Well after President Trump signed off on an executive order pricing H-1B visas beyond the reach of ordinary mortals and even corporations, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt clarified that it would not be as sudden as a massacre. It is a one-time fee which will be levied only on applications for a new visa in the next cycle of the H-1B lottery. But the proclamation had seemed to say that visa-holders travelling outside the US would have to pony up before they are let back into the country. With poor phrasing, whether by accident or design, the order raised yet another wave of panic among Indian workers in the US.

The declared purpose of this move, which has added $100,000 onto the $2,000-$5,000 which new applicants now spend on the visa, is to protect American jobs and national security. The White House noted that foreign workers used to hold 32% of such roles in 2023, but the share has risen to 65%. Most of these visas are held by Indians.

The H-1B program was created by President George HW Bush’s Immigration Act of 1990 to bring in foreign workers as medium-term hires in roles which require specialized skills and higher education. Silicon was clearly the new oil, the public internet was just a year away, mobile telephony lay beyond it and the US industry needed to quickly attract global talent to take the lead in the digital space. It was like a civilian repeat of Operation Paperclip, which the US had used to gain the strategic advantage by bringing in nuclear and missile scientists from Germany during World War II.

Over time India, which had equipped itself in the socialist era with quality centers of higher education, especially in engineering, IT, management, finance and medicine, dominated the H-1B category, bagging 71% of the visas. And the number of active visas has swelled to about 400,000.

The number is large and there can be real concern about American jobs being taken by foreigners. But the context in which the ordinance was released is interesting ― just before Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal arrived in the US on September 22, leading a high-level delegation for bilateral trade talks to end tariff tensions between the two countries. The timing has raised suspicions that the executive order was issued to press India’s panic button and soften up the delegation. It is also speculated to be a diversion, to deflect public attention from the free speech uproar over the suspension of the Jimmy Kimmel comedy show. And that suspension could have been a diversion from the Jeffrey Epstein files, which have turned into a mess dividing the MAGA movement.

But the new H-1B rule could well be a purely strategic step towards upending the very structure of the technology sector, banking and consulting to favor domestic workers. The $100,000 fee would discourage the hiring of all foreign workers except those who deliver extraordinary value to employers. The Halting International Relocation of Employment (HIRE) Act, which is expected to kick in on January 1, 2026, will levy a 25% excise duty on payments made by US entities to support roles shipped overseas. That would disincentivize the outsourcing of back office operations, support functions, call centers and global capability centers to lower wage countries like India. So, while huge numbers of Indians will have to abandon hopes of making careers in the US, their peers in Indian centers will lose their jobs, accentuating the unemployment problem there. The boom which began two decades ago, which benefited both US corporations and Indian workers, is drawing to a close.

While MAGA voices are expressing relief that Americans shall once again be able to call customer support and be answered in American rather than Indian English, Indians are delighted that their peers in the US, who have celebrated the rise of right-wing Hindu politics in India, will be forced to see its realities at close quarters, when they return to a market with few quality jobs and opportunities, in a country with overstretched resources. All over social media and YouTube, they are being welcomed home, to experience the joys of ‘pakodanomics’ ― to try their hand at frying savory pakodas and selling them from handcarts in the streets, which is what India’s unemployed do for a marginal living.

This is savory but bitter revenge. The BJP government won office in 2014 on the explicit promise of creating millions of jobs and turning India into a manufacturing powerhouse. And when the promise was found to be hollow, the government cynically expressed its admiration for the entrepreneurship of India’s workers, who create jobs for themselves, selling pakodas.

People in India also think, with some relish, that fellow citizens in the US are getting their just deserts. The BJP had successfully recruited large numbers of Indian-Americans to celebrate fictitious developmental strides being made by India, like bullet trains, high quality roadways, digital solutions to almost everything ― and the maltreatment of minorities. Vocal sections of the community have turned out to cheer the ruling party, from PM Modi’s show at Madison Square Garden after he took office in 2014. In 2019, President Trump helped to promote the Howdy Modi event in Houston, and visited India for the Namaste Trump jamboree the next year. And in 2022, a bulldozer celebrating the extrajudicial punishment of Muslims in India featured in a parade in the streets of Edison, NJ, which has a significant Indian population.

News of the ruling party’s popularity overseas, piped through compliant channels, has been leveraged to keep its electoral image well-shined. But the trade war is an embarrassing setback. Now, with Piyush Goyal in the US for trade talks, New Delhi can only hope for a quick bilateral deal which would allow it to forget weeks of humiliation and claim, once more, that it has friends in Washington.