Oklahoma GOP Governor Candidate Jake Merrick Pledges to Curb H-1B Visas. He's One of Nine in the Primary.

Per Breitbart's May 25, 2026 report, Merrick's immigration statement commits to:

• Restrict H-1B and OPT visa use to positions where it is “clearly demonstrated that no qualified Americans or Oklahomans are available to fill those positions.”
• Stop Oklahoma state agencies and public universities from using H-1B or OPT programs to replace Oklahoma graduates and American workers.
• Ban Oklahoma state contracts from going to companies that “import cheaper foreign labor instead of hiring Oklahomans.”
• Strip commercial-driver licenses from non-citizens.
• Authorize local Oklahoma law enforcement to coordinate with federal immigration officers.

“H-1B and OPT visas may remain an option, but only when it is clearly demonstrated that no qualified Americans or Oklahomans are available to fill those positions.”

Jake Merrick (R-OK), Oklahoma gubernatorial candidate · Breitbart, May 25, 2026

H-1B is set by Congress, not by states. The numerical architecture, in current law: 65,000 regular slots per fiscal year, plus a 20,000-slot advanced-degree exemptionfor holders of a master's or higher from a U.S. institution. The 85,000 total has been the operating ceiling since the H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2004. USCIS reached the FY2026 cap with 120,141 selectionsin its first lottery round — itself drawn from 470,342+ eligible registrations. The selection rate is roughly one in four.

The single biggest 2025 federal change: on September 19, 2025, President Trump signed the proclamation “Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers,” imposing a $100,000 one-time feeon every new H-1B petition filed after 12:01 a.m. EDT, September 21, 2025. The fee applies to new petitions only — not renewals, not existing visa holders re-entering the country, not the H-1B workers already in the U.S. The administration paired it with a Department of Labor directive to raise prevailing wage levels and a DOL announcement that it had launched 175 H-1B abuse investigations. That is the federal posture Merrick's state-level commitments sit inside.

The December 2024 fight that drew the lines: it began with Trump's appointment of Indian-born venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan to a senior AI-policy adviser role. Laura Loomer attacked the pick. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (R)— then co-leads of the nascent DOGE advisory body — defended Krishnan and the broader H-1B framework. Musk on X (Dec. 28, 2024): “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” Ramaswamy: “The H-1B system is badly broken & should be replaced with one that focuses on selecting the very best of the best (not a lottery), pro-competitive (no indentured service to one company), and de-bureaucratized.”

On the other side: Steve Bannon on War Room: “We haven't fought these battles over years and years and years to allow American citizens of every race, ethnicity, religion, be gutted by the sociopathic overlords in Silicon Valley.”Bannon called for H-1B to be eliminated “root and stem” and proposed reparations for displaced American tech workers. Stephen Miller (White House Deputy Chief of Staff) accused India of “cheating” on immigration via the H-1B program. Vice President JD Vance (R-OH) has called on student audiences to ask their Senate candidates whether they would cosponsor legislation to eliminatethe H-1B program entirely. That — elimination, not reform — is the most restrictionist position publicly held by a sitting member of the Trump administration.

The Economic Policy Institute's ongoing H-1B analysis — the most cited academic-grade data set on the wage-suppression question — finds H-1B computer-occupation salaries run 17 to 34 percent below local median wages. EPI's reference example: the average software-developer salary in Silicon Valley is roughly $147,000; the H-1B Level 1 software-developer wage in the same labor pool is roughly $102,000. EPI further documents what it calls systemic wage theft, including a single HCL Technologies case in which subcontractors at Disney, FedEx, Google and other Fortune-500 employers were collectively underpaid by at least $95 million.

The 2024 sponsor concentration is the structural fact: Amazon filed 13,205 Labor Condition Applications in 2024 — the single largest H-1B sponsor in the United States, and an order of magnitude above the next tier. IBM hired 1,348 foreign workers via H-1B; Microsoft had 1,264 approved petitions; HCL America 1,248; Google 1,058; Capgemini 1,041; Meta 920; Apple 864. Among the top 15 sponsors, only Meta saw approvals rise year-over-year; Google and Microsoft both fell by four-figure amounts. That is the sponsor pool Merrick's state-contract ban would target if a state had been doing business with any of them in a way that displaced Oklahomans.

“H-1B workers made up about 10 percent of all computer professionals — a large enough fraction to depress wage growth for existing employees and discourage many young Americans from considering computer occupations.”

Economic Policy Institute · H-1B Visas and Prevailing Wage Levels

The Center for Immigration Studies — Jessica Vaughan's “Industrialized Fraud” piece and the “H-1B Tsunami” report — documents the categorical fraud channels: forged degrees, falsified employment credentials, third-party-staffing arrangements that bypass the original specialty-occupation premise, and in one cited federal case, the fictitious “Adam University” in Denver that procured H-1B slots for dozens of teachers without a campus, classes, or students. USCIS's own anti-fraud disclosures report tens of thousands of final Not-Employment-Authorized determinations and locked-SSN actions per year. The Department of Labor's 2026 launch of 175 H-1B-abuse investigations is the executive-branch enforcement response. Merrick's commitment to state-contractor screening is the state-level analogue.

President Trump's December 2024 verbal posture (“I've always liked the visas”) and his September 19, 2025 $100,000-fee proclamation are the same person, eight months apart, on the same issue. The proclamation is the operative federal policy. It does not eliminate H-1B; it reprices it — raising the employer's cost per new petition by an order of magnitude and effectively concentrating sponsorship at employers who genuinely cannot fill a role domestically. That is the federal frame any state-level Oklahoma policy now operates inside.

What a governor of Oklahoma can actually do on H-1B is narrower than the headline implies. H-1B is a federal visa program administered by USCIS; a state governor cannot cap it, defund it, or unilaterally exclude it. What a governor can do, and what Merrick is committing to: direct state agencies and the Oklahoma state-university system not to use H-1B / OPT to fill positions where qualified Oklahomans are available, and condition state contracts on an employer's H-1B reliance. The first is meaningful inside the state government and state-university payroll. The second is meaningful for any private contractor whose Oklahoma state-government revenue is large enough to change hiring incentives. The third — banning H-1B use by private Oklahoma employers in general — is beyond a governor's authority and is not, on the Breitbart record, what Merrick is promising.

The second limit: this is a campaign commitment from a non-leading candidate in a nine-way primary. The 2022 R primary in Oklahoma Senate District 22 ended with Merrick losing his Senate seat to Kristen Thompson. The 2026 gubernatorial primary is being led, by media attention, by AG Drummond, McCall, Mazzei, and Keating — none of whom have made H-1B a primary campaign theme to the same extent. Whether Merrick's plank moves the field, or survives the June 16 primary, is the next measurable question.