Perspective: H-1B Workers Can’t Rely on Tech Bros To Save Them
The threat of losing legal residency status, and the possibility of deportation, is used to make immigrant workers of all skill levels accept harder working conditions for less pay than their American counterparts. Welcome to the era of Broligarchs.
Immigration is front and center of the Trump agenda, and the sweeping ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids and deportations around the country are being framed as part of a purge to restore the national character of the country.
There are many in the Indian diaspora who feel this crackdown on “illegal immigration” won’t apply to them. After all, most have come here to seek higher education and work in some of the most advanced sectors in the economy and aren’t the ones crossing the border by foot. Others might feel that Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, David Sacks, Sriram Krishnan or other “tech bros” close to the establishment who are advocates of the H-1B visa will protect Indians because they are the kind of immigrants that America needs.
But this status as a “model migrant” won’t save Indians from the violence of the mass deportation agenda. In fact, deporting immigrant labor, no matter their skill level, has been part of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda since his first term. Case in point: the fake university set up to entrap and expel 600 Indian international students during the first Trump administration.
Back in 2019, ICE arrested hundreds of Indian students who had enrolled at “Farmington University” in Michigan. This so-called university was set up as a sting operation by ICE, but the agency went to great lengths to ensure it had the appearance of a legitimate institution: it had the school accredited through the Department of Education, established a physical location, issued I-20 forms (required for F-1 visas) to students, and even collected tuition from them.
What it didn’t do was offer classes. Instead, students were told that they could participate in Curriculum Practical Training (CPT), a form of employment allowed for F-1 students, to satisfy the requirements of the university, and keep their legal status in the U.S. Shortly after ICE raided and arrested more than a hundred of the students enrolled at Farmington, they published undercover footage showing some students enrolling at the institution after they were told there would not be classes. This, the agency alleges, is proof that the students intended to violate U.S. law by signing up for a “pay-to-stay” scheme.
However, a lawyer representing hundreds of students in a class action lawsuit argues they were wrongly entrapped and defrauded, and that there was no way for these students to know it was a fake university. The lawyer also points to evidence that the university’s administrators (who were actually ICE agents) denied permissions for some students who wanted to transfer to other schools when they realized they wouldn’t be getting classes at Farmington. Emails released by an investigative journalist even show ICE agents
planning to buy alcohol with student money, to celebrate the successful registration of the fake university. In total, the agency took about $6 million dollars from the 600 students.
The Farmington case is a clear example of a government enforcement agency manufacturing the very problem it claims it is trying to fix. If ICE was genuinely concerned about the rise of these pay-to-stay schemes, then it should be cracking down on the institutions that profit from loopholes rather than spending taxpayer money to create fraudulent institutions of its own.
So who benefits from the spectacle of mass deportation?
The threat of losing legal residency status is used to make immigrant workers of all skill levels accept harder working conditions for less pay than their American counterparts. And spectacular deportations are a reminder to them that if they don’t comply, they too could wind up like the people who are being broadcast on the news.
So when the “tech bros” in the president’s orbit say they will, as Elon Musk put it, “go to war” for H-1Bs, it's not because high-skill workers are special as individuals. It is because these oligarchs have an interest in keeping open a steady stream of workers that will do more, for less, because they have no choice.
Angad Singh is an Emmy-winning independent journalist and documentary filmmaker. You can watch his videos @Angadgsingh on YouTube and Patreon. He grew up in the Atlanta metro area.
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