H-1B: Visa row fuels anxiety for Indians eyeing American dream

Ashish Chauhan dreams of pursuing an MBA at a US university next year, a goal he describes as “deeply etched in my mind.” The 29-year-old Indian finance professional (who asked to be identified by a pseudonym) hopes to eventually work in the US, but says he now feels conflicted due to the immigration controversy surrounding a long-standing US visa program, fueled by supporters of US President-elect Donald Trump.

The H-1B visa program, which brings skilled foreign workers to the US, is criticized for undermining American workers' interests on one hand, and lauded for attracting global talent on the other. The President-elect has been a critic, now a supporter of the 34-year-old program, while tech billionaire Elon Musk argues it is essential for securing top engineering talent.

Indian citizens like Mr. Chauhan dominate the program, receiving 72% of H-1B visas, followed by Chinese citizens at 12%. In 2023, most H-1B visa holders worked in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, with 65% in computer-related jobs. Their median annual salary was $118,000 (£94,000). Concerns about the H-1B visa are tied to a broader immigration debate.

A Pew Research Center report showed that US immigration increased by 1.6 million in 2023, the largest increase in over two decades. Immigrants now make up over 14% of the population, the highest level since 1910. Indians are the second-largest immigrant group in the US, after Mexicans. Many Americans worry this immigration surge could hurt job prospects or hinder assimilation.

India has also overtaken China as the largest source country for international students. According to the latest Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, there were a record 331,602 Indian students in the US in the 2023-2024 academic year. Most of them rely on loans, and any visa freeze could be financially devastating for families.

“I worry that this [backlash against H-1B visas] could also spark hostility towards Indians living there,” says Mr. Chauhan. “But I can't put my ambitions on hold and stop my life waiting for the turbulence to subside, because it has been going on for years.”

Efforts to restrict the H-1B program peaked during Trump’s first term, when he signed a 2017 order to tighten application reviews and fraud detection. The rejection rate soared to 24% in 2018, compared to 5-8% during the Obama presidency and 2-4% under President Biden. The total number of H-1B applicants approved under Biden is similar to Trump's first term.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration scholar at Cornell Law School, told the BBC, "The first Trump administration tightened H-1B visas by increasing rejection rates and slowing down processing, making it difficult for people to get visas in a timely fashion. It's unclear if that would happen again in a second Trump administration."

"Some people, like Elon Musk, want to keep the H-1B visa, while other officials in the new administration want to restrict all immigration, including H-1B visas. It's too early to tell which side will prevail."

Indians have a long relationship with the H-1B visa. The author of the book, "The Other One Percent," which studies Indian Americans, argues that the program is also responsible for "the rise of Indian Americans to become the most educated and highest earning group in the US, whether immigrant or native born."

US researchers Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur and Nirvikar Singh note that new Indian immigrants speak different languages and live in different areas than earlier migrants. There is an increase in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu speakers, and the Indian American community has shifted from New York and Michigan to larger concentrations in California and New Jersey. The tech visa program has helped create "a new map of Indian Americans."

Mr. Chauhan says the biggest draw of the H-1B visa is the opportunity to earn higher salaries. The US offers higher pay, and for the first person in a family to gain professional qualifications, earning that much money can be life-changing. “The fascination with the H-1B is directly related to the wage disparity between India and the US for the same engineering roles,” he says.

But not everyone is happy with the program. For many, the H-1B program is the ideal path to permanent residency, or a US green card. While the H-1B itself is a temporary work visa, it allows visa holders to live and work in the US for up to six years. During this time, many H-1B holders apply for green cards through employment-based immigration categories, often sponsored by their employers. This takes time.

There are currently over one million Indians, including family members, waiting in the employment-based green card categories. "Getting a green card means an endless wait of 20-30 years," says Atul Agarwal, who runs a company in India that uses AI to help find visa options for education and work globally.

Mr. Agarwal moved to the US after graduating in 2017 and worked for a software company for a few years. He said getting an H-1B visa was relatively straightforward but then seemed to “hit a dead end.” He returned to India.

“It's a precarious situation. Your employer has to sponsor you, and because the path to a green card is so long, you are basically tied to them. If you lose your job, you only have 60 days to find a new one. Everyone who goes to the US on their own merit should have a path to a green card in three to five years.”

This may be one reason why the visa program has become entangled with immigration issues. Shivendra Singh, vice president of global trade development at Nasscom, an Indian tech industry trade group, told the BBC: “The H-1B is a high-skilled worker mobility visa. It is not an immigration visa. But it gets conflated with immigration and illegal immigration and becomes a sensitive issue.”

Many in the US believe the H-1B visa program is flawed. They cite widespread fraud and abuse, particularly by major Indian IT companies, which are the largest recipients of these visas. In October, a US court ruled that Cognizant discriminated against more than 2,000 non-Indian employees between 2013 and 2022, although the company plans to appeal. Last week, Farah Stockman of the New York Times wrote that “for more than a decade, Americans working in the US tech industry have been systematically laid off and replaced by cheaper H-1B visa holders.”

Mr. Singh of Nasscom argues that H-1B visa workers are not undervalued because employers must pay them the prevailing or actual wage, which is higher than comparable US workers in the region. Companies also invest tens of thousands of dollars in legal and government fees for these expensive visas.

Furthermore, it is not a one-way flow: according to Mr. Singh, Indian tech giants have hired and supported nearly 600,000 US workers and spent over $1 billion on skills enhancement for nearly three million students at 130 US universities. The Indian tech industry prioritizes hiring US workers, and they only bring in H-1B visa employees when they cannot find local people with the required skills.

As Mr. Trump prepares to take office later this month, India is working to ensure the H-1B visa program remains secure. Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters last week: "We have a strong and growing economic and technological partnership between our two countries, and the movement of tech professionals is an important part of this relationship."

So what should students who aspire to work in the US do? Mr. Yale-Loehr says: "Any changes to US immigration policy take time to implement. Students should choose the university that's best for them, wherever that may be. With good immigration advice, they will be able to figure out what to do."

For now, despite the political turbulence in the US, Indian interest in the H-1B visa remains strong, and students are determined to pursue the American dream.