H-1B visa fee hike: Amid Trump's shock, Yale scholar says ‘every country would kill to get IIT graduates’
Gautam Mukunda, a Yale scholar criticized the US decision to increase H-1B visa fees to $100,000, arguing it jeopardizes America's advantage in attracting top talent from around the world, particularly IIT graduates from India, who are in high demand in other countries.
Yale scholar Gautam Mukunda slammed US President Donald Trump's decision to increase the H-1B visa fee to $100,000, warning that such a move would harm America's long-standing advantage to attract world-class talent.
Mukunda reiterated that the policy change is “economically unsound” and would put the US at a disadvantage in the global race to hire highly qualified professionals, especially as other countries become increasingly competitive to tap the same pool of talent.
Increasing demand for IIT graduates
The scholar emphasised that top graduates, particularly from premier institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), are in high demand in other countries. He believes that by imposing this new policy, the US is essentially throwing away this advantage, as every other country would eagerly pursue these talented individuals.
He noted that “every country in the world would kill to get the best IIT graduates”. “But America is throwing this asset away for no reason. This H1B visa decision makes no sense at all,” he added.
Top talent in the US who are H-1B visa product
Among different industries, tech workers make up one of the largest groups of H-1B visa recipients. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple were among the companies that employed the most H-1B visa holders last year.
Some of the most well-known tech industry leaders, such as Tesla's Elon Musk, Alphabet's chief executive Sundar Pichai, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, were at one point H-1B visa holders.
Among these leaders, both Krishna and Pichai were IIT graduates who moved to the US. Krishna graduated from IIT Kanpur, whereas Pichai is an IIT Kharagpur graduate.
Netizens react to the statement
Reacting to Mukunda's statement, one user on X (formerly Twitter) wrote, “It’s wild because the US literally benefits from decades of India’s investment in education, then turns away top talent when it’s time to reap the rewards. The irony is that those same grads end up fueling innovation back home or in competing economies.”
Another user pointed out that “IIT graduates have created $7T in value through companies like Google, Microsoft, and Adobe, yet only 60 receive H1Bs annually versus 850 from single mass-production universities,” adding that countries like Canada, Germany, and the UK are now targeting this displaced talent.
However, the comments were divided. One user, among many others, asked, “Why doesn’t India keep all the IIT graduates in India if they are so exceptional?”
All about the H-1B visa fee hike
Donald Trump’s administration announced on Friday that it has hiked the annual fee on the H-1B visa from a few thousand dollars to $100,000, sending shockwaves throughout the talent hiring industry.
The H-1B is a type of US visa that allows companies to hire foreign workers in skilled occupations such as IT, healthcare, and engineering. Every year, thousands of workers relocate to America on an H-1B visa, with around half a million people currently settled in America as visa holders, the Washington Post reported.