Full Measures
The time for half measures and talk is over.
Deindustrialization stripped the nation’s manufacturing might and its attendant prosperity. It gutted working-class communities and turned China into a peer competitor. Whereas offshoring sent factory jobs overseas, “temporary” skilled worker programs like H-1B and L-1 visas bring foreign workers into American offices, laboratories, and executive suites – outsourcing STEM at home.
At least the People’s Republic is on the other side of the world. The current cycle dispossesses native-born professionals of their livelihoods in their own communities, supplanting them with a permanent low-wage workforce primarily drawn from India.
In 2022, 73 percent of H-1B visa recipients were Indian nationals. Does any one nationality comprise three-quarters of the world’s top talent?
H-1B Hullabaloo
Last Friday, President Trump issued a proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee on all H‑1B visas, effective September 21, 2025. At the signing in the Oval Office, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick repeatedly stated it would be an annual fee and apply to all visa holders. [Watch clip below]
Over the weekend, however, the White House walked it all back. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified that it is a one-time charge, applicable only to new visa petitions that are filed for foreign workers currently outside the U.S.
So, Here’s What the $100,000 Charge Actually Does:
Deters mass applications from Indian IT staffing agencies, such as Cognizant, Tata Consultancy Services, and Infosys, that exploit labor and regulatory loopholes to undercut American workers.
→ This will disrupt future inflow – after 2026 – into one of the exploited pipelines of labor arbitrage in America.
Sends an “I hear you” signal to America First voters – but one that costs little to the tech oligarchs, corporate interests, and donor-class stakeholders whose bottom line depends on low-cost foreign labor.
Leaves the Indian labor cartel in Silicon Valley and other U.S. sectors untouched.
→ Entrenched co-ethnic and nepotistic hiring networks, staffing practices, and gatekeeping in firms dominated by Indian managers remain unaffected.
Leaves the ongoing fraud and abuse in other immigration pipelines – such as L‑1, OPT, B‑1, O‑1, and EB categories – unaddressed.
Allows current H-1B visa holders who are here “temporarily” to continue abusing the immigration system at the expense of American citizens.
Regardless of income, foreign visa holders have children on U.S. soil to secure American citizenship for them and thus anchor their own long-term presence here. Automatic birthright citizenship serves as a direct incentive.
In contrast, Millennial American citizens have been forced to delay childbirth and cannot afford homes due to wage suppression, inflated housing costs, and a labor market rigged to favor H-1Bs and other foreign workers.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi recognizes the strategic and economic value of India’s extensive diaspora in American STEM and other professional sectors. In 2023, India received $120 billion in remittances with the U.S. as its largest source. This represents the biggest remittance flow in the world – more than any other nation receives from its diaspora.
Not surprisingly, the Indian government is throwing a tantrum over the slightest disruption to its labor export racket. India’s Ministry of External Affairs invoked “family separation” and “humanitarian” rhetoric to delegitimize much-needed U.S. immigration enforcement. This tactic comes straight out of the progressive playbook. The Left teaches the world how to undermine America.
Modi’s diplomatic strategy, in fact, mirrors how the Indian diaspora behaves in the U.S. His government wears a left-wing mask abroad, while wielding a far-right fist at home. Woke diplomacy, Hindu supremacy.
Likewise, Indian Americans, particularly Hindus, hold overall conservative views on immigration and affirmative action within India, but predominantly adopt progressive positions on similar issues within the U.S. Supporting India’s traditional caste-based social order sustains their longstanding dominance within India.
Meanwhile, Western left-wing ideology advocates for DEI, unchecked immigration, and the rejection of assimilation, which maximize their collective advantage in U.S. institutions and society. As a result, despite the prevalence of traditional family practices and fiscal conservatism, Indian Americans vote for Democrats by a wide margin.
TL;DR H-1B and other systemically-abused work visas extract maximum value from the U.S. labor market + build a future voting bloc to advance foreign state interests.
Legal Immigration ➡️ Economic and Demographic Dispossession
How did we get into this situation? How can we get out of it? My deep dive breaks it down: https://chroniclesmagazine.org/society-culture/dispossessing-america-again/.
The 2024 election gave Trump 47 an unequivocal mandate to overhaul immigration and codify America First principles into law. This administration has a generational opportunity to reclaim the American Dream for Americans. However, it must first overcome the vested interests within and the many circling hyenas without.
The danger is that reclaiming STEM fields for native-born Americans may only become politically viable some 25 years after irreparable damage is done, much like reindustrialization.
Perhaps it will take another extraordinary political figure – one who has been a victim of oligarchic Big Tech/Wall Street and the subversive legal immigration system – to recognize that this cycle of dispossession is above all about power. Perhaps only someone who has borne the human cost exacted by a technocratic dystopia will have the will to treat the degradation of American STEM as an urgent civilizational crisis – and enact full measures.