It started with the announcement of Sriram Krishnan as a senior advisor in the White House overseeing Artificial Intelligence. Perhaps already miffed at the high profile Indian American nominees of an incoming administration, activists of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) swung into action digging up past statements of Krishnan where he had argued for immigration reforms with an accent on merit that would have benefited the highly skilled from India.

The back and forth soon wandered into other areas like culture, values, freedom of speech and finally into the realm of racism and bigotry. The bottom line: “Our country was built by white Europeans, actually. Not third world invaders from India” said Laura Loomer, a fiery supporter of Trump that even some in the MAGA distance themselves from. “I voted for a reduction of H1B visas. Not an extension”, she noted. Loomer’s comments on India was perceived in social media as being offensive.

Sooner or later it had to come down to Elon Musk, himself a one time recipient of H-1B and now a hugely successful billionaire. “The ‘fixed pie’ fallacy is at the heart of much wrong-headed economic thinking,” argued Musk. “It comes down to this: do you want America to WIN or do you want America to LOSE? If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE. End of story”, he wrote on X.

Musk also took to his platform also to give a warning to the likes of MAGA crowd. “ The reason I’m in America with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H-1B… I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend”.

Musk backtracks

But Musk himself could not escape the heat generated by the MAGA activists and was forced to backtrack as hard-nosed conservatives saw him acting beyond his pay grade and Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist in the earlier Trump administration, labelling him a “toddler”, a reference to being a new entrant to the MAGA.

The H-1B programme the Tesla chief later argued “is broken and needs major reform” stressing that the high skilled visa program can be easily fixed by significantly raising the minimum salary and adding an annual cost for maintaining the programme to make it “more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically”.

It does not matter what Sriram Krishnan, Vivek Ramasamy or Elon Musk have said or are saying on the H-1B visa; those in the MAGA and outside will continue to hammer away on the issue for it has been one of the central themes of President-elect Trump who had promised to address the subject in the overhaul of immigration. Trump had been critical of the H-1B but as it pertained to abuse by employers bringing in foreign skill for lesser salary. He had not been against the visa.

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great programme,” he has said in a recent interview .

The bigger problem for Indians in the US arises from a larger context: the 700,000-odd believed to be illegal in the US including an estimated 18,000 looking at their final orders of deportation ahead of Trump’s January 20 inauguration.

The question now is if the 47th President is going to make a distinction between criminals and law abiding illegals in determining the exit priority.

The writer is a senior journalist who has reported from Washington DC on North America and United Nations

Published on December 31, 2024