H-1B visa row: MEA provides cold comfort, stakeholders in limbo

The exact number of Indians on H1B/H4 visas stranded in India on Saturday night is not known. Many of them would have come on vacation, to renew their visas, in order to meet old and ailing parents, to attend a wedding in the family or to attend festivals starting with Durga Puja beginning on 28 September in Bengal.

The US President’s executive order issued on Friday said if they don’t return to US by 20 September midnight, they will either be refused entry back into the United States or their employers agree to shell out $100,000 (around Rs 88 lakh) for each of them.

Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidency in January 2025, they have dreaded this moment. The MAGA playbook was explicit and it had called for doing away with the H-1B visas and send the immigrants home.

Many of them stayed back in the United States, fearful that they would not be allowed to return once they left. That worst nightmare for many of them has returned to haunt them.

It is possible that many of them will retain their job but move to Canada or Mexico in order to continue. It is also possible that some of them would return to India and will be allowed to work remotely from home. Some may also get employment in other countries in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

All of them would be hoping that the Indian government and PM Modi, who has invested so much in cultivating a ‘personal relationship’ with the US President, will be able to produce a rabbit out of their hat and earn them a reprieve or some breathing time.

The statement issued by the MEA spokesperson on Saturday evening, however, provided cold comfort. The statement acknowledged that the government has ‘seen reports’ on the ‘proposed restrictions’ on the H-1B visa programme’; it went on to add that the ‘full implications’ were being studied.

It also noted that the measures announced would have ‘humanitarian consequences’. It ends by hoping that the ‘US authorities’ would address the impact of disruptions on families.

In the last four years, more than 78 p.c. of the top paid H-1B applicants (whose proposed wage rate exceeded $1 million per year) were from India. Among the Indians whose wage rate exceeded $1 million per year, over 25 p.c. were women. Also, over 65 p.c. of these high-paid H-1B applicants from India were sponsored by relatively smaller companies in the US.

According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Amazon had 10,044 workers using H-1B visas as of June, 2025. Coming in at the second spot was TCS with 5,505 H-1B visas approved. Other top beneficiaries include Microsoft (5,189), Meta (5,123), Apple (4,202), Google (4,181), Deloitte (2,353), Infosys (2,004), Wipro (1,523) and Tech Mahindra Americas (951).

Indians are the biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B visa. Between October 2022 and September 2023, 72 per cent of the nearly 4 lakh visas issued under the H-1B programme went to Indian nationals.

During the same period, the top four Indian IT majors with a presence in the US— Infosys, TCS, HCL and Wipro--obtained approval for approximately 20,000 employees to work on H-1B visas, according to data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

The statement issued by the White House claimed, “The share of IT workers in the H-1B program grew from 32 per cent in Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 to an average of over 65 percent in the last 5 fiscal years. In addition, some of the most prolific H-1B employers are now consistently IT outsourcing companies.

Using these H 1B-reliant IT outsourcing companies provides significant savings for employers: one study of tech workers showed a 36 percent discount for H-1B ‘entry-level’ positions as compared to full-time, traditional workers.

To take advantage of artificially low labour costs incentivised by the program, companies close their IT divisions, fire their American staff, and outsource IT jobs to lower-paid foreign workers” to justify the recurrent annual fees imposed with effect from 21 September. The message to the Indian IT sector cannot be clearer.