OPINION | Two Countries, One Outcome: Why H-1B fees aren’t the real problem

India’s outrage at U.S. visa rules misses the bigger problem at home.

In a telling comment highlighted in The World’s Worst Trade, Bill Clinton admitted: “Globalization didn’t fail. The private sector outfoxed the government. Globalization did make the United States as a whole wealthier. But the obligation to ensure that its gains were widely shared was only identified, never fulfilled.”

That failure explains today’s backlash.

The debate over tariffs and the sharp increase in H-1B visa fees must be seen in this context — as Washington’s attempt to claw back a share of globalization’s spoils, not as an attack on talent or trade.

Two countries, one complicity

In both the U.S. and India, the private sector outfoxed the state. In the U.S., Wall Street and Silicon Valley were the biggest beneficiaries, prioritizing near-term margins and asset-light models while transferring technology and jobs to China.

The result was the hollowing out of Middle America and the surge in what economists now call “deaths of despair.” Between 2005 and 2024, more than 2.5 million Americans lost their lives to drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related illnesses — a staggering human cost of globalization’s imbalances.

In India, IT services firms that benefited from tax holidays and subsidized land were content to maintain supernormal margins rather than reinvest in products or new technology.

Shareholders won, the State lost

The U.S. got richer, but Washington got weaker. Federal debt has ballooned from $4.9 trillion in 1995 to over $37 trillion in 2025, while U.S. market capitalization surged from $7.6 trillion to over $62.8 trillion. The state financed safety nets, defense, and research, while the private sector captured the gains. In short: shareholders won; the state lost.

America won’t lose talent

Rising visa fees won’t scare talent away: The U.S. already has multiple pipelines for exceptional people: O-1 visas for extraordinary ability, L-1 transfers for intra-company mobility, and GCCs in India that funnel skilled workers into the system. America remains the world’s premier talent magnet — it already has the best, and it will keep getting them.

Rounding error for Big Tech

For Big Tech, $100,000 is pocket change: Trillion-dollar firms routinely pay half-billion to billion-dollar packages to secure top AI researchers, making the new H-1B fee immaterial — a rounding error.

Anger should be over $5,000 annual engineer salaries, not H-1Bs

India’s outrage at U.S. visa rules misses the bigger problem at home.

H-1Bs are a relatively recent phenomenon — the program only scaled in the 1990s, and India was lucky that its founding fathers had invested in higher education compared to other countries. 

But over the past 10–15 years, little meaningful change has been made to the education system. Instead, the IIT brand has been diluted by opening more campuses, chasing quantity over quality.

Meanwhile, entry-level engineers still earn about $5,000 a year — a stark reminder of too many graduates and too few quality jobs. Instead of building a handful of world-class universities like China’s Tsinghua or Peking, India kept churning out engineering colleges.

If outrage is warranted, it should be over rising education costs, the growing role of private equity and politicians in the education system, and a syllabus that has failed to adapt to rapid technological and industrial changes.

The $40B lifeline and diaspora dividend

Every year, Indian IT professionals in the U.S. wire home around $40 billion — a recurring inflow that stabilizes the rupee and supports domestic consumption. Beyond remittances, India’s IT diaspora has made U.S. firms more comfortable outsourcing to India than to most other countries.

Existing H-1Bs: Indian professionals’ value just went up

For Indians already in the U.S., existing H-1Bs have become more valuable. Unlike in the UK or Dubai, where work permits are tied to a single employer, an H-1B offers portability and a pathway to residency. The rise in fees simply means the value of existing H-1Bs just went up — and remittances could increase.

Implications and takeaway

* America is clawing back: Tariffs and H-1B fees are Washington’s way of reclaiming a slice of globalization’s spoils. For Big Tech, the costs are trivial — and U.S. talent dominance remains intact.

* India must reinvest, not just remit:IT services firms grew too comfortable protecting margins and stock prices. If Infosys had gone ahead with its $1billion investment in OpenAI in 2015 (today worth ~$45billion), India’s AI story might have been very different. The real challenge now is breaking out of complacency and building a stronger base in skills, education, and industry.

* More GCCs for India: The $100,000 H-1B fee hike is already pushing Wall Street banks and U.S. firms to rely more on Global Capability Centers (GCCs) in India, deepening their presence in tech hubs as an alternative to U.S. hiring.

* Europe’s Opening:China is already experimenting with special visa categories for top talent. For Europe, this moment represents an opportunity to level the playing field with the U.S. by making itself more attractive to global professionals.

Bottom line: Elites in both America and India have been the biggest beneficiaries of globalization. The next phase must spread the benefits beyond elites — to working families in both America and India — or the backlash will only grow stronger.

(Amit Bhartia is Portfolio Manager at Delorean Partners.)

Views are personal and do not represent the stance of this publication.