Soutik Biswas and Nikhil Inamdar
Panic, confusion and then a hasty White House climbdown - it was a weekend of whiplash for hundreds of thousands of Indians on H-1B visas.
On Friday, US President Donald Trump stunned the tech world by announcing an up to 50-fold hike in the cost of skilled worker permits - to $100,000. Chaos followed: Silicon Valley firms urged staff not to travel outside the country, overseas workers scrambled for flights, and immigration lawyers worked overtime to decode the order.
By Saturday, the White House sought to calm the storm, clarifying that the fee applied only to new applicants and was a one-off. Yet, the long-standing H-1B programme - criticised for undercutting American workers but praised for attracting global talent - still faces an uncertain future.
Even with the tweak, the policy effectively shutters the H-1B pipeline that, for three decades, powered the American dream for millions of Indians and, more importantly, supplied the lifeblood of talent to US industries.
That pipeline reshaped both countries. For India, the H-1B became a vehicle of aspiration: small-town coders turned dollar earners, families vaulted into the middle class, and entire industries - from airlines to real estate - catered to a new class of globe-trotting Indians.
For the US, it meant an infusion of talent that filled labs, classrooms, hospitals and start-ups. Today, Indian-origin executives run Google, Microsoft and IBM, and Indian doctors make up nearly 6% of the US physician workforce.
Indians dominate the H-1B programme, making up more than 70% of the recipients in recent years. (China was the second-largest source, making up about 12% of beneficiaries.)
In tech, their presence is even starker: a Freedom of Information Act request in 2015 showed over 80% of "computer" jobs went to Indian nationals - a share industry insiders say hasn't shifted much.
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