American entrepreneur and academic Vivek Wadhwa, delivers a blistering critique of President Donald Trump’s decision to impose a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applicants, arguing it is driven by ego and political theatre rather than sound policy.,
The move is “part two of the vendetta” sparked when Trump failed to receive the deference he expected from Indian leaders, and is intended to placate a shrinking MAGA base by appearing tough on foreign workers.
Wadhwa acknowledges legitimate abuses within the H-1B system — unscrupulous consulting “body shops” that inflate resumes, underpay skilled workers, and game the lottery — but insists that penalising highly qualified scientists and engineers is counterproductive. Around two-thirds of H-1B holders are Indian, he notes, because India produces a large, highly educated scientific workforce. Shutting them out, he warns, will damage American competitiveness and wound US research, startups and labs that rely on that expertise.
He points to a perverse dynamic in which visa backlogs keep skilled immigrants economically captive: unable to change jobs without losing queue position, many accept below-market wages, which reduces labour mobility and weakens bargaining power. Tech companies have been reluctant to press for green cards, he says, because captive workers help preserve cheap talent. The result is a Silicon Valley complacency that ultimately undermines innovation.
Wadhwa predicts a strategic reversal: as talented Indians return home, often with savings, networks and global experience, India’s startup and R&D ecosystem will flourish. Work-from-home norms and globalised talent mean multinationals can retain employees remotely — or lose them to Indian ventures. “America’s loss is India’s gain,” he says bluntly.
Beyond geopolitics, Wadhwa frames his own pivot to India as testament to the country’s capabilities. Having built health-diagnostic technology with Indian institutions, he argues India offers world-class research and an enormous opportunity to retain and scale talent.
The H-1B fee, he concludes, is short-sighted politics that hands a strategic advantage to India while inflicting self-harm on the United States. He urges Washington to clean up fraud in the visa system, expand lawful pathways, and incentivize talent — not erect punitive barriers that backfire strategically.
In a career spanning three decades and counting, Ramananda (Ram to his friends) has been the foreign editor of The Telegraph, Outlook Magazine and the New Indian Express. He helped set up rediff.com’s editorial operations in San Jose and New York, helmed sify.com, and was the founder editor of India.com.
His work has featured in national and international publications like the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, Global Times and Ashahi Shimbun. But his one constant over all these years, he says, has been the attempt to understand rising India’s place in the world.
He can rustle up a mean salad, his oil-less pepper chicken is to die for, and all it takes is some beer and rhythm and blues to rock his soul.
Talk to him about foreign and strategic affairs, media, South Asia, China, and of course India.
