How the Visa Debate for Foreign Workers Fuels Racism Against South Asians

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/us/politics/h1b-visa-debate-racism-south-asians.html

https://archive.ph/Zs8ns

How the Visa Debate for Foreign Workers Fuels Racism Against South Asians
A dispute over the impact of H-1B visas on U.S. workers has been overshadowed by racist rhetoric, with troubling echoes of the great replacement conspiracy theory.
By Amy Qin
Feb. 16, 2026 Updated 7:01 p.m. ET

The floor was open at a regular City Council meeting in Frisco, Texas, and several speakers, riled by a recent viral video over visas for specialized foreign workers, wanted to make their views known. They did not mince words about the program.

The visa, called H-1B, had led to an “Indian takeover” of their city. The program, some said without citing proof, was full of “fraudsters” and “low-quality scammers.”

A few people claimed an even broader racist conspiracy theory, accusing Western elites and corporations of seeking to replace and disempower white Americans.

Created in 1990, the H-1B program allows up to 85,000 foreign workers to fill specialized roles in the United States every year. In 2023, around three-quarters of the 400,000 or so approved H-1B applications were for workers from India, according to Pew Research Center. That same year, Dallas-Fort Worth ranked fourth among metropolitan areas for approved H-1B applications. Many of these visa holders work as software programmers and computer engineers.

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[RandomNumbers]

1. If you walk into an office, somewhere in the U.S., of 20 people and all but one (or zero) is white

what do you think?

Same office, only this time, all but one appear to be South Asian.

Similar thoughts?

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note that I am a software engineer who has lived the actual impacts of the H-1B program. It is not about the people as individuals, it is about the usual short-sighted bottom-line orientation of greedy corporate owners who would rather import labor under an indentured servitude program than hire Americans who can more easily change jobs when they get shit on.

The result in the IT office is the same whether it's refusal to hire blacks, or bending over backwards to get that H-1B by hook or by crook (and 'crook' applies more often than you probably think). Either way, the IT office ends up being a near monoculture, and African Americans are unlikely to be part of it. But one big difference - with the H-1Bs on board in IT, now there's room in the diversity score for other departments (*cough* sales *cough*) to be lily white (if the corporate owners think that's better for their objectives, which they usually do).

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BUT, the idea that "Western elites and corporations of seeking to replace and disempower white Americans" is fucking ludicrous. H-1B does, in fact, have the impact of driving down wages and job opportunities for some white Americans, but that never was the aim, it is just a side-effect.

Re: scammers and fraudsters ... sigh, yes there is proof ... or at least the evidence of our eyes, for many of us in the IT world. But a big part of it is just the truly shitty way the program is designed. I've seen H-1Bs hired that don't know even the fundamentals but have some b.s. on their resume. I've even had an (also H-1B) team leader fire one after a few days because even he saw this guy was clueless. Now, if this is supposed to be a "high-skilled" visa program, how the HELL does someone that clueless get in the door? Well, they just have to lie on their resume, scam their way onto the candidate list ... then, get this! ... they LITERALLY 'win the lottery'. Because that is how this so-called 'high-skilled visa' program is run.

Not everyone who opposes H-1B or wants the program fixed is a racist. I have no issues with people of any ethnicity as a rule, and have worked with a lot of great people from India or thereabouts. But also some turds ... every group has some of both, you know?

It's horrible for people to make this a racial thing. Just fix the damn program so that the people who get these visas are competent and truly have skills not easily found or trained here. Then there'd be a whole lot less to bitch about.