America Last: How U.S. Policy on Temporary Work Visas Morphed Into a Backdoor Trade Deal with India That Is Crushing Americans

There is an unsettling reality in Washington which few are willing to confront: Over the past decade, India has skillfully weaponized the U.S. visa system, turning it into a tool for national gain at the expense of multitudes of American workers.

Backed by relentless lobbying from powerful trade groups like the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Indian multinational enterprises have flooded the American labor market with foreign workers, displacing U.S. citizens and reshaping entire industries under the guise of “partnership.”

What was once sold as a diplomatic and economic alliance rooted in shared prosperity has proven to be anything but mutual. Instead, it has led to a quiet yet deliberate transfer of American jobs, wealth, and technological leverage:

[A] transfer that stands as one of the most costly

misjudgments in modern U.S. trade and labor history.

While federal officials continue to tout a “resilient economy,” the reality for millions of American workers is starkly different. The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) reports nearly 25% of working-age Americans are “functionally unemployed,” meaning they are jobless, underemployed or earning below a living wage. This figure includes more than 5.7 million people excluded from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ official count simply because they have given up actively looking for work.

Yet, even in the face of this harsh reality, the U.S. government continues to approve more than 120,000 new H-1B visas each year, injecting more foreign labor into a collapsing job market. This is no longer a policy oversight, rather a deliberate betrayal of American workers.

To understand India’s role in shaping American employment policy, one must examine the machinery behind it: the India lobby. This powerful and meticulously coordinated network includes government-affiliated industry bodies, multinational corporations and diaspora-driven advocacy groups, all working to align U.S. policy with India’s economic interests. At its core, the lobby operates around three strategic objectives: securing preferential access to the U.S. labor market, eliminating trade barriers that constrain Indian firms, and shaping favorable narratives around immigration, globalization and bilateral partnership.

The H-1B visa, originally intended as a narrow solution for employers who could not find qualified U.S. workers, was repackaged by the U.S.-India Business Council as “a critical tool in strengthening bilateral trade and investment.” In reality, it had become one of India’s most potent economic levers: a trade strategy disguised as a talent pipeline, backed by a relentless lobbying machine willing to cry foul and “discrimination” at any attempt to put American workers first.

India strategically frames “protectionism” as a pejorative term to discredit any U.S. policy that prioritizes American workers or enforces immigration and trade laws, casting such measures as discriminatory or anti-global rather than lawful and necessary. But as it turns out the “protectionism” was seriously warranted all along.

Indian IT giants did not merely displace individual U.S. workers; they systematically undercut entire sectors, including domestic staffing firms, by deploying a business model rooted in low-cost H‑1B labor and aggressive offshoring. And the fallout did not stop with workers. American staffing companies, once the backbone of domestic talent pipelines, have either shuttered under the weight of unfair wage competition or opted to outsource themselves.

India has made no secret of its strategy. As early as 2009, both the CII and Indian ambassadors urged U.S. lawmakers to treat H-1B access as a trade concession no different than tariffs or market entry rights. During high-level meetings with U.S. Chamber of Commerce executives and members of Congress, CII consistently tied “skilled labor mobility” to broader trade negotiations.

India’s gambit was simple: Use visas as a form of leverage to gain access to American markets, technology, and capital while avoiding reciprocal commitments. In 2020, Indian officials expressed optimism The Obiden Regime would go soft on immigration policy.

By 2021, India had become the top recipient of H-1Bs and the largest source of foreign students in the U.S., with over 100,000 Indian students attending American universities.

Since Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025, India has intensified its strategic push on multiple fronts, visa diplomacy, trade and geopolitical coordination, all clearly aimed at preserving its advantaged position in the U.S. labor market. And too, India ranks as the third-largest source of illegal aliens in the United States, with nearly 90,000 Indian nationals arrested attempting to cross the U.S. border illegally in 2023 alone.

In sum, India’s 2025 strategy is unambiguous: It has doubled down on curated visa access, diplomatic coordination on immigration and trade, and national capacity building. The result has preserved its leverage in the U.S. labor market.

India played the long game. American leaders folded. And U.S. workers were left behind.