Panic, confusion and then a hasty White House climbdown – it was a weekend of whiplash for hundreds of thousands of Indians on H-1B visas.<\/p>\n
On Friday, US President Donald Trump stunned the tech world by announcing an up to 50-fold hike in the cost of skilled worker permits, external<\/a> – to $100,000. Chaos followed: Silicon Valley firms urged staff not to travel outside the country, overseas workers scrambled for flights<\/a>, and immigration lawyers worked overtime to decode the order.<\/p>\n By Saturday, the White House sought to calm the storm, clarifying, external<\/a> that the fee applied only to new applicants and was a one-off. Yet, the long-standing H-1B programme – criticised for undercutting American workers but praised for attracting global talent – still faces an uncertain future.<\/p>\n Even with the tweak, the policy effectively shutters the H-1B pipeline that, for three decades, powered the American dream for millions of Indians and, more importantly, supplied the lifeblood of talent to US industries.<\/p>\n That pipeline reshaped both countries. For India, the H-1B became a vehicle of aspiration: small-town coders turned dollar earners, families vaulted into the middle class, and entire industries – from airlines to real estate – catered to a new class of globe-trotting Indians.<\/p>\n For the US, it meant an infusion of talent that filled labs, classrooms, hospitals and start-ups. Today, Indian-origin executives run Google, Microsoft and IBM, and Indian doctors make up nearly 6% of the US physician workforce.<\/p>\n Indians dominate the H-1B programme, making up more than 70% of the recipients in recent years. (China was the second-largest source, making up about 12% of beneficiaries.)<\/p>\n In tech, their presence is even starker: a Freedom of Information Act request in 2015 showed over 80% of “computer” jobs went to Indian nationals, external<\/a> – a share industry insiders say hasn’t shifted much.<\/p>\n The medical sector underlines the stakes. In 2023, more than 8,200 H-1Bs were approved to work in general medicine and surgical hospitals., external<\/a> <\/p>\n