Zach Lahn Immigration Jobs Iowa

Zach Lahn Promises to Ban H-1B Workers From Iowa's Government and Universities. His Own Kansas School Asked for Three of Them.

In a TV ad, Iowa governor candidate Zach Lahn vows to 'ban H-1B visa holders from being hired by Iowa government and universities.' The private school he co-founded in Wichita petitioned for H-1B workers in 2018 and again in 2021 — with Lahn listed as the main contact.

MAGA Report Cards · Oct 08, 2026

Zach Lahn Promises to Ban H-1B Workers From Iowa's Government and Universities. His Own Kansas School Asked for Three of Them. — Photo: Travis Berg / Four Seam Images via AP, via American Journal News

Zach Lahn, the Republican running for governor of Iowa, has a new promise for voters about foreign workers. He looks into the camera in a recent campaign ad and says:

"We'll ban H-1B visa holders from being hired by Iowa government and universities."

His campaign website makes the same pledge: to "stop issuing H-1B visas for jobs that Iowans can do in state government and in our universities."

H-1B visas let American employers hire foreign workers with specialized skills. The employer has to ask the federal government for each one. And when it came to the school Zach Lahn ran, the employer asking was his.

What Lahn's own school did

In 2018, Lahn and his wife co-founded Wonder, a private school in Wichita, Kansas. American Journal News reported on October 7, 2026, that:

In 2018, the same year it opened, Wonder petitioned for two H-1B visas. One was issued. The other request was withdrawn.
In 2021, the school petitioned for another one — and Lahn was listed as the main point of contact on the application.

The 2021 filing shows up in federal labor records. Before an employer can hire an H-1B worker, it has to file a wage notice with the Labor Department. A database of those filings lists Wonder Inc. in Wichita, submitted June 29, 2021, for an "Innovations Director and Design Studio Coach" at a base salary of $65,000.

So the man who now says Iowa's public schools and universities shouldn't hire H-1B workers used the program to hire for his own school. That's not the same thing he's promising to ban — his was a private school in Kansas, not an Iowa university — but it's the same visa.

A pledge that may not even work

The ad is built to sound tough. Whether it would do anything is another question. American Journal News notes that a governor could tell state agencies and universities not to hire H-1B workers, but it's "not clear that such an order would be legally binding."

And the case against H-1B workers is thinner than the ad suggests. American Journal News says there is little evidence that the program costs Americans jobs. As a PBS NewsHour headline put it when Trump made the same claim: "It's not that simple, experts say."

A Kansas candidate with a Kansas résumé

This is the pattern with Lahn. He is running to lead Iowa while keeping close ties to Kansas. The Wall Street Journal caught him presenting himself as an Iowa outsider when he'd spent years as a paid operative for the Koch network's Americans for Prosperity.

The school itself keeps coming up, too. Lahn calls it a model for the country. It owes him and his wife $4.5 million.

Now it turns out the school he holds up as the model is one that used the very visa program he's promising to shut out of Iowa's public institutions.

What the record shows

Zach Lahn is running TV ads promising to "ban H-1B visa holders from being hired by Iowa government and universities." Wonder, the Wichita private school he and his wife co-founded, petitioned for two H-1B visas in 2018 and another in 2021, with Lahn listed as the main contact on the 2021 application — for an "Innovations Director and Design Studio Coach" paid $65,000.