Posted on 10/08/2025 3:40:14 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
The notification pinged on smartphones across America on Friday, September 19, night. US President Donald Trump had signed a proclamation that would add a staggering $100,000 fee to H1B visa applications, sending shockwaves through the Indian Diaspora that forms the backbone of America's tech industry.
For Priya and her husband Rajesh (names changed on request), the news arrived like a digital earthquake in their quiet suburban home.
She, on an H4 dependent visa, watched helplessly as her husband -- an H1B holder with three years remaining on his current visa -- absorbed the implications of what seemed like a career-ending decree.
"I was not really impacted by it initially," Priya recalls, her voice still carrying traces of that night's uncertainty. "It would be my husband who would be affected."
But as the hours stretched into a sleepless dawn, the reality of their precarious situation began to crystallise.
The 24-Hour Nightmare
The new $100,000 fee only applies to new visas, not renewals or current visa holders, but this clarification wouldn't come until Saturday evening -- leaving hundreds of thousands of families suspended in immigration limbo for nearly 24 agonising hours.
Rajesh's initial reaction was measured but telling. "He was pretty straightforward that Trump was going to charge $100,000 for the petition," Priya remembers. "But he didn't provide any official documents when he announced it. So I was waiting for more information."
That wait would prove torturous. Videos began circulating on social media of panicked H1B holders rushing to airports, abandoning flights mid-boarding, convinced they might never be allowed back into the country that had become their home.
"People actually got into flights and then immediately vacated, thinking they won't be able to come back and their life was going to be affected," Priya recounts, her voice reflecting the collective fear
(Excerpt) Read more at m.rediff.com ...
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Well Priya let’s start with this. America is not your country. It doesn’t owe you anything. Read those last two sentences again slowly if you don’t get it. You talk of the stress of “displacement”. How do you think Americans have felt for the last 35 years when they were displaced by H1B Indians....by the hundreds of thousands? Because that’s who those companies employed in those roles previously - Americans. You question the fairness of the $100K fee on H1B Visas? How fair was it to allow in a flood of cheap labor to both cost American workers hundreds of thousands of good paying White Collar jobs AND to undercut the wages of many more Americans who work in Tech, Banking, Healthcare, Consulting, etc etc?
What other country allows this? Does India allow hordes of foreign workers to come into India and undercut Indians on wages? How do you think Indians would react if India started doing that?
Better to scare the companies that didn’t want to hire Americans.
I see them walking around the neighborhood every evening in groups with their dogs and I feel bad for the dogs. They don’t like dogs and are only using them as accessories and status symbols while here.
America first.
And they don’t even walk on the sidewalks.
An Indian, PRASANNA D ZORE,
Here’s your hat, GTFO.
MAGA!
Does India not have any jobs? Asking for a friend.
Has he succeeded in scaring Elizabeth Warren?
Indians. Doing the jobs Americans just can’t get.
It stops the invasion.
And just like that, there were no Ukraine posts any more.
Once THEY lose this Clown, the end is nigh.
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