Trump’s H-1B visa fee hike: the death of onsite
When I began reporting on Indian IT in 2000, just after the Y2K scare, the stories I heard were about the ‘onsite dream’ – an engineer sent to Chicago or San Jose, an H-1B visa that bought a house in Chennai or cleared family debts in Kanpur. Entire families rose into the middle class because one engineer went abroad. I sat in those homes. I saw the first cars in their driveways, the relief of loans paid off, the belief that a promising future had opened up. Many of today’s startup founders — from Girish Mathrubootham to Mukesh Bansal — lived through those years.
For a generation of Indian engineers, the H-1B was not just a visa — it was a portal to the middle class. Families bought homes, paid off debts, and saw their children move upward because one member worked onsite in America. That portal is now gone. Trump’s $100,000 fee signals the end of the onsite era, and with it, the end of an idea: that global talent could move freely to where it was needed. The question is what replaces it: a retreat, or a redirection of ambition and money.
Over much of my career I heard executives at GE, Microsoft and Walmart explain why it was nearly impossible to find enough engineering talent in the US at the time. Indian engineers were not a stop-gap; they were the only option. Two decades later, I have to assume America is now producing millions of engineers willing to do these jobs locally — quite a reversal.
Going, going, gone
The Indian American Dream had already been dying as Trump’s protectionism hardened. On 20 September, it was formally buried when Trump signed a proclamation imposing a $100,000 annual fee on every H-1B visa. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said, “A hundred-thousand dollars a year for H-1B visas, and all the big companies are on board.” Whether or not this survives a legal challenge — experts note the US President has no authority to impose fees beyond cost recovery — the message is blunt. Washington has chosen to tax the very talent it cannot replace.
The dependence is clear from the numbers. According to a Reuters article, more than 70% of H-1B beneficiaries come from India. Amazon secured more than 12,000 approvals in the first half of 2025, and Microsoft and Meta more than 5,000 each. Elon Musk told The New York Times in January that such expertise “does not exist in America in sufficient quantity”.
Yet the White House now demands companies train local graduates while charging $100,000 a head from the same pipeline that keeps its tech economy running. Analysts quoted by Reuters warned the US risked “taxing away its innovation edge, trading dynamism for short-sighted protectionism”.
The tide is turning
A reversal, however, has been underway for some time. The brightest Indian engineers no longer see onsite as the prize. They return home to comparable salaries and greater responsibility. The GCC boom has pulled thousands of high-value jobs into India. Walmart, Boeing, GE, and JP Morgan — alongside Microsoft, Amazon, and Google — now employ armies of Indian engineers out of Bengaluru and Pune, effectively running second headquarters. They save millions each year and build global products out of India. Yet these same firms remain silent while Washington taxes the very workforce they depend on.
For Indian engineers, the symbolism stings. A $100,000 fee is not just another policy; it makes their ambition unaffordable. At home they pay out of their own pockets to stay up to date on AI. They will now have to pay again abroad, to companies that cannot function without them.
Some are already calling time on the dream. On LinkedIn, Chaitanya Chokkareddy, CTO of Ozonetel, wrote: “Now that the H-1B dream is over, it basically means studying in the US taking huge loans is not worth it. Instead of giving a US university $250,000, commit to invest that amount in your kid’s startup. If you do that, I will commit to mentor your kid’s startup. For free. No strings attached.” In other words: redirect your ambition and money to build at home.
For Indian IT firms, this is another penalty layered over the proposed HIRE Act, floated earlier this month. Washington is taxing services abroad and workers at home.
How India can fight back
India’s deeper problem is that it still undervalues its invisible exports. Engineers in GCCs are booked at cost+5% when fair value would be cost+50%. American platforms — Meta, Google, Instagram, OpenAI — operate freely in India, training their AI models on the world’s largest user base. India is their biggest market by users, if not by revenue. The value they draw — training data today, exponential market potential tomorrow — is immense. Yet India charges nothing for this access.
The IT industry didn’t just generate revenue – it built India’s middle class. It gave families their first homes, their first cars, their first passports. To keep undervaluing it now is to waste the foundation of modern India. Onsite is over. Washington has shut the door. If America insists on pricing Indian talent at $100,000 a year, New Delhi must stop giving away engineers, markets, and user data for free. If America can set the price of Indian talent, India can set the price of American profits here.
And American corporations, from Silicon Valley to Bentonville, must admit what they know privately: this is their crisis too.
Post Comment