The increased scrutiny against the South Asian population seeking employment in America, specifically those of Indian nationality applying for the H-1B visa program, has led to increased political hostility and racism against Indian people in the United States, experts told Newsweek.
The uptick in discrimination and bigotry can be tracked across social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and X, often attached to the H-1B work-based visa.
H-1B visas allow for U.S. companies to employ foreign nationals who are often skilled in specific industries, such as tech. The majority of applicants for the H-1B come from India, with 71 percent of H-1B visa holders coming from India alone in 2024, according to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
During the 2024 election season, with two prominent women of South Asian background under the national spotlight, now-second lady Usha Vance and the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, faced public speculation regarding their identities.
Vance, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants, has faced online xenophobia while her husband has faced scrutiny for marrying her, the criticism rooted in white supremacist values.
“They [MAGA supporters] are nativist. That is a key part of their platform and agenda, and right now when we look at the context in which this is all occurring, it is very much anti-immigrant,” Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of the AAPI Equity Alliance and co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, told Newsweek.
“The American economy has, really since its founding, benefited from the labor of immigrants particular to the AAPI community.”
Growing Trend of Anti-Indian Messaging
The anti-Indian racism seen against politicians has impacted Indian and South Asian communities across the country.
According to the AAPI Equity Alliance’s Stop AAPI Hate Report, more than 75 percent of anti-Asian slurs targeted South Asians between December 2024 and January 2025. Moonshot, a group that targets online terrorism, found more than 44,000 slurs targeting South Asians in extremist online spaces during May and June of this year.
The recent appointment of Sriram Krishnan as the White House’s senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence brought a wave of anti-Indian rhetoric from MAGA supporters, particularly after he voiced his support of H-1B visas and the removal of country-cap quotas on green cards.
Although President Donald Trump previously claimed favorable support for visas amid an online battle among his supporters last year, his administration’s views have shifted. At the July 2025 AI Summit in Silicon Valley, California, Trump emphasized national loyalty through the “America First” mentality.
“Many of our largest tech companies have reaped the blessings of American freedom while building their factories in China, hiring workers in India, and slashing profits in Ireland….Under President Trump, those days are over,” Trump said.
That message has been backed by Republicans in Congress, including Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who posted on X this month: “End Indian H1-B visas replacing American jobs.”
“It’s always been a politically volatile issue, but I think more so in the last, I would say, 10 years or so,” Gaurav Khanna, an associate professor of economics at the University of California San Diego, told Newsweek.
“At the start of the current presidency, within the administration, it seemed like there were two factions. So it wasn’t even about Democrats versus Republicans.”
How Does H-1B Factor In?
According to 2020 research published in the Global Journal of Human-Social Science, Indian immigrants following the Immigration Act of 1965 came from privileged backgrounds: upper-caste people with “qualifications and skills to meet the needs of the American economy.”
Khanna said that when Indians first started coming to the U.S. on the H-1B, computer scientists were getting a 900 percent wage bump.
“Now, that wage differential has fallen, but it’s still I think close to about 300 percent, 400 percent higher wages,” Khanna said. “That’s very lucrative. It means that you’re not only earning that wage increase for six years, but a fair number stay on after and get a green card, so it can be like winning a lottery ticket for life.”
The H-1B visa program, although not directly related to systemic barriers of caste, may be harder to access for people who cannot meet visa requirements because of socioeconomic disadvantages.
Sumouni Basu, a licensed immigration attorney at South Asian Network, told Newsweek that she finds the changes in the program to be “in effect, elitist” while claiming to be merit-based.
“If that rhetoric wasn’t already putting a false monolith on our community, I think this will make it worse because H-1Bs will be limited to more higher-earning workers, but at the same time, that isn’t what our community is all made up of,” she said.
Basu also believes that social media has created a dynamic of extremes: Indians are either stereotyped as successful and well-off in their careers or doing low-wage work for a living, such as taxi drivers.
“It impacts our community internalizing that… I think South Asians already carry a level of shame and reputation-based identity,” she said.
People may be hesitant to seek public benefits or social support services, even if eligible, because of others operating off stereotypes and social hostility.
“There are people in our community who could use that, but it’s not reaching them,” Basu added.
In order to foster solidarity and self-advocacy moving forward, Kulkarni reminds the South Asian community that “too many people see themselves as immune to it [racial discrimination] because of economical or educational privilege, and that is part of the authoritarian playbook….We have to vote and organize. Democracy is not a spectator sport.”
South Asian and Indian American Impact Foundations Executive Director Chintan Patel echoed the sentiment.
“The America that we believe in that brought so many South Asian Americans to this country is one that doesn’t scapegoat vulnerable communities, trample fundamental rights, or pit communities against each other,” he told Newsweek. “The reality we are seeing now is so contrary to our experience.”