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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...

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...

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...

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) today introduced the Visa Cap Enforcement Act. This bill restricts the ability of universities, research institutions, and non-profits to hire an unlimited number of foreign workers. “Colleges and universities shouldn’t get special treatment for bringing in woke and anti-American professors from around the world. My bill closes these loopholes that universities have abused for far too long,” said Senator Cotton. Text of the bill can be found here. The Visa Cap Enforcement Act would: Eliminate four exemptions to the H-1B visa cap, including one for foreigners who hold a master’s degree or higher from a U.S....

United States lawmakers continued tightening rules for the H-1B and L-1 worker visa programmes Monday after three senators introduced two separate pieces of legislation to target "loopholes" used by for- and non-profit employers. The top Republican and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee - Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, and Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois - tabled a bill to raise wage and hiring standards, mandate public job postings, and narrowing visa eligibility, among others. "Congress created the H-1B and L-1 visa programs as limited pathways for businesses to acquire top talent when it can't be found at home....

Florida politician Anthony Sabatini has sparked debate over the H-1B visa row, tweeting a call for “a complete and total shutdown.” The move comes in the wake of President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement of a $100,000 fee on new H-1B applications, aimed at curbing alleged abuses of the program. Far-right politician Sabatini on Monday tweeted, “I am calling for a complete and total shutdown of H-1 B visas until we can find out what is going on.” His tweet went viral in no time, given the ongoing debate surrounding the H-1B visa and its impact on the American workforce and...

Days after the Trump administration's big H-1B fee hike to $100,000, a bipartisan support to further changes to the visa allocation system was seen in the US senate with the introduction of the H-1B, L-1 visa reforms bill. The bill proposes further restrictions on both visas, and comes days after the steep H-1B fee hike and overhaul proposed for the existing lottery system. The move is likely to affect Indians the most, who account for 71% of H-1B visa beneficiaries. The proposed legislation introduces stricter wage and recruitment rules for employers, giving priority to H-1B visas for workers with STEM...

Florida politician Anthony Sabatini has called for a complete halt to the H-1B visa program, saying the government needs to review how it operates. In a tweet on Monday, he wrote, “I am calling for a complete and total shut down of h-1b visas until we can find out what is going on.” Sabatini framed the move as a defence of American workers, amid growing concern among some conservatives that the program displaces US employees and affects wages. The H-1B visa program, which allows US companies to hire skilled foreign workers, currently includes an estimated 600,000–700,000 visa holders, with a...

The Trump administration has launched Project Firewall, a major initiative to curb H-1B visa misuse and prioritise American workers for high-paying, skilled jobs. This move signals a shift toward stricter enforcement and could reshape opportunities for both domestic and foreign professionals. The move comes amid rising concerns over the exploitation of the H-1B programme. According to a January 2025 report by fwd.us, the US hosts roughly 730,000 H-1B visa holders along with 550,000 dependents. Critics have long argued that some companies use the program to hire cheaper foreign talent, often at the expense of qualified American professionals. This initiative follows...

-snip- Many H-1B visas are awarded to foreign graduates of U.S. universities. Visa holders can generally stay in the country for up to three years, with an additional three-year extension, and H-1Bs have the additional benefit of being able to be converted into a green card. That’s a common path foreign professionals use to establish permanent citizenship, Glennon said. How does Trump want to change the H-1B program? During the COVID-19 pandemic and near the end of his first term, Trump suspended the H-1B visa program, saying he wanted Americans to be able to find jobs in a fragile labor...

American President Donald Trump's decision to finally impose a massive 100% tariff — import duty or tax — on movies made outside the US comes as another major blow to India, which has been facing his wrath, with blips of bonhomie, for the past three months and more. -snip- The Indian diaspora in the US spends around $100 million a year to watch Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi, Bengali and other Indian language movies released in the US country, according to the Producers Guild of India. Indians are about 1.6% of the total US population, with other South Asians also...

Thousands of young Indians have mapped their adult lives with the aim of moving to the US, plans that now lie in tatters. Meghna Gupta* had planned it all – a master’s degree by 23, a few years of working in India, and then a move to the United States before she turned 30 to eventually settle there. So, she clocked countless hours at the Hyderabad office of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT firm and a driver of the country’s emergence as the global outsourcing powerhouse in the sector. She waited to get to the promotion that would...

Several Indian students who secured job offers in the United States have seen their offers withdrawn after US President Donald Trump announced the $1,00,000 H-1B visa policy. Under the new rule, US employers who are looking to sponsor H-1B visas should pay a one-time fee of $1,00,000, which many companies now cite as a reason to back out. Thousands of students, who are currently on F-1 visas, wanted to bag a job in the United States and obtain an H-1B visa. But with the new rules and skyhigh price on the visa, the companies are reluctant to pay the amount,...

Donald Trump's new $100,000 fee on H-1B foreign visas has shattered the dreams of Indian university students hoping to make it big in the United States. -snip- n 2023, nearly three-quarters, approximately 73 percent, of all H-1B workers whose applications were approved were born in India, according to the Pew Research Center. When the White House announced the $100,000 fee last week, students at technical universities across Indian said their hearts broke. 'My dreams were shattered,' Sai Jagruthi, a 17-year-old engineering student at Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, told The New York Times. She said her father called her to tell...

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said that there will be a significant number of changes to the H1B visa process before February 2026. This comes ahead of the new one-time USD 100,000 fee for new H1B work visas. Lutnick described the idea of inexpensive tech consultants coming to the US with their families as completely wrong. -snip- In addition to the new fee, the US Department of Labour has launched an initiative called Project Firewall. This enforcement programme aims to protect the rights, wages, and job opportunities of highly skilled American workers. The initiative ensures that employers prioritise qualified...

The U.S. Department of Labor today announced the launch of Project Firewall, an H-1B enforcement initiative that will safeguard the rights, wages, and job opportunities of highly skilled American workers by ensuring employers prioritize qualified Americans when hiring workers and holding employers accountable if they abuse the H-1B visa process. “The Trump Administration is standing by our commitment to end practices that leave Americans in the dust. As we reestablish economic dominance, we must protect our most valuable resource: the American worker. Launching Project Firewall will help us ensure no employers are abusing H-1B visas at the expense of our...

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, India, 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 US visa restrictions and policy unpredictability. For decades the H-1B visa has been the gateway...

Shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, the Trump-Vance campaign called into question claims he previously made about his military service, opening a broadside against the U.S. Navy veteran that some Republicans now liken to “sort of a Swift Boat 2.0 attack.” It is a reference to the highly contentious playbook the GOP used against Sen. John Kerry when the Massachusetts Democrat ran for the White House in 2004, in large part on his record as a junior naval officer in Vietnam. Those character attacks, widely panned at the time, called into...