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AFPAshish Chauhan dreams of doing an MBA at an American university next year, a goal he describes as “imprinted in his brain”.
The 29-year-old financial professional from India (name changed on request) hopes to eventually work in the US, but now says she feels conflicted immigration row It was sparked by supporters of President-elect Donald Trump over a longstanding US visa program.
The H-1B visa program, which brings skilled foreign workers to the U.S., faces criticism for draining the American workforce but is praised for attracting global talent. The president-elect, once a critic, now supports the 34-year-old program, which tech billionaire Elon Musk champions as key to securing top engineering talent.
Indian nationals like Mr. Chauhan dominate the program, receiving 72% of H-1B visas, followed by Chinese nationals at 12%. The majority of H-1B visa holders worked in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, with 65% in computer-related jobs in 2023. The average annual salary was $118,000 (£94,000).
Concerns about H-1B visas are tied to broader immigration debates.
A Pew Research report shows that US immigration 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 since 1910. Indians are the second largest immigrant group in the US – after Mexicans. Many Americans fear that this surge in immigration could hurt job opportunities or hinder assimilation.
India has also overtaken China as the top source of international students, with a record 331,602 Indian students in the US in 2023-2024, according to the latest. Open Doors Report About the International Educational Exchange. Most rely on loans, and visa freezes can destroy family finances.
“My concern is that this (resistance to H-1B visas) will also incite hostility against the Indians living there. But I can’t park my ambitions, put my life on hold and wait for the volatility to subside, as it has been for years,” says Mr. Chauhan.
Efforts to curtail the H-1B program peaked during Trump’s first term, when he signed an order in 2017 to investigate applications and detect fraud. Rejection rates rose to 24% in 2018, compared to 5-8% for President Barack Obama and 2-4% for President Joe Biden. The total number of H-1B applicants approved under Biden was similar to Trump’s first term.
“The first Trump administration tightened H-1B visas by increasing denial rates and slowing processing times, making it harder for people to get visas on time. It’s unclear if that will happen again in the second Trump administration,” Stephen Yale-Loehr. An immigration expert at Cornell Law School told the BBC.
“Some people like Elon Musk want to preserve H-1B visas, and other officials in the new administration want to limit all immigration, including H-1B. It’s too early to tell which side will prevail.”
Indians have a long relationship with the H-1B visa. The program is also “the reason Indian-Americans have risen to become the highest-educated and highest-income group in the U.S., immigrant or native,” say the authors of The Other One Percent, a study on American Indians.
US researchers Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur and Nirvikar Singh noted that the new Indian immigrants spoke different languages and lived in different areas than earlier arrivals. Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu speakers proliferated, and Indian-American communities shifted from New York and Michigan to large clusters in California and New Jersey. The skilled visa program helped create a “new Indian-American map.”
The biggest draw of H-1B visas is the opportunity to earn significantly higher wages, according to Mr. Chauhan. The US offers higher wages, and for someone who is the first in their family to gain professional qualifications, earning that much can be life-changing. “The fascination with H-1Bs is directly related to the wage 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 pathway to permanent residency or a US green card. While the H-1B itself is a temporary work visa, the visa allows them to live and work in the US for up to six years. During this time, H-1B holders apply for a green card through employment-based immigration categories, usually sponsored by their employers. This takes time.
More than a million Indians, including dependents, are waiting for employment-based green card categories. “Getting a green card means signing up for an endless 20-30 year wait,” says Atal Agarwal, who runs a company in India that uses AI to help find visa options for education and work.
Mr. Agarwal moved to the US after graduation in 2017 and worked for a software company for a few years. He says getting the H-1B visa was relatively easy, but then it seemed to hit a “dead end.” He returned to India.
“It’s a precarious situation. Your employer has to protect you and because the path to getting a green card is so long, you’re basically tied to them. If you lose your job, you only have 60 days to find a new one. Every person who goes to the US on the merits gets a green card within three to five years. should be the way to get green.”
This may be one reason why the visa program has been linked to immigration. “H-1B is a mobility visa for highly skilled workers. It is not an immigration visa. But it overlaps with immigration and illegal immigration and becomes a sensitive issue,” Shivendra Singh, vice president of global trade development at Nasscom. India’s technology industry trade group told the BBC.
Many in the US believe that the H-1B visa program is flawed. They cite fraud and abuse, especially by the large Indian IT companies that are the main recipients of these visas. In October, a US court found Cognizant Guilty of discriminating against over 2,000 non-Indian workers Between 2013 and 2022, although the company plans to appeal. Last week, Farah Stockman of the New York Times he wrote “For more than a decade, Americans working in the tech industry have been systematically fired and replaced by cheaper H-1B visas.”
Nasscom’s Mr. Singh says H-1B visa workers are not underpaid because employers must pay them above the prevailing or actual wages of comparable US workers in the field. Companies invest tens of thousands of dollars in legal and government fees for these expensive visas.
And it hasn’t been a one-way traffic: India’s tech giants have hired and supported nearly 600,000 American workers and spent more than $1 billion to improve nearly three million students at 130 U.S. universities, according to Mr. Singh. India’s tech industry has prioritized hiring US workers and brings in workers on H-1B visas only when they can’t find locals with the skills they need, he said.
India is working to ensure that the H-1B visa program remains secure as Trump prepares to take office this month. “Our countries share a strong and growing economic and technological partnership, and the mobility of skilled professionals is a key component of this relationship,” Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal told reporters last week.
So what should students looking for a job in the US do? “Any immigration change in the US will take time to happen. Students should choose the best college for them, no matter where it is. With good immigration advice, they will know what to do,” says Mr. Yale-Loehr.
For now, despite the political turmoil in the US, Indians remain steadfast in their interest in H-1B visas, with students determined to pursue the American dream.
