The Curse of the HIB Visa

A bruised Indian diaspora watches opportunity go glimmering

By: Nirupama Subramaniam

In February, when US President Donald Trump acted on his threat, or promise, to send back undocumented immigrants, more than 300 Indians were handcuffed, shackled, and flown back home in military aircraft.

The visuals shocked India, but the Narendra Modi government brushed off the inhumane treatment meted out to its citizens, saying “handcuffing illegals was US policy.” Mostly from Punjab, these Indian citizens had wanted to escape their impoverished conditions back home but didn’t have the qualifications to take the legal route. But they got no sympathy from Delhi.

The message was clear: If an Indian had been caught for breaking the law to enter the US, the Modi government was not going to expend diplomatic energy to make the case that “illegal” Indian blue-collar workers should be treated better while being deported. Bigger things were at stake. Getting the Trump administration to agree to a deal on expanding the H-IB visa program was far more important.

Eight months later, it seems the Trump administration and the MAGA crowd are not interested in the difference that the Modi government wants to make between its poor citizens and the better-heeled. They would rather not have any “job-stealing” Indians coming in, educated or not. India is now staring at a situation in which the much-coveted H-IB visa may no longer be accessible to even its most affluent and qualified citizens.

Still putting itself together after the shock of a 50 percent tariff to get back into trade talks with the US, the Modi government hardly expected President Trump to firebomb India’s most high-value export – its “techies” – by charging a one-time fee of US$100,000 for new H-IB visas.

For more than a quarter century, if not longer, the H-IB visa program has been the Indian middle-class’ true north, its route to the American dream, an escape to a better life. Send the kids to engineering schools, next stop Silicon Valley.

Year after year, American and Indian IT companies with projects in the US snapped up Indians with STEM qualifications from Indian or US universities. A staggering 71 percent of H-IB visas issued in 2024 went to Indians. The number of visas is capped at 850,000 each year. But the demand grew over the years. In 2020, more than 260,000 hopefuls applied for the visas. In 2023, the number of applications peaked at more than 759,000. This year, 344,000 applicants have registered. A lottery picks the winners. H-IB visa holders are now said to constitute 65 percent of the tech workforce, up from 32 percent in 2003.

In the land of arranged marriages, the possessor of an H-IB visa rated high in the “wanted grooms” sections of the classified columns in Indian newspapers. Spouses eagerly flew to their H-IB husbands. The Obama administration eased the visa conditions to permit the spouses to work too. They had children, applied for green cards, and waited to become American citizens.

Each year, as the North American winter eased, the flights out to the US from India told the story of the great H-1B migration. Aging couples, many of them in wheelchairs, are heading to months of grandparenting and babysitting duties, while their sons and daughters-in-law go to work. And flights into India were packed, at all times, with young couples and infants, travelling back to visit their parents.

Some of the average annual techie salaries came to India as remittances. Though only a small percentage of India’s foreign remittances, this money trickled into the economy by improving the purchasing power of extended families back here. Young families sent home money to retired parents, paid their medical bills, and bought homes in India even while aspiring to US citizenship.

A month before Trump’s inauguration, India watched with growing unease as his base was divided over the HIB visa program, the split playing out publicly on X with nasty exchanges. Members of Trump’s team such as Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, championed the importance of the HIB workers to American industry, saying these immigrants were necessary because “American culture” prioritized “the prom queen over the maths Olympiad.”

The anti-immigration MAGA sections snarled back at how India’s “tech-coolies” were undercutting salaries and doing Americans out of jobs. The Modi government was encouraged that, at the time, Trump said he had “always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of them.”

But Trump’s professed fondness for the HIB did not last. The massive one-time fee, equivalent to nearly 9 million Indian rupees, imposed by executive decree, for new visas (renewals are exempt), has crushed the dreams of many young Indians and their families. Those already in America are in a panic about their future in the US. It remains unclear if companies in either country are prepared to foot a hundred million dollars even for the best graduates, where they were paying just over US$1,500 for each visa.

The language used in the White House statement reflected MAGA’s concerns, citing “abuse” of the system to undercut American wages by outsourcing IT jobs to outsiders willing to sign on cheaply.

In February 2025, when Modi visited Trump at the White House, a joint statement of the meeting between the “old friends, who had campaigned for each other in 2020, mentioned defense, space, and tech partnerships, but was quiet on the HIB program. That should have raised red flags, but the meeting was hailed in India as a triumph of Modi’s diplomacy, lulling Indians into complacency that the personal bond between the two leaders would resolve all obstacles.

Then came the terrorist attack in Kashmir, India’s retaliatory strikes inside Pakistan, the four-day hostilities between the two countries, and Trump’s claim that he mediated the ceasefire. Since 1972, Indian governments, irrespective of party, have held firmly the position that all India-Pakistan problems shall be resolved bilaterally. Pakistan has always sought international involvement, believing it helped to strengthen its case.

The Modi government denied Trump’s role. India-US relations began unspooling. Trade talks failed, and Trump announced first a 25 percent tariff on Indian imports, then another 25 percent for buying Russian oil, placing India in the same category as Brazil. The HIB visa fee piled the misery on New Delhi.

The movers and shakers in the vast Indian diaspora in the US, including in the tech industry, who Modi held up as his “unofficial ambassadors” both in their adopted country and back in India, had no words of comfort to offer.

In its official reaction, the Indian government warned of “humanitarian consequences” and “disruptions” to families. Modi’s response has been to urge self-reliance. “India’s biggest enemy is its dependence on other countries,” he said in his first response. He asked Indians to start buying Indian and “go vocal for local.”

While it gave Modi another reason to bash the opposition Congress Party, which led the country for decades after India’s independence, for not developing the Indian industry enough, even Modi’s supporters remain unconvinced about his atmanirbharta or self-reliance pitch.

Skepticism is widespread about Indian political will and the risk-averse industry’s willingness to make the massive financial infusions required to create an ecosystem in which Indian tech startups can flourish and rival those abroad. China’s success with AI has only underlined how far India lags behind.

A former policy czar in Modi’s government dared to predict that Trump’s move to shut the door on tech immigrants would “choke US innovation and turbocharge India’s.” His post on X that “by slamming the door on global talent, America pushes the next wave of labs, patents, innovations and startups to Bangalore and Hyderabad, Pune and Gurgaon” drew snarky retorts.

For now, it is the human face of the problem that confronts Modi – the disappointment of those who believed that their education and qualifications would make them eligible for the American Dream, but now find the door slammed shut.

Many had believed in the rhetoric of a “special relationship” between Trump and Modi. Trump’s racist instincts and his anti-Muslim statements mirrored the majoritarian values of many Hindu Indians. Hindu priests in India prayed for Trump’s victory. Anecdotal evidence suggests that sections of Indian American citizenry in the US voted for Trump. The letdown has been all the greater.