The floor was open at a regular City Council meeting in Frisco, Texas, and several speakers, riled by a recent viral video about visas for specialised foreign workers, wanted to make their views known. They did not mince words.
The visa, H-1B, had led to an “Indian takeover” of their city. The programme, some said without proof, was full of “fraudsters” and “low-quality scammers”.
A few claimed an even broader racist conspiracy theory, accusing Western elites and corporations of seeking to replace and disempower white Americans.
“We must maintain our Rhodesia,” said a college student, referring to the former white-ruled colony that later became Zimbabwe.
During the nearly two-hour open floor, some spoke about job losses and suppressed wages, while South Asian residents expressed fears about the rhetoric. And the leaders of Frisco, a rapidly growing suburb north of Dallas, emphasised the value and contributions of its population, one-third of whom are of Asian heritage.
Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney described many of the speakers as “outside agitators” who did not represent the majority of residents.
But the meeting showed how anger over H-1B has helped ignite racist rhetoric targeting the Indian community, not only in Frisco but also across the country.
The H-1B programme allows up to 85,000 foreign workers to fill specialised roles in the US every year. In 2023, around three-quarters of the roughly 400,000 approved H-1B applications were for workers from India, said Pew Research Center.
H-1B rules are meant to protect American workers. Companies are prohibited from paying H-1B workers less than others with similar skills. But the effectiveness of these rules is hotly disputed.
The tech industry says it needs the programme because of a dearth of qualified Americans, and healthcare associations say the visas help ease physician shortages. Economists have generally found that H-1B visa holders boost American productivity and raise wages.
Critics, mainly labour unions, argue it is ripe for abuse and displaces domestic workers.
They point to examples like the 2015 decision to lay off 250 technology workers at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, who were told to train their replacements who held H-1B visas.
And in 2024, a federal jury found that Cognizant, an IT outsourcing company that is among the top recipients of H-1B visas, had intentionally discriminated for years against non-Indian employees.
President Trump has fuelled the debate with anti-immigrant rhetoric and an executive order mandating a $100,000 fee for new H-1B applications. The important policy debates, however, have increasingly been overshadowed by what Asian American advocacy groups say is a surge in hate speech directed at South Asians.
During 2023–25, the use of anti-South Asian slurs in online spaces associated with targeted violence rose by 115%, according to Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit.
The Centre for the Study of Organised Hate found a similar uptick against Indians, noting that posts on X featuring anti-Indian slurs, stereotypes or narratives like “deport Indians” garnered 280 million views over about two months in the summer.
In recent months, prominent conservatives of Indian heritage like Vivek Ramaswamy and Dinesh D’Souza have also decried a rise in such rhetoric.
“In a career spanning 40 years, I have never encountered such rhetoric,” D’Souza wrote on X.
“The Right never used to talk like this. So who on our side has legitimised this type of vile degradation?”
Some of the racist rhetoric echoes the great replacement conspiracy theory, which seeks to stoke fear of a future in which white people are no longer the majority in America.
“Whereas the old version of replacement theory accuses Jews of taking over, the thrust of this new version is that now Indian people are taking over,” said Stephanie Chan, director of data and research at Stop AAPI Hate.
The escalation began in 2024 around the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris, whose mother was Indian, Chan said. “And it spiked in the summer after Trump’s H-1B executive order and the rise of Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor. Nearly 80% of the anti-Asian slurs online are now directed at South Asians”.
Republicans have also been the targets of this rhetoric. After Vice President JD Vance announced that he and his wife, Usha, were expecting their fourth child, right-wing forums reacted with both congratulatory and racist messages.
Some called for the deportation of Usha Vance, who is of Indian descent, and her “anchor baby” — a trope commonly associated with replacement theory, which claims immigrants have babies in the US to get citizenship. (Usha Vance was born in the US and is an American citizen.)
Ramaswamy, the Trump supporter and current candidate for governor of Ohio, has been targeted by one of his primary challengers, Casey Putsch. A political newcomer, Putsch has called Ramaswamy an “Indian anchor baby” and a “globalist Trojan horse”. He has described H-1B as a “billionaire slave bomb” intended to destroy the job market for young Americans and accused Ramaswamy, without evidence, of being involved in H-1B fraud.
Ramaswamy is a critic of the visas, arguing the programme should be replaced with a system that brings in the most highly skilled foreign workers.
Putsch declined to comment through a spokesperson.
The rising rhetoric directed at South Asians comes as their profile has risen in America. Indians are now the largest Asian group in the US among people who identify with one country of origin, though they constitute only about 1.5% of the population, said a 2023 census report.
Among Asians in the US, Indians, on average, are the wealthiest and most highly educated. They are often highly politically and civically engaged, a result of India’s robust democratic tradition and English proficiency. And they are also increasingly prominent as Big Tech executives, national political figures and Hollywood stars.
In Frisco, the tensions over H-1B were heightened by a conservative content creator who recently posted a widely watched video in which she made claims about possible H-1B fraud in the area. Shortly afterwards, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, ordered a pause on H-1B hiring at public universities and Texas agencies.
The New York Times