Desi talk

www.desitalkchicago.com – that’s all you need to know 4 VIEWPOINT October 3, 2025 Disclaimer:The views and opinions expressed on this page are those of the authors and Parikh Worldwide Media does not officially endorse, and is not responsible or liable for them. The US’ $100,000 Mistake That Hands India The Future T he US has announced a $100,000 fee on every H-1B visa application. President Donald Trump believes this will protect American workers. What it will actually do is slam the door on the doc- tors, 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. I have never defended the H-1B 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 employ- ers 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 back- log, 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 compa- nies across the American economy. This will be a disaster for U.S. competitiveness be- cause location is no longer a barrier to innovation, as I have seen firsthand with my company, Vionix Biosci- ences. When I first tried to build the company in Sili- con Valley, I could not find the hardcore engineers and scientists I needed. So I turned to India. At IIT Madras I found brilliant researchers working on deep, funda- mental problems. These were people I could never have brought to the U.S., because the immigration system would have kept them out or forced them into decades of waiting. They were already advancing the frontier, eager to contribute, and ready to tackle challenges that most American graduates shy away from. I also found extraordinary medical researchers and lab technicians at India’s leading institutions such as AIIMS and IISc. Their skills were matched by an unmatched work ethic. The same spirit defined the machine learn- ing graduates I hired from across India. In Silicon Valley, the first question many applicants ask is about perks and stock options. In India, the first question was always about career progression. Within four months, these developers were delivering at Silicon Valley standards at a fraction of the cost—and without the entitlement that has crept into the Valley’s workforce. With today’s collaboration tools, distributed teams can produce world-class results from anywhere. You do not need to bring talent to America to build advanced tech- nologies. You can leave it in Bangalore or Hyderabad and still achieve global standards. By attaching a $100,000 price tag to visas, Trump is accelerating this shift. Ameri- can companies will stop trying to bring people over and build their labs abroad. The knowledge, the patents, the startups, the wealth, and the tax revenues will stay out- side the United States. For India this is a historic opening. For decades, its brightest minds left because the U.S. was the only place they could do cutting-edge work, and the H-1B visa was their bridge. The U.S. has a shortage of high-end skills in fields such as artificial intelligence, deep science, hard- core engineering, computing, and biotechnology. These are not roles that can be filled by retraining displaced factory workers. For the United States, a fix is still possible. It would mean clearing the green card backlog so workers can change jobs and build lives, raising wages so visas cannot be used to undercut Americans, shutting out the outsourcing companies that game the lottery, and prioritizing genuine talent. Imagine if Trump told the million-plus skilled immigrants stuck in limbo that their paperwork would be processed immediately if they bought or built a home. Even if half took up the offer, it would trigger more than 600 billion dollars in economic activity—hundreds of thousands of homes sold, con- struction jobs created, and local tax revenues soaring. The immediate economic jolt would be larger than any- thing Trump’s tariffs can ever deliver. India, meanwhile, should treat this as an opportu- nity. It should hang a sign on Route 101 in Silicon Valley saying: If America does not want you, India does. The country now offers far more than elite schools. It has a thriving digital economy, a proven track record of scaling technologies like UPI to hundreds of millions, world- class hospitals, pharmaceutical manufacturing at global scale, and a startup ecosystem with ambition and capital. Add to this a young workforce, lower costs, and a govern- ment eager to back science and entrepreneurship, and the advantages are obvious. Companies like mine have already discovered that India can deliver breakthroughs at global standards. If India builds on this momentum, it can become the place where the talent and entrepre- neurs America is shutting out choose to create the future. America’s loss can once again become India’s gain. Vivek Wadhwa is the CEO of Vionix Biosciences and has held academic appointments at institu- tions including Harvard Law School, Stanford, and Duke University. ByVivekWadhwa PHOTO:CourtesyVivekWadhwa How Google Views Trump’s New H-1B Visa Policy T he Trump administration’s lat- est immigration policy change, requiring a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas, sparked concerns over its potential impact on the tech industry, which greatly benefits from foreign skilled workers from countries such as India and China. But on Tuesday (September 23, 2025), Google’s Senior Vice President James Manyika assured that the new H-1B visa policy won’t disrupt the company and its current employees. “I think it’s quite important to continue to invest in American and U.S. talent,” Manyika said at TheWashington Post Live Global AI Summit. “But it’s no secret for us that the U.S. and companies like ours having access to the best talent, from wherever they are, is a competitive issue we care deeply about.” Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring new applicants approved for the H-1B visa to pay a $100,000 fee. The policy would make it harder for foreigners to obtain legal work permits in the United States, carry- ing out Trump’s promise to secure jobs for Americans. The abrupt shift shook up Silicon Val- ley and sparked confusion for its foreign skilled workers. According to a report released in August by the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizen- ship and Immigration Services, the tech industry is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the skilled worker program. Tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple and Meta are among the top companies employing workers with H-1B visas. Workers in “computer-related” fields made up 64 percent of approved H-1B visa recipients in 2024. The new policy ap- plies only to new visa applicants. Current H-1B visa holders and renewals won’t be affected. According to Manyika, Google is stay- ing in close contact with its employees who are H-1B visa holders to make sure they know they won’t be impacted by the policy change. Manyika says the compa- ny’s biggest concern surrounding the new policy is maintaining its competitive edge when it comes to hiring talent, domestic or foreign. Google employs more than 4,100 H-1B visa holders, making it the sixth-largest employer of skilled workers with the visa type behind Amazon, Tata Consultancy, Microsoft, Meta and Apple. “I think that even today the people on H-1B visas for us is a small portion of our talent,” Manyika said. “But for us as a company, I think we’ll work our way through this.” -TheWashington Post By Andrea Jiménez PHOTO:@blog.google/authors/sundar-pichai Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet. BUSINESS