The Free Press
Last spring, Atal Agarwal, 31, quit his job at the San Francisco office of Businessolver, a healthcare-focused tech company. The decision meant leaving not only his job but the United States as well, and returning to India, where he was born.
The American dream, he concluded, was no longer worth the cost.
With bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology—India’s most prestigious engineering institution, which educated Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai—Agarwal had arrived in the U.S. in 2017 to pursue a graduate degree in technology management at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“The possibilities felt endless. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, to build something revolutionary, like Elon Musk,” he told me.
But after he entered the workforce, those possibilities looked a lot more limited—solely because of his immigration status. After graduation, he applied for the job at Businessolver, and the company offered to sponsor his H-1B visa. Agarwal enjoyed working there, but the future was still daunting: If he ever wanted to quit, he’d have two months to either leave the country or find another employer willing to sponsor him. There was no path under the H-1B program for him to strike out on his own and pursue his dream of building an AI-focused start-up in the U.S.
“I felt chained,” Agarwal said. “Every day I felt like my dreams were being crushed. I was heading in a direction I didn’t want to go.”
The H-1B visa—which has recently become a point of intense debate—was introduced in 1990, and it allows U.S. companies to employ skilled foreign workers in fields like information technology, engineering, and medicine. It is capped at 65,000 visas annually, with 20,000 additional spots for U.S. master’s degree holders. Despite growing demand for skilled workers, these caps have remained unchanged for two decades, and the large number of applicants means that the fate of many of these accomplished people is decided by a lottery.
The H-1B remains a popular visa for skilled workers who can get it, because it can serve as a pathway to obtaining an employment-based green card, which allows the holder to live and work permanently in the U.S. Employment-based green cards are capped by law at 140,000 a year—although people can seek green cards under other categories as well, for example, if they’re an immediate family member of a U.S. citizen.
Moreover, in any given year, no more than 7 percent of America’s employment-based green cards can go to applicants from a single country. This hits applicants from India the hardest, because their country has both the world’s largest population and many highly skilled workers seeking opportunities in the U.S.
This path toward the American dream was thrown into the spotlight late last year when president-elect Donald Trump nominated tech entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan to be senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence. Krishnan has called for the removal of country-specific caps on green cards, citing the unfair impact on skilled workers from large countries like India. His nomination triggered a fierce debate about skilled immigration.
Critics of the H-1B program, such as Democratic senator Bernie Sanders and some within MAGA World, contend that it displaces American workers. Advocates, including Trump and Musk—an immigrant himself—argue that the H-1B program is essential for maintaining America’s competitive edge in technology and innovation.
But even champions of skilled immigration argue that the H-1B system needs an overhaul.
David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, estimates that over 1.1 million Indians, mostly with advanced degrees, are waiting for one of America’s limited number of green cards, and 90 percent of them have H-1B visas. Many face decades-long waits, with 400,000 likely to die before obtaining one.
“The H-1B visa is a bad system because it’s keeping people out and causing us to lose talent. We will never know of all of the lost innovations and productivity that would have happened if we had a much better immigration system for the last 30 years,” Bier told me. “It’s amazing how many incredibly successful people we’re forcing to wait to become Americans.”
That includes Agarwal. For him, the breaking point came in 2022, when he was laid off. Under H-1B rules, he had 60 days to find another job and a new sponsor or leave the country. Although he managed to secure another position, the experience left him disillusioned, because he knew he could spend his whole life waiting for a green card.
“I was dying internally. The thought of being in my 40s, still stuck on an H-1B and waiting for a green card, tied to a job I may not especially like, and not being able to set up my own company was unbearable,” he said. “I couldn’t see a future for myself in America.”
It’s a sentiment I’ve heard time and time again. In reporting this story, I spoke to two dozen highly skilled Indian professionals—including doctors, teachers, scientists, and engineers—who have been trapped in a green card backlog, some for up to 15 years. Despite the uncertainty, they’ve built lives in the U.S.—buying homes, raising kids who are American citizens—without any guarantee of being American themselves.
Raj Karnatak, 44, is a critical-care physician in Milwaukee who spends 12-hour shifts tending to patients on life support or recovering from transplants. He arrived in the U.S. in 2008, and has been serving America ever since, helping to save lives during Hurricane Sandy and during the pandemic. But he’s not yet been offered a green card.
“The stress of being on an H-1B is relentless,” he told me. “You’re constantly hanging by a thread. It keeps me up at night.”
“The irony isn’t lost on me. Illegal aliens walk right in and get benefits, while I save American lives, providing a service that Americans need, yet my own family’s future in America feels precarious.”
Karnatak’s wife, Namita, a pediatric psychiatrist, is also on an H-1B visa, while their 11-month-old son, Advik, is an American citizen. The birth of his child was a turning point. Karnatak applied for an EB-1 visa, colloquially called an “Einstein visa.” It is reserved for individuals with extraordinary abilities. Melania Trump, as a top model from Slovenia, was a recipient of this visa, which offers a fast track to permanent residency.
But even the EB-1 visa application process allows talented individuals to slip through America’s fingers. Bier, the immigration expert at Cato, noted that Elon Musk wasn’t initially successful in getting one, as Musk himself acknowledged. “The government got Elon Musk, the most successful human being in terms of market impact in the history of the United States, wrong,” Bier told me.
Though Karnatak’s exceptional qualifications earned him EB-1 status in July 2024 and lifted him out of the green card backlog, he admits the stress isn’t entirely behind him. “The uncertainty isn’t over,” he said, as he still waits for a green card.
Anna Gorisch is an immigration attorney based in Austin, Texas, who helps her clients navigate the green card process. She told me that the H-1B visa and green card backlog is a “system set up for resentment.”
“We’re talking about 10 million people coming across the border illegally, but we’re mad about 65,000 H-1Bs per year? I think our priorities are a little out of whack.”
Supriya, 36, is a senior engineering manager in Seattle, working at a major tech firm. (She asked that we not print her surname.) Supriya came to the U.S. in 2009 to do a master’s program in information systems at Northeastern University. She’s on an H-1B visa and has been in the green card backlog since 2016.
When I asked Supriya why she chooses to endure this ongoing uncertainty, she echoed what everyone else told me: “America is still the place to be. Merit is rewarded in every aspect of life—except when it comes to the green card system.
“I love America. I’ve put my blood and soul into America. I haven’t committed any crimes, I pay my taxes on time, and have assimilated as much as I can, but I can’t change my country of birth. That’s an immutable factor,” Supriya told me.
Research by Britta Glennon, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, shows that when multinational companies cannot get the talent they need in the U.S. because of shortages in H-1B visas, they will invest more in other countries and hire skilled talent there instead.
“Policymakers should consider that restrictive immigration policies implemented with the intent to protect native jobs could backfire and instead have the unintended consequence of offshoring jobs,” Glennon told me.
Rahul Menon, 31, is an oil and gas engineer who works for a Texas-based firm and lives in Rhode Island. He’s on an H-1B visa and his green card application is about to join the large backlog of India-born applicants.
“We’re not here to replace American workers or here to steal your jobs. We are here because there was actually a need for our services, and we’re here to fulfill that need,” Menon told me.
Indeed, the oil and gas industry in America is grappling with a growing labor shortage, underscored by dwindling enrollment in petroleum engineering programs and a noticeable reluctance among young professionals to join the sector.
“I feel like America is torn between its core capitalist spirit which brought folks like me here, and the economic nationalism that you’re seeing right now,” Menon told me. But he still wants to be in America. “The freedom I experience here is unlike anywhere else despite the green card backlog.”
Agarwal, who gave up on his entrepreneurial pursuits in the U.S., grew up in poverty in a small town in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest, and one of its poorest, states. He told me that there were times his parents couldn’t afford to put food on the table, let alone pay his school fees. He worked hard to get to America, where he lived a life of relative affluence. But he still couldn’t fulfill his aspirations. “I got freedom from poverty, but the H-1B visa was an even greater challenge.”
In December 2023, a year before he left for India, Agarwal went to the White House and met members of Congress to make the case for unblocking the green card backlog for Indians. The experience left him “frustrated,” because he felt that lawmakers weren’t serious about fixing the problem.
“I knew I couldn’t bet my future on these people. I have got to take my own call and take control of my life,” he told me.
Back in India, he’s now founded his own company, something he wasn’t allowed to do in the U.S. on an H-1B visa. His start-up, Open Sphere, is an AI-powered app that helps top international talent streamline their visa and green card applications. Having been unable to fulfill the American dream, he’s now living the Indian dream, Agarwal told me.
“I feel a lot of relief that I’m not on an H-1B visa. I feel liberated now.”
