US Indian-origin lawmakers have raised concerns that measures undertaken by the Trump administration, such as the USD 100,000 fee on H1B visas and 50 per cent tariffs on India, were hurting American businesses and threatening people-to-people ties between Washington and Delhi.The remarks came during a House Foreign Affairs South and Central Asia Subcommittee hearing titled ‘The US India Strategic Partnership: Securing a Free and Open Indo-Pacific’.US Representative Ami Bera, addressing the hearing, highlighted “the strong bipartisan support” the US-India partnership has received by the Congress and various White House administrations over decades PTI reported.“It’s clear our interest, from the Congressional perspective and the administration perspective, is a closer relationship, both our economic interests, our geopolitical strategic interests, to create an atmosphere of security, peace, prosperity that both the Indian people want, that we also want,” Bera said.Bera added that the announcement of the USD 100,000 fee on H1B visas “hurts American companies, disadvantages our companies.”He also said that visuals of Prime Minister Narendra Modi meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping do “cause some heartburn for folks in Congress.”Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said the tariffs announced by the Trump administration “are damaging India’s economy and also hurting American businesses and consumers.” On the intensive crackdown on immigration, Jayapal said Trump has “threatened” people-to-people ties by “shutting down legal pathways to immigrate, reminiscent of a legacy of discriminatory quotas that made it extremely difficult for Indians to immigrate in the first place.”Recalling that she is the only member of Congress to have been on both a student visa and an H1B visa, Jayapal said she deeply understands the “harms of those policies, and I’m committed to making sure that we continue to provide strong legal pathways for people to come to this country from India as well as around the world.”She also voiced concern about the “anti-Indian hate that has been rising in the United States,” underscoring that Indian-Americans are extremely important to the US economy, “an integral part of our society, running major Fortune 500 companies as well as startups, and leading cutting-edge research to save lives.”The hearing also heard from Jeff Smith, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation; Dhruva Jaishankar, executive director of the Observer Research Foundation America; and Sameer Lalwani, external senior advisor at the Special Competitive Studies Project and senior fellow in the Indo-Pacific programme at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
