By TN Ashok
New York
youtube.com/@theflagpost
Aug 26 , 2025
America. The dream. Ivy League. Silicon Valley. Wall Street. For Indian students, it was paradise. Families sold land. Took loans. Spent savings. All for that U.S. degree — the golden ticket to jobs, green cards, and glory. Now? The dream looks cracked.
Visa Roulette
Step one: the student visa. Once a routine. Now a battlefield. F-1 applicants grilled. “Will you return home?” “Are you secretly chasing a green card?” Rejections rise. Interviews end in tears. Top GREscorers walk out with nothing. Future killed before it starts.
H-1B Hell
Next hurdle: the H-1B work visa. Indians dominate it — nearly 70%. IT, engineers, coders. But Trump’s America says “Hire American.” The lottery is brutal. And the odds are worse than Las Vegas.New rules demand fat salaries. Start-ups back off. Small firms exit. Big Tech fights on, but slots shrink. Result? Graduates with $100,000 degrees and no job and no future. The next option is the temporary work permit, it offers a lifeline. But Trump allies want it axed. Deportation fear stalks campuses.
Love on Hold: It’s not just careers. It’s love. H-4 visas let spouses of H-1Bs work. Not anymore. Trump’s rollback froze thousands — mostly women — at home. Careers are dead. Dreams buried. Couples split. Weddings postponed. Families torn apart. Life on hold.
Green Card Mirage: The ultimate prize? Permanent residency. For Indians, the line is endless. Decades long. Files gather dust. Trump pushed “merit-based” filters. More checks. More delays. Even whispers of denaturalisation. Message clear: Even if you play by the rules, don’t expect a green card.
The Cost of Survival: On campus, survival is a war. Tuition: $60,000 a year. Add rent, insurance, food. Loans crush families back home. Homes mortgaged. Fathers retire late. Mothers pawn jewelry. Jobs are scarce. Off-campus work is banned. Break the rule, get deported.
So students scrub dishes in dorms. Stack books in libraries. Work three shifts. All while chasing grades. Stress mounts. Racist slurs sting. Attacks make headlines. Mental health cracks. Counselors see tears, but stigma keeps kids silent.
Trump’s Shadow : Trump sells it as patriotism. “Foreigners steal jobs from our kids,” he roars. His base cheers. But students are pawns. Indians pump $13 billion a year into U.S. universities and towns. They overtake Chinese as the biggest group on campus. Yet politics trumps economics. Optics beat facts.Europe Rising: The backlash has an echo. Canada lures many. But it too caps visas now. Housing crisis bites. Germany is tempting with cheap tuition. But jobs aren’t easy. Language is a wall. Britain reopens doors with post-study visas. But politics is a storm too. Still, for many Indians, these lands feel safer bets than Trump’s America.
The Gamble: Yet thousands still apply. Every year. Despite the odds. Despite the risk. Some hit the jackpot. Jobs at Google. Wall Street roles. Start-up success. Riches and fame. Others crash. Degree in hand. Forced home. Dreams shattered. For most, it’s a gamble. America is no longer a promise. It’s a casino. High stakes. High costs. Slim chances.
The Reddit Cry: One Indian student asked online: “What’s wrong with us? Why does every country want to limit us?” The answer: Nothing. Indians are smart. Ambitious. Driven. But numbers spook governments. Politics feeds fear. Students pay the price.
The Harsh Lesson: Trump’s America teaches one thing: The U.S. dream is no longer golden. It’s fragile. Costly. Painful. Not a promise. A bet. And that may be the hardest lesson Indian students ever learn.
