H-1B Visa scheme has been the bridge between American Big Tech companies and skilled Indian talent ever since the Internet boom. However US President Donald Trump is trying to dismantle this bridge with the introduction of “H-1B Visa reforms”, claiming excessive immigration of Indians using this route.
What are the new Reforms?
The new H-1B Visa rules have levied a mandatory 100,00$ amount on Tech companies importing Indian talent. These reforms have significantly concerned the Indian community living in the US. Although these reforms are not going to affect any existing H-1B Visa holders.
Is the “American Dream” alive for Indians?
Yet there is a sense of uncertainty among young professionals regarding the ‘American Dream’, since President Trump has announced these reforms companies have asked H-1B Visa holders to return the US immediately otherwise they are at risk of being denied entry.
Motives behind these reforms?
Interestingly these reforms are seen as measures to make hiring skilled talent from abroad difficult for companies in the US. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia spoke on this matter that he and his family would not have been able to migrate from Taiwan to the US if not for the H-1B Visa.
Since about 70 percent of H-1B Visa holders are Indians let us in this article analyse how some of the biggest Tech Leaders of ‘America’s Silicon Valley’ are products of the H-1B Visa scheme.
Satya Nadella
Microsoft CEO and chairman Satya Nadella was born and raised in India. After moving to the US in the 1990s, Nadella secured the highly coveted green card. However, he later riskily chose to relinquish his green card in order to bring his wife into the country through a H-1B visa application in 1994.
Sundar Pichai
Sundar Pichai was born in 1972 and grew up in Chennai. An IIT Kharagpur alumnus, he later attended Stanford for MS and Wharton for his MBA. Pichai joined Google in 2004 and was the driving force behind Google Chrome browser and the Chrome OS. He started the Google search tool bar when IE was the dominant browser. He became the CEO of Google in 2015, and eventually rose to become the head of parent company Alphabet as well.
Aravind Srinivas
Aravind Srinivas is the founder and CEO of Perplexity AI. He is an IIT Madras graduate who has been making waves in Silicon Valley. Pitted in a David versus Goliath slugfest against tech titans like Microsoft and Google, the AI search startup founded by Srinivas is now valued at $20 billion.
Jayshree Ullal
Jayshree Ullal is the CEO of cloud networking company Arista Networks. She was born in the United Kingdom and raised in New Delhi. At 16, Ullal moved to the US to attend college at San Francisco State University. She also has a master’s degree from Santa Clara University in California.
After graduating, Ullal worked at several prominent tech companies, including Fairchild Semiconductor, Advanced Micro Devices, and Cisco. Today, the 68-year-old is one of the handful of immigrant billionaires in the US with a net worth of $6 billion.
Arvind Krishna
Arvind Krishna is the current CEO and chairman of IBM. Born in Dehradun, India, Krishna is an IIT Kanpur alumnus and earned a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is believed to have moved to the US on an H1-B visa after joining IBM in the 1990s. Over the years, Krishna rose through the ranks as he took on various roles heading teams working on cloud and cognitive software at IBM. In 2020, Krishna was chosen to be IBM CEO.
