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www.newsindiatimes.com – that’s all you need to know Dr. Sudhir M. Parikh Founder, Chairman & Publisher Ilayas Quraishi Chief Operating Officer Ela Dutt Editor Archana Adalja Contributing Editor T. Vishnudatta Jayaraman Advisor Arun Shah Ahmedabad Bureau Chief Peter Ferreira, Deval Parikh, Freelance Photographers Bhailal M. Patel Executive Vice President Chandrakant Koticha-Rajkot, India Executive Director Business Development Jim Gallentine Business Development Manager - U.S. Shahnaz Sheikh Senior Manager Advertising & Marketing Sonia Lalwani Advertising Manager Shailu Desai Advertising New York Muslima Shethwala Syed Sheeraz Mahmood Advertising Chicago Digant Sompura Consultant for Business Development Ahmedabad, India Hervender Singh Circulation Manager Main Office Editorial & Corporate Headquarters 1655 Oak Tree Toad, Suite 155 Edison, NJ 08820-2843 Tel. (212) 675-7515 Fax. (212) 675-7624 New York Office Tel: (718) 784-8555 E-mails editor@newsindiatimes.com advertising@newsindia-times.com subscription@newsindia-times.com Website www.newsindiatimes.com Chicago Office 8846 Lavergne Ave, Skokie, IL 60077 Tel. (773) 856-3345 California Office 650 Vermont Ave, Suite #46 Anaheim, CA 92805 Mumbai Office Nikita Ajay Pai Goregaon, West Mumbai Ahmedabad Office 303 Kashiparekh Complex C.G. Road, 29 Adarsh Society Ahmedabad 380009 Tel. 26446947 F ax. 26565596 Published weekly, Founded in 1975. The views expressed on the opinion pages are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect those of News India Times. Copyright © 2025, News India Times News India Times (ISSN 0199-901X) is published every Friday by Parikh Worldwide Media LLC., 1655 Oak Tree Toad, Suite 155 Edison, NJ 08820-2843 Periodicals postage paid at Newark, N.J. , and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address change to News India Times, 1655 Oak Tree Toad, Suite 155 Edison, NJ 08820-2843 Annual Subscription: United States: $28 Disclaimer: Parikh Worldwide Media assumes no liability for claims/ assumptions made in advertisements and advertorials. Disclaimer:The views and opinions expressed on this page are those of the authors and Parikh Worldwide Media does not officially endorse, and is not responsible or liable for them. The US’ $100,000Mistake That Hands India The Future Opinion News India Times (September 27, 2025 - October 3, 2025) October 3, 2025 3 T he US has announced a $100,000 fee on every H-1B visa applica- tion. President Donald Trump believes this will protect American workers. What it will actually do is slam the door on the doctors, scien- tists, and engineers who built America’s greatest industries. It is the immigration equivalent of his tariffs—loud, clumsy, and self-defeating. The outcome will be a weaker United States and a stronger India. I have never defended the H-1B system. It has long been abused by third-tier outsourcing companies that treat it as a lottery to be gamed. They flood the sys- tem with applications, bring in workers by the planeload, and then rent them out at low wages. American corporations have been complicit, us- ing the program to create a low-paid and captive workforce. Because of the decades-long green card backlog, these work- ers cannot change jobs or start companies. They wait in line while their employers hold the pow- er. It is a modern form of indentured servitude. Trump’s new fee one-ups his mindless tariffs. Instead of fixing the abuses, raising wages, or clearing the backlog, he is mak- ing the program prohibitively expensive for everyone. The true victims will be hospitals that need doctors, universities that depend on international faculty, startups that rely on global talent, and laboratories that thrive on collaboration. America’s strength has always come from immigrants. One third of Nobel Prize win- ners in science were born abroad. More than half of Silicon Valley’s startups were founded by immigrants. They now lead not only technology firms in the Val- ley but companies across the American economy. This will be a disaster for U.S. com- petitiveness because location is no longer a barrier to innovation, as I have seen firsthand with my company, Vionix Biosciences. When I first tried to build the company in Silicon Valley, I could not find the hardcore engineers and scien- tists I needed. So I turned to India. At IIT Madras I found brilliant researchers working on deep, fundamental problems. These were people I could never have brought to the U.S., because the immigra- tion system would have kept them out or forced them into decades of waiting. They were already advancing the frontier, eager to contribute, and ready to tackle challenges that most American graduates shy away from. I also found extraordinary medical researchers and lab technicians at India’s leading institutions such as AIIMS and IISc. Their skills were matched by an unmatched work ethic. The same spirit defined the machine learning graduates I hired from across India. In Silicon Valley, the first question many applicants ask is about perks and stock options. In India, the first question was always about career progression. Within four months, these developers were delivering at Silicon Valley standards at a fraction of the cost— and without the entitlement that has crept into the Valley’s workforce. With today’s collaboration tools, distributed teams can produce world- class results from anywhere. You do not need to bring talent to America to build advanced technologies. You can leave it in Bangalore or Hyderabad and still achieve global standards. By attaching a $100,000 price tag to visas, Trump is accelerating this shift. American companies will stop trying to bring people over and build their labs abroad. The knowledge, the patents, the startups, the wealth, and the tax rev- enues will stay outside the United States. For India this is a historic opening. For decades, its brightest minds left because the U.S. was the only place they could do cutting-edge work, and the H-1B visa was their bridge. The U.S. has a shortage of high-end skills in fields such as artificial intelligence, deep science, hard-core en- gineering, computing, and biotechnology. These are not roles that can be filled by retraining displaced factory workers. For the United States, a fix is still pos- sible. It would mean clearing the green card backlog so workers can change jobs and build lives, raising wages so visas cannot be used to undercut Americans, shutting out the outsourcing companies that game the lottery, and prioritizing genuine talent. Imagine if Trump told the million-plus skilled immigrants stuck in limbo that their paperwork would be processed immediately if they bought or built a home. Even if half took up the offer, it would trigger more than 600 billion dol- lars in economic activity— hundreds of thousands of homes sold, construction jobs created, and local tax revenues soaring. The immediate economic jolt would be larger than any- thing Trump’s tariffs can ever deliver. India, meanwhile, should treat this as an op- portunity. It should hang a sign on Route 101 in Silicon Valley saying: If America does not want you, India does. The country now offers far more than elite schools. It has a thriving digital economy, a proven track record of scaling technologies like UPI to hundreds of millions, world-class hospitals, pharmaceutical manufacturing at global scale, and a startup ecosystem with am- bition and capital. Add to this a young workforce, lower costs, and a government eager to back science and entrepreneur- ship, and the advantages are obvious. Companies like mine have already discovered that India can deliver break- throughs at global standards. If India builds on this momentum, it can become the place where the talent and entrepre- neurs America is shutting out choose to create the future. America’s loss can once again become India’s gain. Vivek Wad- hwa is the CEO of Vionix Biosci- ences and has held academic appointments at institutions including Harvard Law School, Stan- ford, and Duke University. ByVivekWadhwa PHOTO @in.usembassy.gov Image representing the bilateral US-India relationship. PHOTO:CourtesyVivekWadhwa