Trump's Green Card Curbs Put the American Dream Out of Reach for Many Indian Tech Workers

For generations of Indian engineers, the path to an American life followed a script most could recite. Earn an engineering degree, land a job at a technology services firm, get posted to the US, renew the H-1B visa again and again, and finally receive the green card that confers permanent residency. This month, that script took a heavy blow.

Earlier in October, the US announced that eight technology companies would be suspended from hiring skilled foreign workers on a permanent basis through a widely used pathway. The list includes Microsoft and the Indian firms Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and HCL Technologies. New and pending applications under the Permanent Labor Certification Program, known as PERM, have been frozen.

The timing matters because of how the system works. Indians hold a majority of H-1B visas, the temporary visa for specialists, and many have relied on PERM as the step toward a green card and eventually citizenship. The suspension fits with the Trump administration's wider push for stricter skilled-worker rules, which tech firms have already been adjusting to. For that reason, experts say the effect on the businesses themselves may be small.

The companies' own numbers point the same way. Nasscom, the trade association for India's $300bn (£226bn) technology industry, says Indian firms have cut their reliance on H-1B visas and are hiring more locally, so relatively few employees move from H-1B to permanent residency through PERM. Wipro said more than 80% of its US workforce is locally hired. TCS said its PERM applications were in single digits over the last two years. Microsoft said it files for H-1B visas mostly to retain existing staff. Business Standard, citing PERM Tracker, reported that TCS filings fell to two in 2025-26 from 513 the year before and 1,804 the year before that, with no records found for Infosys and Wipro in 2025-26. HDFC Securities said the impact would be minimal, since PERM-linked jobs are a small share of revenue. The BBC emailed all eight companies about the impact and how they were supporting affected US employees; none replied.

The human cost is where the weight falls. A senior executive at one of the eight firms, speaking anonymously, said the restriction will not break the business but is far more intense at a personal level. He described people who have spent years in the US with green card applications that have not moved. Even those ready to return to India, he said, face children who do not want to go because they grew up in America.

The climate around the decision is also fraught. Researchers at Stop AAPI Hate have reported a sharp rise in anti-South Asian online sentiment since the 2024 US election, with Indian immigrants and H-1B holders frequent targets. Announcing the PERM restriction, Vice President JD Vance referred to H-1B holders as "foreign indentured servants". He later called the rhetoric "imperfect", but India's foreign ministry had already described it as "unwarranted" and "deeply offensive" because of its colonial connotation.

The alternatives are narrow. Poorvi Chothani of the immigration firm LawQuest said many came to the US borrowing heavily to study and build careers, and now have fewer options and less capacity to absorb costs. Ahmet Gulek of Stanford's Immigration Policy Lab noted that moving to a firm outside the suspension is possible, but it is unclear whether such firms would hire immigrants given "the fear of retaliation", and layoffs, cost-cutting and AI adoption have made job changes harder. Categories for people with exceptional accomplishments or work serving national interests bypass PERM, and investing at least $800,000 in eligible US enterprises can qualify someone through EB-5. Gulek warns some of these routes may be targeted next, and Chothani says some people want to stay so badly that they are considering EB-5 without the capital for it.

The backlog was already enormous. According to the National Foundation for American Policy, nearly one million Indian nationals were waiting for employment-based green cards as of December 2025, some 79% of all pending applications. Its report projects waits of five to 179 years for highly skilled Indians filing from January 2026, depending on category. Earlier, a $100,000 fee on certain new H-1B petitions was struck down by federal courts, and the administration has since proposed a $70,000 fee for universities recommending international students for the post-study work programme.

Like those measures, the PERM suspension may be challenged in federal court. An Indian professional who recently moved to an H-1B after a long wait told the BBC the trend is not changing soon, adding that both major parties agree the laws need reform even if they disagree on how. Some research suggests restrictions may move jobs to India rather than to American workers, and industry players say offshoring is already rising. Experts expect US demand for Indian tech talent to endure; what may change is how it is tapped, and what Indian professionals expect from a future in America.