Free Republic

Manisha Puppala, an Indian national who recently graduated with a master’s degree in tech management from the Rochester Institute of Technology, planned to apply for an H-1B work visa to remain in the U.S. after her studies. Now that the Trump administration has announced a $100,000 fee for new H-1B applications, her future is in doubt. Puppala, who took on $120,000 in loans to study in America and has been working at a Boston firm on a permit that allows foreign students to work temporarily in the U.S., had dreamed of running her own startup. “What do I do now?”...

When Qian Zhang boarded a flight from Shanghai to Boston at age 18, she thought she was heading toward the "best version" of her life. It was 2009, during President Barack Obama's first term, when the U.S. economy was rebounding and opportunities for well-educated workers seemed plentiful. She was bound for Dartmouth College, a top choice for many Chinese students, and later found her way to Harvard Business School. Qian embraced the American dream: the promise of equal opportunity, a country that rewards talent and hard work, and a place where global citizens like her could belong. By her early...

For decades, young Indians were told that success meant heading west. Wealth, global recognition, and a career on the international stage could only be earned by leaving home for the United States. Silicon Valley became the promised land, Wall Street the pinnacle of ambition, and the H1-B visa the golden ticket. Families built dreams around it, students tailored their education for it, and India’s brightest minds set their sights on crossing oceans. But now, that dream faces a harsh reality. President Donald Trump has imposed a staggering $100,000 fee on new H1-B visas, a barrier so steep it threatens to...

There’s been lots of discussion about which tech companies will be the biggest losers from President Donald Trump’s broad assault on H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, including a $100,000 fee for each new visa recipient. But the impact could be felt first by universities, says Jeremy Neufeld, the director of immigration policy at the Institute for Progress, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. That's because the fee won’t apply to companies until next March, when the annual lottery for the roughly 85,000 new commercial H-1B visas awarded each year, takes place. Meanwhile, universities and certain other research and not-for-profit...

Tighter US immigration rules are making Indian families think twice before arranging marriages with relatives living in the United States, matchmakers and experts say. Sidhi Sharma, a 19-year-old medical student from Haryana, had hoped to marry an Indian citizen with a high-paying US job but abandoned the idea after recent headlines about President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.