About 375,000 temporary visaholders and green card applicants will now be banned from entering the U.S. until next year, according to Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group. A significant number of those are now stuck in India, which has long had a close connection to Silicon Valley. The technology industry has consistently objected to the administration’s immigration restrictions, and Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Twitter Inc. immediately condemned the latest executive order, along with trade groups representing hundreds of other technology firms.
Indian tech companies have also urged the administration to reconsider its latest move. A major trade group from the country called it ” misguided and harmful to the U.S. economy.” Some Indian IT companies are considering alternatives to placing people on-site with U.S. clients, such as creating clusters of workers in countries like Mexico or Canada.
The objections haven’t spared people like Bhat and her husband, who have worked in Silicon Valley for the last nine years, she as a manager for a software firm and he as an engineer at a bank. Her husband flew back to the U.S. in early March for work and has spent the past four months of lockdown alone. Bhat is now working overnight to support her U.S.-based clients, and trying to convince their son Adhrit to eat Indian food like chapati for breakfast over his complaints that he misses his standard Californian breakfast of avocado toast.
