India, Dec. 30 -- Donald Trump won the US presidential election in November 2024 promising to crack down on illegal immigration. True to form, his second term has featured highly visible deportation operations targeting undocumented migrants. But nearly one year into Trump's presidency, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement he created is spending as much energy aiming its guns toward a different target: the H-1B visa programme, and, by extension, Indian immigrants more broadly.

For decades, the H-1B visa programme was framed as America's gateway for global talent: a technocratic instrument meant to keep the US competitive in science, technology, engineering, and innovation. It was imperfect and often controversial, but it occupied...