Thread by @RajeevSrinivasa

let's look at this from first principles.

1. H1B visas not necessarily in india's national interest.

2. H1Bs are in the personal interest of middle-class indians who want to live in the US. and of indian IT companies and US firms.

personal interest > national interest? 1/n

https://twitter.com/CNBCTV18News/status/1317111228313972736

not in national interest coz it negates #makeinindia, and skews aspirations away from, say, mechanical or civil eng jobs which are needed for manuf/infra.

training up these migrants is a drain on the indian economy, and then they all become medium-skilled coders 2/n

they then depress wages in the US and compete with natives, who are justified in complaining about it.

besides, if they stayed on in india, at least some of them will build solutions to problems we have in india.

yes, admittedly, some individuals' US migration will be hurt 3/n

and i sympathize with their personal hardships. they do have alternatives: canada, australia etc, so they can go there.

but there is no reason to act as though H1B restrictions are a huge anti-india conspiracy. in fact just the opposite, as it helps retain talent in india 4/n

there will be opportunities in india. so stay home, instead of becoming comfortable middle class US residents. it's not that india owes you that or you are entitled to it.

so i suggest all quit whining about H1B. if you want it that bad, go study there. then rules easier 5/n

there are much bigger issues in the US: persistent #hinduhatred and a tendency to put india down in every possible way (esp among #dems eg pramila, ilhan, ro, bernie, warren, clinton).

we can overlook this for we (and the US too) need the Quad and need to contain china 6/n

with cloud adoption, IT services jobs will also be short lived. if you want to be employable, jump on technologies and platforms like blockchain, machine learning, smart cities, bioinformatics like genomics/CRISPR.

but don't expect H1B to be high priority for GoI 7/n