Gov. Abbott has now told two different kinds of taxpayer-funded institutions, seven months apart, that they shouldn’t be paying for H-1B labor: state agencies and universities in January, public schools in August. Both times the stated reason is the same: taxpayer money.
Neither order touches the largest taxpayer-funded H-1B channel we’ve found: private state contractors. Fourteen confirmed H-1B-sponsoring vendors have been paid $743.2 million across 1,916 Texas state contracts since 2013 — and 11 of those 14 vendors won new state contract awards on or after the day Abbott’s freeze took effect.