On 8 October, the US Department of Labour halted the Permanent Labour Certification (PERM) process for major outsourcing firms, including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, following remarks by Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling describing their operations as predatory "visa mills". Federal regulators cited systemic wage suppression and lottery manipulation designed to monopolise skilled worker quotas. With an employment-based green card backlog exceeding one million Indians and waits spanning decades, foreign staff remain bound to sponsoring employers with virtually no pathway to citizenship.

It began in 1989, when an unreviewed, highly lobbied National Science Foundation study sparked panic in Washington by forecasting a catastrophic shortfall of 675,000 scientists and engineers. Exploiting this fabricated crisis, lobbyists pushed Congress to pass the Immigration Act of 1990, which birthed the H-1B visa.

Instead of plugging a domestic skills gap, the Act gave Indian IT conglomerates the legal architecture to construct an industrial-scale labour cartel. By flooding the visa lottery to monopolise the pipeline, these outsourcing firms laid the demographic foundation of Silicon Valley's caste-based backend. Caste matters here because the claim of indentured servitude matters, and this demographic onslaught normalises discrimination at home and whitewashes Narendra Modi abroad.

Bear in mind three facts. Technology platforms are the new media. New citizens of Western nations were long expected to leave their prejudices behind, yet caste belied that. And this diaspora has played a critical role in normalising Modi abroad.

Begin with Modi's coverage. When you are........

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