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As Washington reopens to China, it’s closing the door on India

‘Indians are scammers' stereotype is taking over US politics. Our foreign policy isn't built to deal with it. The MEA operates at the pace of diplomatic notes

Last month, three distinct centres of American political power moved against Indian immigration and, by extension, against the human foundation of the US-India strategic partnership. On 15 April, Vice President JD Vance stood before conservative college students in Georgia and said there’s been a ninety per cent administrative cut in H-1B visas, urging them to demand that Senate primary candidates commit to abolishing the programme entirely. On 22 April, Congressman Eli Crane introduced the End H-1B Visa Abuse Act, a seventy-one-page bill seeking a three-year moratorium on new H-1B visas, the elimination of Optional Practical Training, the abolition of dependent visas, and a $200,000 minimum salary floor that would price out the vast majority of Indian applicants. These legislative moves followed President Donald Trump’s public dismissal of the subcontinent in terms that stripped away two decades of careful diplomatic framing about shared democratic values.

This convergence was not coordinated in any operational sense. It was something more consequential: Three actors responding independently to a domestic incentive structure that now rewards anti-Indian positioning. This structure deserves close examination by Indian analysts who continue to treat American hostility as episodic or temperamental.

Trump’s rhetoric is functional, not impulsive. The MAGA base that sustains his political viability treats cultural hostility toward non-European immigration as a marker of authentic commitment. Racial animus toward Indians is not incidental; it is a feature of a political identity built on the premise that demographic change constitutes a threat to American civilisation. Every derogatory remark about the subcontinent reinforces a compact with voters for whom the point is precisely that he is willing to say it.

Vance is positioning himself as the presidential candidate for the 2028 race and has identified immigration restrictionism as the ground on which to outflank potential primary rivals from the Right. That his wife is of Indian origin makes the positioning more deliberate. It signals to the base that ideological commitment overrides even personal affinity. His Georgia address was a campaign event, not a policy speech, designed to establish that Vance will go further than any competitor on the issue that now defines Republican primary viability.

The congressional picture is equally revealing. Crane’s bill attracted 11 co-sponsors, and the composition tells a structural story. Four are from Texas: Brian Babin, Brandon Gill, Wesley Hunt, and Keith Self, representing the state with the highest H-1B concentration outside California and the one where anti-Indian yard signs have become a feature of suburban politics. Gill is married to Danielle D’Souza, of Indian origin, replicating the Vance pattern. Andy Ogles of Tennessee described the H-1B programme as a mechanism for making Americans “strangers in their own country.” Paul Gosar of Arizona called it a system “hijacked to replace American workers.”

Their strongest policy weapon is a provision most Indian observers have never encountered: Participants in the Optional Practical Training programme and their employers are exempt from Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, a combined 15.3 per cent cost advantage over hiring an American graduate.

The Freedom Caucus—a congressional caucus of the most conservative members of the Republican Party—frames this as the government rewarding firms for hiring foreigners while taxing them for hiring citizens.

These members are funded by........

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