Why the H-1B Visa Backlash Is a Wake-Up Call for the Indian Diaspora

The new political climate sweeping the West suggests they will be as much a target for populists and ethno-nationalists as other immigrant communities.

- Mihir Sharma

Indians have long been proud of what they see as their outperformance in the information technology sector.

Companies such as Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services dominate IT-enabled services, bringing home billions of dollars in profits. US technology giants including Alphabet, Microsoft, and IBM have Indian-origin CEOs. India-trained engineers labor in the trenches of Silicon Valley and invisibly help Western companies adapt to the digital age.

It turns out that others have noticed this as well, and they are not happy. Over the past fortnight, Indians have watched aghast as victorious Republicans in the US have torn into each other over the future of H-1B visas.

The temporary work permits are the only real way to employ Indian immigrants in the US, since national caps make it nearly impossible for them to get a green card. What quickly became clear was that the intra-GOP argument had less to do with fixing the H-1B system than whether all these Indian engineers were welcome in the first place. Some on the left, like Senator Bernie Sanders, joined in the right's chorus, deriding H-1B recipients as "low-wage indentured servants".