1️⃣ The Math No One in DC Mentions
- 💰 $650 billion – total remittances Indian nationals in the U.S., U.K., Canada, EU-27 and Australia wired back to India between 2005 and 2024.
- 📈 $61 billion – the 2024 slice alone, bigger than India’s entire defense budget (~$55 bn).
- ⚖️ 23 % – average salary discount (GAO-22-105312) for U.S. STEM roles filled by an H-1B; 72 % of H-1Bs are Indian nationals.
- 🧑💻 700 000 active H-1Bs + 800 000 STEM OPT/F-1 students = the personnel backbone of the conduit.
Four numbers explain why both parties keep the pipeline open.
🏭 Domestic Wage Arbitrage: Industrial Policy in Plain Sight
When Congress raises the H-1B cap (or quietly expands OPT “training” slots), it achieves politically painless wage compression that a minimum-wage repeal or union-busting bill could never accomplish.
👩💻 Example: Rani M. in Austin earns $88k on an H-1B; her identical-credential coworker Madison, on a GC/EAD, makes $115k. That $27k delta is the employer’s implicit subsidy, booked as “innovation cost savings.”
Multiply that across 700 000 visas and you get $18–20 billion per year in suppressed U.S. payroll. HR calls it competitiveness. Treasury calls it revenue it never has to account for.
🌏 External Balancing: The “Pivot to Asia” via Bank Wires
While Madison’s salary is undercut in Texas, those same remittances bankroll Indian ports, chip-packaging plants, and highway corridors running parallel to Chinese Belt & Road projects.
Washington never needs a formal “counter-China” stimulus:
💸 $61 billion per year flows from U.S. paychecks into India’s banking system, SWIFT-verified and politically frictionless.
| 📊 USAID Indo-Pacific aid (FY 2024) | $1.6 billion
| 💳 US-origin remittances to India | $27 billion
The wires beat the aid budget 17 to 1, with no floor speeches or C-SPAN outrage.
🔄 The Policy Loop: Self-Funding, Self-Justifying
- 🗣️ Employers claim “STEM skills shortage.”
- 📝 Agencies rubber-stamp visas.
- 💵 Wages compress, margins widen.
- 📤 Indian tech workers wire surplus home, fueling capital that rivals Chinese inflows.
- 🏛️ Congress cites “U.S.—India economic synergy” to approve more visas.
Each loop widens the offshore welfare channel and narrows U.S. wage ranges.
📌 Bottom Line
For Washington’s managerial class, the H-1B is not immigration policy.
It is fiscal alchemy:
- 🏚️ Internal → suppress domestic wages
- 🌐 External → fund India’s rise as a China counterweight
All wrapped in “diversity” and “competitiveness,” paid for by Main Street salaries, applauded across the Beltway, because unlike a defense bill nobody has to vote for it.
If your Ohio, Pennsylvania, or North Carolina grad got a $72k offer instead of $95k, follow the wire. It lands in a Mumbai NRE account pegged to compete with the next Belt & Road loan.
