For decades, the H-1B visa program has functioned as a pipeline for highly skilled workers to join the U.S. labor force. By design, it allows companies to hire employees in “specialty occupations” and has been particularly popular in the technology sector. Indian nationals have been the main beneficiaries—comprising 71% of approved beneficiaries in FY 2024.
Created in 1990, the H-1B visa allowed U.S. firms to recruit foreign workers with at least a bachelor’s degree for jobs requiring specialized knowledge. The tech concentration reflects both the global demand for Indian tech talent and the limited domestic pipeline in STEM fields.
Despite this, the H-1B program has become a focal point for a rising wave of xenophobia targeting South Asians that has been building since before President Donald Trump’s re-election in November 2024.
Now, the Trump administration has imposed a one-time, $100,000 fee on each new H-1B petition, effective immediately, up from the previous $2,000 to $5,000 range. After an initial period of confusion, the government has clarified the $100,000 fee is a one-time payment for new visa petitions that does not apply to visa renewals or extensions.
The problem, as labor organizers see it, is not the presence of foreign workers, it’s how corporations use them to undercut both immigrant and domestic labor.
While the Trump administration and its allies portrayed the move as protecting American workers, labor advocates argue this narrative pits workers against each other while ignoring corporate exploitation of the H-1B system. For example, in 2015, Disney laid off about 250 American IT workers. According to a lawsuit which a federal judge eventually dismissed the case citing that Disney did not violate the visa law, some workers were allegedly required to train their H-1B replacements from outsourcing firms like HCL and Cognizant as a condition of severance. This incident, detailed in a lawsuit against Disney, highlighted how some corporations use H-1B visas to reduce labor costs, not to fill genuine skill gaps.
Similar stories have surfaced at Toys ‘R’ Us and Southern California Edison. The loophole lies in the fine print—large companies can bypass wage protection rules simply by paving H-1B workers $60,000 or more, well below the prevailing salary for many U.S. tech jobs.
The problem, as labor organizers see it, is not the presence of foreign workers, it’s how corporations use them to undercut both immigrant and domestic labor. H-1B visa holders are tied to their employers for legal status, making it nearly impossible to bargain collectively or report abuse. Many are underpaid, misclassified, or hired through a chain of subcontractors that hides who is really in charge. This vulnerability has made immigrant tech workers an easy scapegoat, even though they are as exploited by the system as the American workers they are accused of displacing.
The H-1B program is too often abused by employers to undercut wages and displace workers, regardless of nationality. The program can also contribute to a “brain drain” from countries in the Global South, where skilled workers are lured to the US, leaving local economies short of talent. The real issue isn’t the workers, but employers gaming the system for profit.
The timing of the H-1B fee hike hints at broader geopolitical maneuvers.
Earlier in August 2025, Trump slapped 50% tariffs on Indian imports to punish India for buying Russian oil and engaging in “unfair” practices. The $100,000 fee announcement came weeks later, fueling speculation that the White House was using immigration policy to pressure India.
Shakeel Syed, Executive Director of the California-based nonprofit South Asia Network which advocates for South Asian communities, argues that the fee is a tool of foreign policy as much as domestic politics: “This is just weaponizing one piece toward our foreign policy toward India, to put pressure from multiple angles,” he told Breakthrough News.
By targeting H-1B workers – who overwhelmingly hail from India – the administration sends a message to New Delhi while appeasing a nativist base.
“The H-1B policy is driven by inherent racism, with no logic or rationale that it will create more opportunities for American people versus foreigners, that’s pure baloney. It’s also politics, politics in the context of India versus the United States, India versus China, India versus Russia,” Syed said.
By targeting H-1B workers – who overwhelmingly hail from India – the administration sends a message to New Delhi while appeasing a nativist base.
India’s tech sector is deeply intertwined with Silicon Valley. Many top U.S. technology leaders, including Google’s Sundar Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, first arrived on H-1B visas. Punishing the program therefore jeopardizes relationships with key partners.
This impact isn’t just limited to tech companies or foreign workers. Universities, research labs, and hospitals—long reliant on skilled immigrants—are also caught in the crossfire of political theater and economic nationalism. Soon after the $100,000 H-1B policy was announced, a coalition of major unions, including the American Association of University Professors, UAW International, and UAW Local 481 filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that the new fee will devastate academic research and teaching across the country. The complaint notes, “This fee will result in significant and potentially catastrophic setbacks to research that benefits the American public,” including delays in life-saving medical studies.
Meanwhile, China is seizing the opportunity with Beijing’s new K Visa which will allow young foreign STEM graduates to live and work in China without employer sponsorship. Canada and the UK are also courting these workers.
A rise in anti-South Asian racism has been brewing online since the 2024 elections. The Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) began documenting growing anti-India hate online in late 2024. In September 2025, CSOH documented 680 high-engagement posts on X (formerly Twitter) from July 1, 2025 to September 7, 2025 that framed Indians as “invaders” and “job thieves”.
These posts amassed 281.2 million views, with deportation narratives compromising nearly 70% of the content. Slurs such as “pajeet,” a derogatory term originating on 4chan, appeared in 121 posts generating 74.3 million views. The report noted that activity peaked around August 12, when a Sikh truck driver’s crash in Florida was used by far-right accounts to scapegoat all Indians.
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GAPHE) found anti-South Asian slurs on 4chan almost tripled from 11, 427 in January 2023 to 32,703 in March 2024. Gab, a far-right social network, saw anti-South Asian posts increase from 197 in January 2023 to 691 a year later – a 251% increase. On Telegram, these posts jumped by 1,720% over the same period.
The surge in anti-Indian racism we’ve documented since the start of Trump’s second presidency reflects both his policies around immigration and a deeper undercurrent of xenophobia. Hate doesn’t emerge in a vacuum.
Moonshot, an organization tracking extremism, collaborated with Stop AAPI Hate and counted more than 44,000 South-Asian targeted slurs in extremists spaces in May and June 2025. According to Stop AAPI Hate, 75% of Asian slurs online in December 2024 and January 2025 targeted South Asian; they documented around 884 threats of violence during that period.
CSOH researchers argue that algorithmic amplification and lax moderation across platforms allow racist content to spread transnationally, connecting American far-right narratives with European extremists.
“The surge in anti-Indian racism we’ve documented since the start of Trump’s second presidency reflects both his policies around immigration and a deeper undercurrent of xenophobia. Hate doesn’t emerge in a vacuum,” CSOH Executive Director Raqib Hameed told BreakThrough News.
“It sits within a wider wave of xenophobia in the US, where anxieties about immigration, demographic change, and economic insecurity are increasingly projected onto Indians.”
The anti H-1B backlash is not simply organic prejudice; it is orchestrated by a coalition of far-right influencers, politicians, and online agitators, often overlapping with white nationalist circles.
Laura Loomer, a prominent far-right activist suspended from multiple platforms for hate speech, has accused tech billionaires of importing “slave laborers from India and China,” and demanded mass deportations. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene echoed these sentiments, tweeting in July 2025: “End Indian H-1B visas replacing American jobs.” In August, Sen. Mike Lee teased legislation targeting “H-1B abuse” after unfounded reports of kickback schemes at Walmart.
Behind far-right influencers and politicians is a network of wealthy donors and foundations.
One prominent figure is billionaire and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal and Palantir. An investigation by the American Immigration Council in 2008 reported allegations that Thiel donated $1 million to NumbersUSA, an advocacy group that pushed for drastic reductions in immigration.
From 2005 to 2015, the Colcom Foundation, an environmental and “overpopulation” charity tied to the billionaire Mellon family, poured at least $108 million into Tanton’s network of anti-immigrant organizations, including FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA.
NumbersUSA is part of a network created by John Tanton, a figure described by civil rights groups as a key architect of the modern nativist movement. Tanton’s organizations, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) – promote the narrative that immigrants are an economic and cultural threat, often under the guise of protecting American workers.
From 2005 to 2015, the Colcom Foundation, an environmental and “overpopulation” charity tied to the billionaire Mellon family, poured at least $108 million into Tanton’s network of anti-immigrant organizations, including FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA. In 2016, Colcom’s anti-immigration funding peaked at $19 million, accounting for 58% of its grants that year, primarily to these groups. By 2019, Colcom continued its support, allocating nearly $10 million to NumbersUSA, $7 million to FAIR, $2.75 million to FAIR’s Immigration Reform Law Institute, and $1.94 million to CIS.
This financial backing has significantly amplified the influence of these organizations, whose talking points now shape right-wing policy agendas, including the criticism of the H-1B program. The Tanton Network has called the H-1B program a vehicle for “cheap foreign labor,” and blamed Indian and Chinese workers for job losses.
CIS takes that framing further, publishing multiple articles that single out South Asians, particularly “young Hindu males” from southern India, as the demographic dominating the H-1B pipeline.
FAIR’s report argues that the H-1B system has been “hijacked” by outsourcing firms, insisting that the program be restricted to address short-term shortages.
CIS takes that framing further, publishing multiple articles that single out South Asians, particularly “young Hindu males” from southern India, as the demographic dominating the H-1B pipeline. Its writers describe Indian-run “body shops” as exploitative systems that favor pliable, lower-paid workers over older Americans, and even suggest that India itself encourages emigration of high-tech labor to reduce overpopulation and weaken opposition to Prime Minister Modi in the southern states.
Together, FAIR and CIS have shaped much of the contemporary anti-H-1B rhetoric driving Trump’s immigration policy, with a special emphasis on South Asians as not just economic competitors, but as a demographic threat to American identity.
Thiel’s support for anti-immigrant politicians goes back to Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign. In 2016, he gave roughly $1.25 million to Trump’s campaign, and has remained an important benefactor of Trump and the MAGA movement.
Palantir, the data-mining company Thiel co-founded, has long been tied to ICE contracts used for immigration enforcement. Palantir secured multi-million dollar ICE contracts of $41.6 million in 2014 to build a deportation data system, drawing protests by immigrant advocates. Thiel’s support of Trump’s immigration crackdown led activists to pressure his ventures like PayPal and Palantir. Though, he continued to give quietly to allied politicians.
Vox reported that Thiel donated more than $2 million to support Kris Kobach’s campaign in the 2020 Kansas GOP Senate primary race. Kobach, a former Kansas Secretary of State, is known for influencing draconian anti-immigration policies like Arizona’s infamous 2010 “Show Me Your Papers” law (SB1070). Thiel hosted a fundraiser for Kobach and pumped $850,000 into a super PAC backing him.
Despite his political record, Thiel’s own companies employ a global workforce of engineers, relying heavily on H-1B and O-1 visas (designated for immigrants with “extraordinary” skills) to source skilled workers from India, China, and other countries.
In the 2022 midterms Thiel poured more than $35 million into the campaigns of 16 anti-immigrant federal GOP candidates—12 of whom went on to win. Thiel directed $28 million to super PACs backing Blake Masters in Arizona and JD Vance in Ohio, his two biggest political investments that cycle. Both men amplified the “great replacement” conspiracy theory and called for sharp cuts to legal immigration, including the H-1B visa program.
While Thiel largely stepped back from direct campaign funding for 2024, he continued to influence public debate. In late 2024 he publicly endorsed Trump’s and Vance’s claims that immigration, especially skilled-worker visas, drives up housing costs and hurts Americans.
Despite his political record, Thiel’s own companies employ a global workforce of engineers, relying heavily on H-1B and O-1 visas (designated for immigrants with “extraordinary” skills) to source skilled workers from India, China, and other countries. In 2025, Palantir filed 95 H-1B Labor Condition Applications, and PayPal filed 946 H-1B LCAs in the same year.
As the South Asian Network’s executive director Shakeel Syed observed, the right-wing coalition is not monolithic; donors like Thiel are deeply invested in global tech talent and simultaneously entangled with ultra-conservative groups. This strategy allows him to expand his political influence, profit from immigration enforcement, and simultaneously reap the benefits of immigrant skilled labor for his own companies.
While Trump and Vance courted voters by promising tougher immigration controls, the Trump campaign’s official stance on H-1B visas was ambiguous. Trump told supporters that he uses H-1B workers at his own properties and called the program “great” even as he promised restrictions.
Trump’s unclear stance on H-1B, along with the presence of high-profile South Asians in his administration, exposed fractures in the MAGA coalition.
Far-right influencers like Jaden McNeil, Nick Fuentes and Vincent James have claimed that JD Vance’s marriage to Usha Vance meant he would not defend “white identity” and would bring more Indian immigrants. Senior White House Policy Advisor Sriram Krishnan has also become a target of far-right activists like Laura Loomer and Stew Peters for his support of H-1B visas and removing country-cap quotas on green cards. Vivek Ramaswamy’s brief tenure at the Department of Government Efficiency was cut short by internal sparring over the H-1B program that ultimately spilled out into public discourse, when Ramaswamy decried the “mediocrity” of American culture, sparking backlash.
While far-right activists and media figures have been more apt to oppose H-1B, Elon Musk and other tech-aligned donors argue that the U.S. lacks super-talented engineers and that the economy needs skilled immigrants. When Loomer attacked Krishnan, Musk and venture capitalist David Sacks publicly defended him and called his critics “contemptible fools.” In 2024, Musk even threatened to “go to war” with critics of the H-1B visa.
As Washington moves to codify sweeping reforms under the H-1B Nonimmigrant Visa Program, the consequences could be severe. Proposals to tighten job definitions, reduce exemptions, and increase oversight could slow growth in key industries like technology, health care, and research, while pushing innovation to other countries.
The proposed H-1B overhaul remains in its early stages. The Department of Homeland Security is expected to release a full draft for public comment in the coming months before issuing a final version that could take effect in the next filing cycle. Court challenges are likely, and their outcomes could determine whether the new rules reshape U.S. immigration or stall under the pressure of political and legal battle.
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Arshi Qureshi is a New York-based journalist with six years of experience covering politics, human rights, and social conflict in India and the U.S. Her work has appeared in PublicSource, PassBlue, New York Focus, City & State New York. She is currently a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Organized Hate, focusing on extremism and disinformation.
