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The White House has rolled out a memo, named A Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education to nine of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, including MIT, Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania among others. The document dictates how universities should admit students, hire faculty, and shape campus life, linking compliance to federal rewards. At the heart of it lies a measure that could redefine the future of US higher education: a proposal to cap international undergraduate enrolment at 15 per cent. The nine-page directive goes further, restricting the number of students from any single country to no more than...

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 33-year-old Shreya Mishra Reddy, a technical program manager at Visa based in Austin. Business Insider has verified Reddy's employment, immigration status, and unsuccessful H-1B attempts. The following has been edited for length and clarity. I never dreamed of living in the US. I grew up in India and wanted to stay close to my parents. In December 2021, I moved to the States for a Master's program in engineering management at Duke University. After I graduated in 2022, I got a job at Visa as a technical program manager in 2023....

Four Indian students were rejected for U.S. visas after undergoing a new Trump-era social media screening. All were told they had failed to prove ties to India. Kaushik Raj felt like his future was falling into place. He’d just won a $100,000 scholarship to pursue a graduate degree in journalism at Columbia University. A U.S. visa was the only thing that stood between him and a new life in New York. Raj, 27, wasn’t overly concerned. He had completed every stage of the traditional application process. As a last step, he had to allow American authorities to vet his “online...

US Senators have asked India's largest IT firm TCS to furnish details about its hiring practices in the US, whether the company has displaced any Americans with H-1B workers, as well as wage parity between H-1B hires and its local US staff. In a recent letter to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) CEO K Krithivasan, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley and ranking member Richard Durbin noted that the company has announced plans to layoff over 12,000 employees worldwide, including American staff. TCS laid off nearly five dozen employees in its Jacksonville office alone, according to the letter. "At the same...

The Trump administration has stepped up unannounced inspections targeting foreign students in the United States under the Optional Practical Training (OPT) programme, with a sharp focus on those in the two-year STEM OPT extension. Officials have even been visiting student residences and university housing facilities for verification, according to immigration attorneys, as reported by Lubna Kably in The Times of India. The Open Doors report for 2023-24 shows that 3.3 lakh Indian students were in the US, with nearly 97,556 enrolled in the OPT programme, many in STEM-OPT. This makes them one of the largest groups affected by the checks....

Immigration data show a nearly 50% drop in the number of international students from India arriving in July and August 2025 compared to the same period one year ago. The numbers indicate that U.S. universities may experience a significant decline in Indian and other international students in the 2025-26 academic year. Educators say the Trump administration’s policies, which included suspending visa interviews, have contributed to the decline. Universities worry that new immigration rules will also make it challenging to attract international students to the United States. -snip- India is the largest source country for international students to the United States....

“Indians are just waking up after Trump nuked the H1B program. Want to keep them in India? Clog the flight reservation system!” “Operation Clog the toilet needs your help. 4chan hatched a diabolical plan to clog up flight schedules to keep the Poopjeets in India or pay a $100,000 fee to come back.” “Ben up all night participating in Operation Clog the Toilet. Preventing jeets from getting back in 24 hours so they are forced to pay $100k to renew H1B” These are some comments posted on 4chan — an anonymous imageboard known for controversial content because some boards lack...

On Friday, Sept. 19, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation stating that new H-1B visa petitions submitted on Sept. 21 or after will require a $100,000 payment. This change would cause MIT to pay over $10 million every year for H-1B visa sponsorships. -snip- Although the majority of H-1B workers hold a computer-related job (65% in 2023), many universities in the U.S. issue H-1B visas for other international employees, including postdoctoral scholars, researchers, and professors. According to Director of Media Relations Kimberly Allen, MIT submitted 118, 102, and 103 new H1-B visa petitions in 2024, 2023, and 2022, respectively. Under...

A Reddit post by an Indian professional who recently returned from the United States has reignited debate on the H1B visa system, workplace culture, and community-based favoritism in American tech firms. The techie, who previously worked at Amazon USA, said one of the key reasons for returning to India was the “toxic behaviour” of Indian managers abroad. According to him, many Indian managers exploit employees on visas, aware of their vulnerability due to complex immigration rules. “They avoid hiring Americans because they know they can’t push them to work 24/7. Americans won’t hesitate to sue if boundaries are crossed,” the...

The H-1B visa has helped skilled professionals from across the world to advance America's technology sector. Three stalwarts who have made an indelible mark in the US after obtaining an H-1B visa are - Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella. For many Indians, it has symbolised the realisation of the "American Dream", however, on September 21, US President Donald Trump imposed a new $100,000 fee on this visa, pushing it into major controversy. -snip- Satya Nadella Microsoft's chief executive officer had started his career in the 1990s under the H-1B visa program. He has highlighted the program's importance for...

The H-1B visa, introduced by the United States in 1990, has long been a pathway for highly skilled professionals from across the globe to contribute to America’s technology sector. Many of today’s tech leaders, including Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, and Satya Nadella, entered the US through this programme, allowing them to innovate, lead companies, and create global impact. -snip- Sundar Pichai Pichai came to the US as an international student before transitioning to an H-1B visa, which allowed him to join Google in product management roles. Over the years, he rose to become CEO of Alphabet, overseeing key innovations in...

In India, some of the biggest jobs in tech come to you. Graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology (ITT), one of the country’s most prestigious universities, are recruited directly by Indian companies as well as American firms looking to lock down some of the world’s top talent in fields that will dominate the future, such as artificial intelligence and robotics. Many of them also continue their studies in the United States, where India overtook China last year as the biggest source of foreign students. But policy decisions and other moves by the Trump administration, including the recently announced $100,000...

Paridhi Upadhaya was packing her bags after securing a computer science scholarship in the US until headlines of President Donald Trump's H-1B visa crackdown last week prompted her family in Lucknow to scrap the plan. "Trump's unending onslaught against immigrants is forcing us to consider other destinations for her," the 18-year-old's father, Rudar Pratap said. Upadhaya is among thousands of Indians for whom the American dream of world-class education, lucrative careers, better quality of life and social mobility, is turning sour due to rising U.S. visa restrictions and policy unpredictability. For decades, the H-1B visa has been the gateway to...

In another challenging development for Indian professionals in America, H-1B visas and green card processing is set to be affected as the US government shut down on Wednesday. The shutdown came after President Donald Trump’s Republicans and the opposition Democrats were unable to agree on a congressional budget bill that would fund the government. Immigration lawyers told HT that the shutdown, which ends funding for non-essential government services, will particularly impact new applicants for H-1B visas and employment-based green cards. This development came after the Trump administration announced a new $100,000 H-1B visa application fee for new applicants. The fee...

Confusion and fear gripped H-1B visa holders over the weekend as a sudden US policy change forced some to choose between family commitments abroad and their careers in the United States. President Donald Trump’s announcement of a USD 100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications, part of a broader immigration crackdown, sent shockwaves through the tech and finance sectors, prompting workers from India and China to abandon travel plans and rush back to the US. At San Francisco airport, an engineer whose wife was scheduled to fly to Dubai described the impossible decision he faced. “It is a situation where we...

At a time when most people use keyboards to write, does handwriting really matter? Yes, say Indian courts, if the writer is a doctor. Jokes around the notoriously bad handwriting of many doctors that can only be deciphered by pharmacists are common in India, as around the world. But the latest order emphasising the importance of clear handwriting came recently from the Punjab and Haryana High Court which said that "legible medical prescription is a fundamental right" as it can make a difference between life and death. The court order came in a case that had nothing to do with...

After US President Donald Trump and Congress failed to reach a funding deal by Wednesday's deadline, the government shutdown began. As a result, hundreds of thousands of federal employees face furloughs, and many offices will be closed. H-1B visas will also face a pause until the shutdown ends, says immigration attorney Nicole Gunara. She said that H-1B visa filings will not be processed until the Congress can agree on federal funding allocations.

Apoorva arrived in New York in 2018 on an H-1B visa, fresh from one of India’s top graduate schools and brimming with hope of building a life in the United States. She soon joined an architecture firm, eager to contribute her skills and establish roots. But her dreams were quickly dashed — because Apoorva, like many other immigrants on an H-1B, soon experienced some visa-related issues. She recalled being stuck at her minimum wage architecture job for over three years. Changing jobs on an H-1B visa is famously difficult, and often means enduring months of bureaucratic limbo and steep United...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) are scrutinizing major corporations for filing thousands of H-1B skilled labor visa petitions after conducting mass layoffs of American employees. “In evaluating the high unemployment rate for American tech workers, we cannot ignore the massive, ongoing layoffs ordered by you and your peers in Big Tech C-suites over the past few years … At the same time you have been laying off your employees, you have been filing H-1B visa petitions for [thousands of] foreign workers,” Grassley and Durbin wrote in letters to 10 major employers in...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) are reintroducing bipartisan legislation to reform and close loopholes in the H-1B and L-1 visa programs. The H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act targets fraud and abuse in our immigration system, provides protections for American workers and visa holders and enhances transparency in the foreign worker recruitment process. Grassley and Durbin have long partnered to improve the H-1B visa system and first introduced their bipartisan legislation in 2007. Last week, the senators sent letters to 10 major U.S. employers, including Amazon, Google and Meta, scrutinizing their heavy...