is the H-1B statute allows for stuff like that,” Fishman said.
There is no law that requires universities or other companies to recruit U.S. workers first, and there is no prohibition on them laying off U.S. workers and replacing them with H-1B workers, he said.
Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told The Fix there seems to be a trend of institutions that prefer foreign workers.
“The whole concept of foreign workers is to be able to bring in people who have skills that are not easily replicated here in the United States,” Mehlman said. “I can’t imagine that they couldn’t find somebody somewhere in this country who was a qualified golf instructor to coach the team.”
“The idea of being allowed to bring a foreign worker into the country should be predicated on some objective evidence that there is no qualified worker prepared to take that job here in the United States.”
MORE: Trump may tack $100,000 fee on foreign students who want to work in U.S. after graduation
