$100k mistake that hands India the future

THE US has announced a $100,000 fee on every H-IB visa application. President Donald Trump believes this will protect American workers. What it will actually do is slam the door on the doctors, scientists, and engineers who built America’s greatest industries. It is the immigration equivalent of his tariffs—loud, clumsy, and self-defeating. The outcome will be a weaker United States and a stronger India.

- Vivek Wadhwa

I have never defended the H-IB system. It has long been abused by third-tier outsourcing companies that treat it as a lottery to be gamed. They flood the system with applications, bring in workers by the planeload, and then rent them out at low wages. American corporations have been complicit, using the program to create a low-paid and captive workforce. Because of the decades-long green card backlog, these workers cannot change jobs or start companies. They wait in line while their employers hold the power. It is a modern form of indentured servitude.

Trump's new fee one-ups his mindless tariffs. Instead of fixing the abuses, raising wages, or clearing the backlog, he is making the program prohibitively expensive for everyone. The true victims will be hospitals that need doctors, universities that depend on international faculty, startups that rely on global talent, and laboratories that thrive on collaboration. America’s strength has always come from immigrants. One third of Nobel Prize winners in science were born abroad. More than half of Silicon Valley's startups were founded by immigrants. They now lead not only technology firms in the Valley but companies across the American economy.