Agence France-PresseAshish Chauhan dreams of obtaining a master's degree in business administration from an American university next year, a goal he describes as “engraved in his brain.”
The 29-year-old Indian financial expert (whose name has been changed upon request) hopes to eventually work in the United States, but says he now feels conflicted amid… Immigration class Raised by supporters of President-elect Donald Trump over the long-standing US visa program.
The H-1B visa program, which brings skilled foreign workers to the United States, faces criticism because it reduces the number of American workers, but is praised because it attracts global talent. Now the president-elect, once a critic, is backing the 34-year-old program, while tech billionaire Elon Musk defends it as key to securing top engineering talent.
The program is dominated by Indian nationals like Chouhan, receiving 72% of H-1B visas, followed by 12% for Chinese nationals. The majority of H-1B visa holders worked in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, with 65% in computer-related jobs, in 2023. Their average annual salary was $118,000 (£94,000).
Concerns about H-1B visas are linked to broader debates about immigration.
A Pew Research Report It shows that immigration to the United States rose by 1.6 million in 2023, the largest increase in more than 20 years. Immigrants now make up more than 14% of the population – the highest percentage since 1910. Indians constitute the second largest immigrant group – after Mexicans – in the United States. Many Americans fear that this increase in immigration will hurt job prospects or hinder assimilation.
India has also surpassed China as the leading source of international students, with the number of Indian students in the US reaching 331,602 in 2023-24, according to the latest data. Open Doors Report About international educational exchange. Most of them rely on loans, and any visa freeze could devastate a family's finances.
“What worries me is that this (resistance to H-1B visas) could also spark hostility towards Indians living there. But I cannot stop my ambitions, put my life on hold and wait for the volatility to subside because it has been like this.” For years now,” says Mr. Chauhan.
Efforts to restrict the H-1B program peaked during Trump's first term, when he signed a 2017 order to increase application scrutiny and fraud detection. Disapproval rates rose to 24% in 2018, compared to 5-8% under President Barack Obama and 2-4% under President Joe Biden. The total number of approved H-1B visa applicants under Biden has remained similar to Trump's first term.
“The first Trump administration tightened H-1B visas by increasing denial rates and slowing processing times, making it difficult for people to get visas in a timely manner. It is unclear whether that will happen again in the second Trump administration,” Steven Yale Lohr An immigration researcher at Cornell Law School told the BBC:
“Some people like Elon Musk want to preserve H-1B visas, while other officials in the new administration want to restrict all forms of immigration, including H-1B visas. It is too early to know which side will prevail.”
Indians have a long relationship with the H-1B visa. This program is also the reason why Indian Americans “have risen to the highest-educated and highest-income groups, whether immigrants or U.S. citizens,” say the authors of “The Other One Percent,” a study of Indians in America.
US-based researchers Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapoor and Nirvikar Singh point out that recent Indian immigrants speak different languages and live in different areas than previous arrivals. The number of speakers of Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu increased, and American Indian communities moved from New York and Michigan to larger groups in California and New Jersey. The Skilled Worker Visa Program helped create a “new map for American Indians.”
The biggest draw to H-1B visas is the opportunity for much higher salaries, according to Mr. Chauhan. The US offers higher wages, and for someone who is the first in their family to gain professional qualifications, earning this much money can be life-changing. “The fascination with the H-1B is directly related to the pay gap 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 an aspirational path to permanent residency or a U.S. green card. While the H-1B itself is a temporary work visa, it allows visa holders to live and work in the United States for up to six years. During this time, many H-1B holders apply for green cards through employment-based immigration categories, which are usually sponsored by employers. This takes time.
More than one million Indians, including dependents, are currently waiting in employment-based green card categories. “Getting a green card means signing up for an endless wait of 20 to 30 years,” says Atal Agarwal, who runs a company in India that uses artificial intelligence to help find visa options globally for education and jobs.
Mr. Agarwal moved to the US after graduating in 2017 and worked at a software company for a few years. Obtaining an H-1B visa was fairly easy, he says, but then it seemed like he “hit a dead end.” He returned to India.
“It's a precarious situation. Your employer has to sponsor you, and since the road to a green card is so long, you're essentially tied to it. If you lose your job, you only have 60 days to find a new one. Everyone and everyone will go to the United States on a Merit must be on track to obtain a green card within three to five years.
This may be one of the reasons why the visa program is linked to immigration. “The H-1B is a visa that moves highly skilled workers. It's not an immigrant visa. But it collides with immigration and illegal immigration and becomes a sensitive issue,” said Shivendra Singh, vice president of global trade development at Nasscom, a leading global trade development company. The Indian technology industry trade group told the BBC.
Many in the United States believe that the H-1B visa program is flawed. They point to widespread fraud and abuse, especially by major Indian IT companies that are among the biggest beneficiaries of these visas. In October, a US court found that Cognizant Guilty of discrimination 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 books “For more than a decade, Americans working in the technology industry have been systematically laid off and replaced with cheaper H-1B visa holders.”
Nasscom's Chowdhury says H-1B visa workers are not underpaid, as their average wages are more than double their average wages in the United States. Companies also invest tens of thousands of dollars in legal and government fees for these expensive visas.
Nor has it been a one-way street: Indian tech giants have hired and supported nearly 600,000 American workers and spent more than $1 billion improving the skills of nearly three million students at 130 American colleges, according to Singh. He said the Indian tech industry has prioritized hiring American workers and only brings in employees on H-1B visas when they can't find locals with the skills they need.
India is working to ensure the H-1B visa program remains secure as Trump prepares to take office later this month. “Our two countries share a strong and growing economic and technological partnership, and the mobility of skilled professionals is a vital component of this relationship,” Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal told reporters last week.
So, what should students aspiring to get jobs in the United States do? “Any immigration changes in the United States will take time to implement,” Yale-Lohr says. “Students should choose the best college for them, wherever that may be. With good immigration advice, they will be able to know what to do.”
For now, despite the political turmoil in the US, Indian interest in H-1B visas remains steady, with students determined to chase the American dream.
