A Closed Door in the U.S. Opens a New Chapter for India's Tech Industry

For a generation, America's H-1B visa was the golden ticket for India's top tech talent. Today, that door is closing. A sustained tightening of U.S. work visa policies has rerouted the career paths of thousands of engineers, setting off a chain reaction from Silicon Valley to Bangalore.

The change is structural. With visa denial rates up and green card waits for Indian nationals stretching into decades, the old model is broken. Major U.S. tech firms, long dependent on this pipeline, are executing a pivot they'd been considering for years: they're moving the jobs to where the talent already lives.

India is the primary beneficiary, but it's a complex win. The country's domestic tech hubs are booming as Global Capability Centers (GCCs) for firms like JPMorgan, Google, and Microsoft expand beyond support roles into core product development. For senior engineers, this means high-impact work and salaries once unthinkable in India, though still far below U.S. levels. This salary differential continues to drive corporate investment.

Yet the surge is creating a split market. While top engineers with FAANG experience command premium pay, mainstream IT services firms like Infosys and Wipro face pressure. Their traditional model, partly built on sending workers to the U.S. on visas, is under strain, pushing them to hire more locally in America and automate.

The human dimension is profound. Professionals who built lives in the U.S. are now returning, sometimes after layoffs left them without visa sponsorship. They bring Silicon Valley experience and capital, fueling India's startup scene in what some call a 'brain gain.'

Quietly, Canada is also gaining ground, marketing itself as a stable North American alternative with faster residency processes. The long-term effect is a diffusion of global tech work. The assumption that the world's best engineers would inevitably come to America is no longer safe. The talent isn't leaving the global market; it's simply deciding to build its career elsewhere.