Soon after graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, Amit Mehta came to Charlotte, North Carolina in 1999 to work in information technology (IT) for a multinational firm, Dassault Systèmes.
His employer sponsored him for a H-1B visa, a program designed to help businesses find foreign workers in specialty occupations, which can range from engineering to medicine.
Back then, he said, Charlotte had a much smaller population of people of South Asian descent.
"The majority of the Indians then were people who had moved in the '70s and '80s, primarily small business owners, hotel owners," Mehta said. "And then with the IT boom is when a lot of Indians moved to Charlotte"
Now, in North Carolina, people from India are the second-largest group of foreign-born residents, after those born in Mexico, according to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau reviewed by The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Twenty five years later, Mehta is a U.S. citizen and a cybersecurity manager for one of the city's large financial institutions. Charlotte is the corporate headquarters of Bank of America, and the largest employment center for Wells Fargo.
"It has become a home away from home for us," Mehta said.
He says over time he's seen how Indian-Americans have gone from mainly rank-and-file employees at the city's banks to being in charge. And he recently attended a reunion of graduates from the Indian Institute of Technology. He said 50 people attended — all of whom live in the Charlotte area.
"Now I look around and, you know, my last three bosses were Indian Americans," he said. "You are talking about C-level people running major businesses."
Workers from India make up a majority of the visa's recipients, according to recent data from the U.S. State Department. While Mehta credits the H-1B visa with providing a path for him to have a successful career in the U.S., others have recently questioned whether the program needs to be ended or changed.
A controversial program
H-1B visas have been controversial since they started being issued in the early 1990s. The program has been front-and-center in recent weeks, as some far-right Republicans debate its merits even before President-elect Donald Trump has started his second term.
Supporters say the visas are needed for the U.S. to keep its edge in technology. Critics say the H-1B program unfairly harms American workers by encouraging employers to lay them off or not hire them in favor of less expensive talent from overseas.
Mehta thinks visas for highly specialized workers are critical because there isn't enough technical talent in the country.
"That's a competitive advantage that we have as a country. We should not give that away," said Mehta.
Speaking on his War Room podcast in late December, Steve Bannon — a one-time advisor to President-elect Donald Trump called on the incoming administration to end the program entirely.
"We want it gone, and we demand that it's gone," he said. "And we're going to fight for this."
Bannon said H-1B visas had unfairly displaced American workers. And he called on the government to provide "reparations" for tech workers he asserts have been replaced by people on H-1B visas.
On the other side of the political spectrum, Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, also opposes the current H-1B visa program. In an op-ed published by Fox News earlier this month he wrote that he believes they are "disastrous for American workers."
As Bannon and others have attacked the program, newer Trump allies have been some of its most outspoken defenders. That includes tech billionaire Elon Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy has said the program could be improved. But in response to Bannon's call for a total elimination of H-1B visas, Ramaswamy said on X that the visas are needed, in part, because American culture has "venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long."
Shan Shanmuganathan, who works in Charlotte's IT sector, is heartened by Trump's appointees, many of whom, like Ramaswamy, are of South Asian descent.
"He's a New Yorker, right. So he naturally tends to work with all kinds of people," he said.
Shanmuganathan lives in a south Charlotte neighborhood, Stone Creek Ranch, that he says is home to a large Indian American community. He came to the U.S. on a H-1B in 1993. A Trump voter, he believes the H-1B program is rife with problems.
"What's happening right now is that it's gotten abused quite a bit, no question about it," he said.
The goal of the H-1B program is for employers to use the visas to find talent that's not readily available in the U.S. But Shanmuganathan said some businesses aren't necessarily looking for hard-to-get talent — just inexpensive talent.
"Corporations do this all the time, right? They replace their experienced workforce and bring in new college grads to cut costs," he said.
Shanmuganathan thinks the H-1B visas should not be sponsored by employers. Instead, he thinks people applying for a visa should be evaluated based on a point system. Once they are qualified, employers would compete to hire them. He thinks that would ensure salaries are competitive because the visa-holder has negotiating power.
As for Mehta, he said people don't realize that being in the U.S. on a H-1B visas comes with its own challenges.
"Life is not easy," he said, noting that the visa is only valid for a period of time. "And you are tied to an employer so you can't change jobs."
Mehta said the federal government should make sure H-1B recipients are not being paid less than their American colleagues.
He says his own experience with H-1B shows that his company needed him for his skills — not to save money.
"I still remember I was paid more than some of my peers," he said. "And I was not being kind of underpaid and the company was not just that to just bring cheap labor."
Trump weighs in
As for Trump, back in 2017, during his first term in office, he signed an executive order to strengthen his push to "Buy American and Hire American," saying H-1B visas "should include only the most skilled and highest paid applicants and should never, ever be used to replace American workers." The following year, he also tightened some rules for companies that seek workers through H-1B visas.
Speaking to the NY Post last month, he called it a "great program."
He told the newspaper: "I've always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That's why we have them."
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