Indian Government Protests Rubio’s Visa Curbs that Help Americans
The Indian government is stepping up protests over new State Department restrictions against widespread visa fraud by migrant workers at U.S. embassies.
“While we understand…that visa-related matters are the sovereign domain of any country, we have flagged these issues and the concerns of our nationals to the US side, both in New Delhi and Washington DC,” an Indian government spokesperson said on December 26.
“Several people have been stranded in India for a prolonged period… [delays] have also caused hardship to their families…and also to the education of their children,” he said.
The “several” Indian workers are stuck in their home countries because Secretary of State Marco Rubio suddenly put the brakes on the US embassy’s fast-track process of granting new visas and visa extensions to Indian migrants. Migrants now have to wait several months before going to their jobs in the United States.
India’s protest is just one aspect of a lobbying campaign aimed at preserving the controversial visa programs.
The Indian government vigorously defends visa programs because it wants to maximize the flow of Indian workers to jobs in the United States, as well as Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, the Gulf States and even the Gulf countries. Russia in wartime.
India’s economy is deliberately built on the wealth extracted by its migrant workers. For example, India receives at least $40 billion in remittances from the United States, coupled with huge investments from many American companies. now run by legalized Indian migrants.
At least one million Indian graduates work in white-collar jobs in the United States, through the H-1B, L-1, B-1, OPT and CPT programs, often as contractors for large companies. This enormous population is an economic boon for Indian tax collectors and for those responsible for hiring under the corrupt program, but it is a lifelong disaster for American graduates, for their professionalism, productivity and innovation.
Since January 2025, President Donald Trump’s aides have tweaked the H-1B visa program to help increase hiring among Americans, despite objections behind closed doors from pro-business lobbies in Washington.
Trump zigzags between the voters he needs to win the 2026 election, the business leaders he needs to continue growing the economy, and Indian government officials who can cut U.S. exports to India.
The State Department has said little about the impact and scope of its new visa restrictions. On December 17, the department responded to questions from Breitbart News with a vague statement:
Under the Trump administration, the State Department is using every tool available to rigorously screen every visa applicant. While in the past the focus may have been on processing cases quickly and reducing wait times, our embassies and consulates around the world, including in India, now prioritize a thorough review of every visa file, above all else. They do not issue a visa unless the applicant can credibly demonstrate that they meet all requirements of US law, including that they intend to engage only in activities consistent with the terms of their visa.
As part of this effort, the Department is conducting online attendance screenings for applicants who will spend extended periods of time within U.S. communities, including students, exchange visitors, temporary specialty workers, and their dependents. We will not allow aliens who pose a risk to Americans or U.S. national interests to abuse our immigration system.
The Rubio restrictions follow reports of massive fraud in India, driven in large part by the huge gains Indians can make even from low-wage jobs in the United States.
“I would say 80 to 90 percent of the people I met in each of the visa categories…were basically using the nonimmigrant visa pipeline to come work in the United States and never come home and basically displace American workers,” Mahvash Siddiqui, a former U.S. foreign service officer, told the Center for Immigration Studies in November.
She added:
Unfortunately, due to political pressure from above, our objections were rejected by our [U.S.] the bosses [before Trump]. There was a lot of political pressure from Indian politicians who spoke to our ambassador in Delhi, to our consul general, and put pressure on us from Delhi, saying, “Please stop running this.” They called us a rogue operation.
Many U.S. contracting companies that lease Indian workers to American companies are partly owned by Indian politicians, she added.
In the United States, many corporate media sides side with imported workers. December 19, Jeff Bezos’ speech Washington Post published an article sympathizing with Indian migrant workers who are now taking jobs that would otherwise be filled by American graduates:
These sudden cancellations have upended lives, lawyers said, leaving workers whose visas have expired fearing they will lose their jobs. Emily Neumann, a partner at Houston-based immigration firm Reddy Neumann Brown PC, said she has at least 100 clients stuck in India. Veena Vijay Ananth, an immigration lawyer in India, and Charles Kuck, who practices immigration law in Atlanta, said they have each had more than a dozen similar cases.
Most of those affected are tech workers in their 30s and 40s, the lawyers said, who have lived in the United States for years. They are now scrambling to find alternative working arrangements with their American companies. Some who traveled to India with their children must now decide whether to keep them out of school or send them home alone; others are completely separated from their families.
Bezos’ Amazon companies are the largest users of H-1B migrant workers, Optional Practical Training (OPT) migrants, and also employ many migrant truck drivers. The article was written by two journalists of Indian origin in the United States, Pranshu Verma. And Supriya Kumar.
Middle-class Americans are increasingly opposed to India’s migrant extraction economy, as they see themselves and their peers sidelined by Fortune 500 recruiters and their contractors. THE Los Angeles Times reported on December 19:
“Stanford computer science graduates have a hard time finding entry-level jobs” with top tech brands, said Jan Liphardt, an associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. “I think it’s crazy.”
…
“This represents a dramatic reversal from three years ago, when all of my undergraduate mentees found great jobs at the companies around us,” Stanford’s Liphardt said. “That has changed.”
The author of Indian origin of Los Angeles Times The article blamed the job shortage on artificial intelligence, although it actually cited a Turkish graduate who actually got a job that otherwise would have gone to an American:
After four months of research, graduated from LMU [Eylul] Akgul eventually landed a job as a technical manager at a software consulting firm in Los Angeles. In her new job, she uses AI coding tools, but feels like she has to do the work of three developers.
Akgul is likely able to work because she enrolled in the Optional Practical Training program, which grants work permits of up to three years to foreign graduates from U.S. universities. Many foreign-born U.S. business executives prefer to hire foreign graduates because they can be paid very little and will work long hours in hopes of remaining in the United States.
In contrast, American graduates demand their compensation in the form of dollars, which they also need to pay off college debt, get married, and have children.
