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06-01-2025
Bureau Report
NEW DELHI: The movement of skilled professionals is an important part of India-US ties and benefits both countries, New Delhi said on Friday amid a debate over H-1B visas on which President-elect Donald Trump and his backer Elon Musk commented recently.
India, known for its massive pool of IT professionals, many of whom work across the world, accounts for the bulk of such visas issued by the United States.
Late last month, Trump said he fully backed the H1B program for foreign workers opposed by some of his supporters after Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, opens new tab and SpaceX, vowed to go to “war” to defend it.
India said such visas provided mutual benefits.
“Our countries have a strong and growing economic and technological partnership and within this ambit, mobility of skilled professionals is an important component,” India’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal, told a press conference when asked about the H1B visa discussions in the US.
“India-US economic ties benefit a lot from the technical expertise provided by skilled professionals, with both sides leveraging their strengths and competitive value. We look forward to further deepening India-US economic ties which are to our mutual benefit.”
India received about 78% of the 265,777 H1B visas issued by the United States in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2023.
The country is keen to strengthen ties under Trump, Jaiswal said, noting that India’s foreign minister and foreign secretary recently visited the United States and held meetings with Trump’s transition team.
Earlier, President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday sided with key supporter and billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk in a public dispute over the use of the H-1B visa, saying he fully backs the program for foreign tech workers opposed by some of his supporters.
Trump, who moved to limit the visas’ use during his first presidency, told The New York Post on Saturday he was likewise in favor of the visa program.
“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” he was quoted as saying.
Musk, a naturalized US citizen born in South Africa, has held an H-1B visa, and his electric-car company Tesla obtained 724 of the visas this year. H-1B visas are typically for three-year periods, though holders can extend them or apply for green cards.
The altercation was set off earlier this week by far-right activists who criticized Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian American venture capitalist, to be an adviser on artificial intelligence, saying he would have influence on the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Musk’s tweet was directed at Trump’s supporters and immigration hard-liners who have increasingly pushed for the H-1B visa program to be scrapped amid a heated debate over immigration and the place of skilled immigrants and foreign workers brought into the country on work visas.
On Friday, Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump confidante, critiqued “big tech oligarchs” for supporting the H-1B program and cast immigration as a threat to Western civilization. In response, Musk and many other tech billionaires drew a line between what they view as legal immigration and illegal immigration.
Trump has promised to deport all immigrants who are in the US illegally, deploy tariffs to help create more jobs for American citizens and severely restrict immigration.
