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On Friday, the Trump administration issued what may end up being the biggest federal policy change to impact South Asian American communities in a generation.
The fee for the H-1B visa was hiked from a few thousand dollars to $100,000 — effectively making it a far more difficult path to justify or simply cost-prohibitive for some employers.
The impact on the Indian American community can’t be overstated:
That 10%, or 1 in 10, figure doesn’t even include the countless South Asian Americans who have since attained citizenship. Since 1990, the H-1B visa has been the pathway for thousands of South Asian Americans, particularly from India, to build a life in the United States.
After Friday’s proclamation, it sowed mass confusion across the U.S., without clear initial details on how it would all work. WhatsApp groups exploded. Emails flowed frantically. Lawyers were called. Some employers told current H-1B employees traveling abroad to rush back to the United States within 24 hours. As the news broke, an announcement on board an Emirates flight about to take off from San Francisco said people could de-board if they needed to:
As panic continued this weekend, the White House eventually made clarifications that the $100K fee only applies to new applicants, including for the upcoming H-1B lottery cycle.
With little advance warning, the changes took effect on Sunday.
Who does this impact?
The technology industry, of course, will be hit hard. According to U.S. government data, here are the top firms that have had approved H-1B applications between 2021 – 2025:
The New York Times reports there were at least 300,000 Indians working in the U.S. on H-1B visas in 2024. “They, along with their spouses and children, made up about a tenth of all Indian-origin people who reside in the country legally.”
Some of the biggest companies in the United States have been run by someone who grew up in India, immigrated with a specialized visa and proved their worth by rising to a top job in the Fortune 500.
Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, moved to the United States on the H-1B visa program, as did Indra Nooyi, who ran PepsiCo from 2006 to 2018.
While most news coverage has focused on the obvious impact on the tech sector, there’s also a sizable H-1B population in the medical community. As the United States continues to face a growing doctor and nurse shortage, this could add salt to that wound, too.
The White House said Monday that doctors might be exempt from the fee.
American universities, already under intense federal pressures and budget cuts, will also be impacted, influencing academic appointments.
Does the U.S. actually have enough homegrown talent to fill near-term and longer-term high-skilled roles?
That’s the big question. (And the answer is likely, no — at least not right now.)
As the U.S. tries to win the AI race, attracting top talent from a global pool could be that much more challenging. Early in the second Trump presidency, the debate over the value of skilled immigration caused fractures, with MAGA hardliners pitted against other MAGA supporters like Elon Musk, a former H-1B visa holder himself.
Of course, the H-1B program has not been perfect, including some cases of fraud and other allegations of corporate misuse.
The familial impact?
In India’s first official response to Trump’s announcement, the Ministry of External Affairs said it believes that “this measure is likely to have humanitarian consequences by way of the disruption caused for families.” We’ll likely know more in the coming weeks and months as to how it might change the trajectory of people’s lives.
For years now, Pew Research Center data has indicated that Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the United States — and Indian populations among the fastest. With a primary cause of that growth — immigration — further curbed, we’ll have to see the long-term implications of this change on South Asian communities’ population numbers.
The global impact?
After years of globalization, it’s clear that U.S. tariffs and now this visa blow is pushing India further inward. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a speech over the weekend that Indians in his country should stop buying foreign goods and instead buy local products.
“A lot of products we use daily are foreign made, we just don’t know … we will have to get rid of them,” Modi said in an address to the nation ahead of Monday’s implementation of widespread consumer tax cuts.
“We should buy products that are made in India,” he added, without naming any country.
Some are already speculating whether these changes might eventually fuel a sort of reverse brain drain, that the brilliant minds who would normally contribute in America might stay in India instead. But it’s also likely that companies in Canada, Australia and the U.K. will seize on this moment and recruit that top talent instead.
China, the second-highest country where H-1Bs come from, has already reportedly made hints by saying it “welcomes outstanding talents” from around the world.
The U.S. political impact?
To the Indian Americans who voted for Trump in larger numbers in 2024 than before, this moment could be a test of their support — that the current administration is taking serious action on legal immigration that directly impacts their own families and people they know to a larger scale.
So what now?
Like many policy changes announced in recent months, we’ll have to see how it actually plays out beyond the initial shock. There are likely court battles that could change the course as well.
But whatever happens, this could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back: Between sweeping Indian tariffs (still 50% as of today) and a whiplash of visa changes for the diaspora, this blow may leave a deep scar on a decades-long relationship of U.S.-India commerce and talent flow.
This article was first published on redwhiteandbrown.