As policy gears shift, old prejudices resurface, grinding against lives built across borders. Visa Rules, Rising Friction A growing wave of hostility toward Indian professionals and businesses in the United States has followed recent changes to the country’s skilled-worker visa regime, experts told the Financial Times. The backlash has been linked to revisions introduced by the Trump administration in September that reshaped the H-1B visa programme. Under the revised framework, applicants now face an application fee of $100,000 and a wage-based selection system that favours higher-paid roles. The administration has defended the changes as necessary to “protect American workers”. From February, the rules are set to tighten further, with US authorities prioritising the highest-paid, Level-IV H-1B applicants, narrowing pathways for many skilled migrants. As the new system took effect, several large American companies, including FedEx, Walmart and Verizon, became targets of online abuse. Social media users accused the firms of illegally selling jobs to Indian workers. Raqib Naik, executive director of the Center for the Study of Organised Hate, said some of the attacks appear to be coordinated campaigns. He noted that Indian American entrepreneurs who accessed government-backed Small Business Administration loans have been particularly targeted. Naik warned that discrimination… Read MoreBusiness Archives – Trak.in – Indian Business of Tech, Mobile & Startups
