Athira Sethu
Kochi, 1 Dec 2025
In a recent podcast with Nikhil Kamath, Elon Musk echoed his view on the H-1B visa issue, citing misappropriation by a number of outsourcing companies. He again elaborated that some firms have taken undue advantage by snatching away the very purpose of the program. His views had come when the US government, under the Trump presidency, is mulling over plans to charge higher fees for H-1B applications. The underlying intention of this policy has been to save American jobs and shrink the number of foreign employees in the technology industry.
It includes charging companies hiring foreign workers a new application fee of $100,000. This has increased the number of denials for Indian tech companies like HCL America, LTIMindtree, and Cognizant, despite US tech giants like Amazon and Google being given easy approvals. The Trump administration contended that such moves were only part of a wider strategy toward ensuring the protection of American jobs, mainly in manufacturing industries.
Concerns over the future of outsourcing were also highlighted by ex-RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, who warned that proposed legislation, including the HIRE Act, might impose tariffs on outsourced services. That would impact India’s IT and service exports as there is already a fear that tariffs will soon hit services besides goods. On immigration, too, Trump’s stance has evolved over time from a belief that America has enough homegrown talent to meet the requirements of its high-tech sectors to a belief that some specialized skills are still in short supply and foreign talent will be needed to fill the gaps.
