Clipped from: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/editorial/visa-woes/article70446582.ece
H-1B squeeze will hurt students, professionals hard
The US is tigetining the screws on hiring of foreign professional | Photo Credit: subodhsathe
The US government is reshaping the H-1B visa programme by replacing its long-standing lottery system with a wage-based allocation model to attract highly specialised, high-paying talent while reducing dependence on mass recruitment. The change is likely to make it harder for entry-level professionals and volume-driven employers to secure visas. The Department of Homeland Security has announced amendments to the regulations governing the H-1B selection process so that visas are prioritised for higher-skilled and higher-paid “aliens”, ostensibly to protect the wages, working conditions and job opportunities of American workers. In practice, this shifts power decisively towards large employers and senior-level professionals.
This regulatory overhaul arrives on the heels of another disruptive change: the expansion of social-media vetting to all H-1B visa applicants. Adding to the squeeze is a steep one-time fee of $100,000 for first-time H-1B applications. Together, these measures signal, if there were any doubts, that the US is no longer rolling out the red carpet for immigrant professionals, particularly engineers and technology workers. The most immediate shock will be felt by Indian students enrolled in American universities. Every year, thousands take on heavy education loans in the expectation of securing a job at a US technology firm after graduation. That journey, via Optional Practical Training and ultimately an H-1B role, has long provided the economic logic for studying in America. Now the pathway is narrower, more expensive and less predictable.
Even for students graduating from Indian engineering colleges, the US stood unrivalled as the dream destination, not merely for higher salaries and a better quality of life, but for access to deep pools of venture capital, world-class research ecosystems and a culture of risk-taking. Working in India, by contrast, has never seemed an equal alternative. Weak infrastructure, a shallow pipeline of frontier-technology roles and relatively modest research ambitions limit opportunities. Even in the R&D centres of MNCs, the work assigned in India is often incremental rather than path-breaking. Yet this new reality must be faced. India’s gross expenditure on R&D remains stuck at about 0.64 per cent of GDP, far below most global peers. India’s top IT services firms spend only 0.4–1.3 per cent of revenue on research, a ratio that has barely shifted in years. This is unsustainable for a nation that aspires to technological leadership.
However, Indian IT firms will be partly insulated from these policy shifts, having already moved towards greater local hiring in the US. At the same time, big technology firms such as Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Google, which have relied heavily on Indian talent through the H-1B route over the past decade and a half, are now committing multi-billion-dollar investments to India. This will undoubtedly open more doors for Indian professionals, but the domestic ecosystem must strengthen rapidly to keep pace.
Published on December 28, 2025
aniltikotekar4sme.com 