How the H-1B visa changed American food culture forever
Visa wives, or the spouses of H-1B workers, have had a big hand in taking Indian food to the place it occupies today in the US.
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“Bombay Based Now US Settled Lauva Patel boy MS Computer Science (US) H-1B Visa, 27/ 6 ft arriving November for marriage.” This matrimonial ad ran in The Times of India on October 24, 1993. It was one of the first mentions in the newspaper of the H-1B visa, which has been roiling relations between Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s MAGA maniacs since December.
The H-1B visa category was created in 1990 to allow US employers to get specialist workers because, as Gaurav Sabnis notes in Scroll, their demand for tech workers is far more than the US can provide. When the category was created, H-1B visas were projected as the short-term fix for this problem. They are explicitly temporary and, if terminated, holders must return to their home country.
Musk and his fellow technocrats support bringing highly skilled foreign workers to the US. But anti-immigration zealots note how huge numbers, particularly from India, have used H-1B visas to get a toehold into the citizenship process. Once in the US, these temporary workers become irreplaceable and their employers eventually sponsor their green cards for permanent residency. In this view, the H-1B category is a Trojan Horse for migrants and Trump must end it, as he promised in the past....
