Hiring restrictions on high-skilled foreign workers hinder financial innovation without increasing domestic high-skill employment. Using variation from the Employ American Workers Act (EAWA), which prohibited TARP banks from hiring new foreign workers until TARP repayment, we show that banks relying on foreign inventors pre-crisis experienced greater declines in patent quantity and quality, particularly in FinTech, cybersecurity, and payments. First-time foreign inventor patents dropped the most. Banks neither replaced internal innovation with external patents nor substituted foreign talent with domestic hires. Instead, affected banks retained pre-crisis foreign workers by offering higher wage premia over average domestic wages.