Subu Kota, founder and Chairman of The Boston Group, U.S.A., making a point during an interaction with The Hindu in Hyderabad.
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Amid speculation over H-1B policy and days ahead of Donald Trump’s Presidential oath-taking ceremony in the United States of America, the IT industry feels there will be tougher measures on illegal immigrants. The President-elect will ignore the negative impact of such a measure and walk the talk on illegal immigrants, opine industry leaders.

Speaking exclusively to The Hindu here, the Non-Resident Indian from Andhra Pradesh and founder and Chairman of The Boston Group (1988), U.S.A., Subu Kota says, ‘‘Mr. Trump is back with the motto of controlling illegal immigration. He has a challenging task of fixing the problem. How to fix it, and getting the decision passed through the Congress is not a simple thing.’‘

Data | Republican party supporters and Donald Trump’s team disagree on H1B immigration debate 

‘’But is it practical? It’s not. Would he do that? To prove a point, he would do that. In the recent times, even though he hasn’t taken the oath, he has sent several plane loads of people to Brazil and several plane loads of people to India also,” he adds.

Mr. Subu Kota, who belongs to the first generation NRIs, started The Boston Group and brought thousands of Indian software professionals through H1B process to the U.S.A. since late 1980s, while Infosys has done the same thing from India. He is also closely associated with the US politics and involved in Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. He was in Hyderabad to attend KATALYST, a global entrepreneurs summit by the American Progressive Telugu Association last week-end.

Uncertainty

‘’What could happen to the Indian programmers during Trump era is a question mark because nobody has touched the aspect of immigration in the past 35 years. No matter how many Presidents changed, the Congress has not agreed on what is the right thing to do in immigration,’‘ he says.

‘’The H-1B has benefited several Indians, especially Telugu people, and contributed a lot to the U.S. and Indian economies. Controlling illegal immigration in the U.S., though may not be practical, would open up multiple opportunities to Indian youth in legal immigration, gives access to best of career opportunities in the U.S. and will be a game changer,’‘ observes Mr. Subu Kota, who hails from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.

Burden on people

“Mr. Trump said he will send back all the illegal immigrants but it’s not practical as most of them have become a part of the workforce in America. So, sending them back means enhanced employment costs and price rise which could be an unnecessary burden on people. But, unlike other Presidents, Mr. Trump thinks out of the box, he says out of box and he does also,” he explains.

Also Read | Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, debate on H1B visas intensifies

Dependable workforce

On the U.S. view of Indian immigrants, he says, way back, the Press in the U.S. called the H-1B process a brain drain from India. Now the U.S. economy thinks they can count on India as a partner in manufacturing and other aspects. “Over a period of time, we became product and technical support for the industry, and later technical support for local leaders. If a President was addressing, most probably the presentation was made by one of our people. Technology-wise, they depended on us. We became directors but never became Presidents. Over the years, we earned the trust and credibility because of our discipline and hard work. Now, we are leading over 10% of the Fortune 500 companies. We have leadership such as Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Google’s Sundar Pichai and several to name,” Mr. Subu Kota sums up.

Washington, United States:

Donald Trump weighed in Saturday in a bitter debate dividing his traditional supporters and tech barrons like Elon Musk, saying that he backs a special visa program that helps highly skilled workers enter the country.

“I’ve always liked the (H1-B) visas, I have always been in favor of the visas, that’s why we have them” at Trump-owned facilities, the president-elect told the New York Post in his first public comments on the matter since it flared up this week.

An angry back-and-forth, largely between Silicon Valley’s Musk and traditional anti-immigration Trump backers, has erupted in fiery fashion, with Musk even vowing to “go to war” over the issue.

Trump’s insistent calls for sharp curbs on immigration were central to his election victory in November over President Joe Biden. He has vowed to deport all undocumented immigrants and limit legal immigration.

But tech entrepreneurs like Tesla’s Musk — as well as Vivek Ramaswamy, who with Musk is to co-chair a government cost-cutting panel under Trump — say the United States produces too few highly skilled graduates, and they fervently champion the H1-B program.  

Musk, who himself migrated from South Africa on an H1-B, posted Thursday on his X platform that luring elite engineering talent from abroad was “essential for America to keep winning.”

Adding acrimony to the debate was a post from Ramaswamy, the son of immigrants from India, who deplored an “American culture” that he said venerates mediocrity, adding that the United States risks having “our asses handed to us by China.”

That angered several prominent conservatives who were backing Trump long before Musk noisily joined their cause this year, going on to pump more than $250 million into the Republican’s campaign.

“Looking forward to the inevitable divorce between President Trump and Big Tech,” said Laura Loomer, a far-right MAGA figure known for her conspiracy theories, who often flew with Trump on his campaign plane.

“We have to protect President Trump from the technocrats.” 

She and others said Trump should be promoting American workers and further limiting immigration.

‘MAGA civil war’

Musk, who had already infuriated some Republicans after leading an online campaign that helped tank a bipartisan budget deal last week, fired back at his critics.

Posting on X, the social media site he owns, he warned of a “MAGA civil war.” 

Musk bluntly swore at one critic, saying, “I will go to war on this issue.”

That, in turn, drew a volley from Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who wrote on the Gettr platform that the H1-B program brings in migrants who are essentially “indentured servants” working for less than American citizens would.

In a striking jab at Trump’s close friend Musk, Bannon called the Tesla CEO a “toddler.”

Some of Trump’s original backers say they fear he is falling under the sway of big donors from the tech world like Musk and drifting away from his campaign promises. 

It was not immediately clear whether Trump’s remarks might soothe the intraparty strife, which has exposed just how contentious changing the immigration system might be once he takes office in January.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)