For decades, the United States has represented the ultimate academic and professional frontier for Indian students. From technology to medicine, and from journalism to data science, generations of Indians have crossed the oceans to seek knowledge, skills, and opportunities that remain scarce in India’s overstretched higher education system. But recent shifts in US visa policy are forcing many aspirants to question this long-cherished pathway — and perhaps, for the first time in a generation, to look seriously elsewhere. The latest suspension of student visa appointments and tightening of entry conditions are not mere procedural hiccups. They reflect a deeper, more unsettling pattern: rising unpredictability in US immigration and education policy that treats international students — and by extension, India’s brightest young minds — as expendable variables in domestic political games. For........

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