The White House’s move to slap a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas looks, at first blush, like a blow to Indian talent and the companies that rely on it. In reality, it is an inflection point that will prompt the end of brain drain, force a faster pivot to “build in India, for the world", and strengthen the foundations of Viksit Bharat. Meanwhile, the United States will find that a paywall cannot conjure up a domestic Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) pipeline overnight and that throttling high-skill immigration chokes a key pillar of its own innovation engine.

First, the facts. On September 19, 2025, the administration announced a $100,000 payment attached to H-1B visas. Whether it survives court scrutiny is uncertain; its deterrent effect on the talent pool and employers is not.

For India, this is the moment to turn a historical leakage into a virtuous cycle. Indian nationals have long dominated the H-1B pipeline—roughly 70% of approvals in many years—which means any steep fee impacts Indian-origin talent and their prospective employers the hardest. But it also means that the default option of “move to America" just became economically irrational for tens of thousands of young engineers and researchers. If the tap to the US narrows, the pool at home deepens, and that is precisely where India’s digital public infrastructure, manufacturing push, and startup ecosystem can turn quantity into compounding quality.

Remember the macro context. India already produces one of the world’s largest numbers of Science and Engineering (S&E) graduates, about 2.25 million, nearly triple the US number. That gap has only widened with the surge of affordable engineering and computer science programs, along with the government’s heavy focus on skilling. The United States, by contrast, graduates far fewer S&E majors and relies disproportionately on imported skills, especially in software, semiconductor technology, and AI. You cannot impose a $100,000 toll and expect a domestic pipeline to materialise in months. Education systems develop........

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