U.S. 2025 H1B Visa Policy Aids Russian War Economy, Despite Admonitions to Allies to Do Opposite

As Russian dictator Vladimir Putin drives his inexperienced troops into a war of skyrocketing attrition for diminishing returns, the Trump Administration’s H1B Visa policy requiring $100,000 payment for H1B Visas from mostly Indian tech professionals is driving New Delhi to redirect Indian tech labor to help fill Russia’s civilian labor shortage crisis caused by Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

This has three effects:

(1) prolongs the suffering of Ukrainians for mercenary reasons;

(2) hastens the collapse of the Russian state and economy under Putin’s suicidal ambition despite that Russia does not have the human capacity to conquer and keep Ukraine;

(3) threatens U.S. interests, allied security in Europe, and global security should Russia’s catastrophic weapons proliferate through insecurity, theft, corruption, or takeover by forces bent on empire, whether secular statist or religiously-based -ism.

To knowingly continue with haphazard policies without solving for the foreseeable shift of labor and brain-trust toward our dictatorial adversaries and their terrorist proxies is irresponsible. It also reduces the magnitude of U.S. instruments of power in a technological hyperspace era with unpredictable outcomes and potential tipping points that can reverse fortunes for those without the brain-trusts to securely bring these wild forces in for controlled landings.

Losing India, a democracy sharing common interests with the United States to a strategic, autocratic enveloping movement in the Eastern Hemisphere is a loss to freedom worldwide as an increasingly self-isolationist U.S. administration alienates free nations and feeds Indian labor to its neighboring dictators, one of which has lured Indians into military service in a war of aggression against Ukraine.

This is how the U.S.A.’s abdication of freedom-leadership damages U.S. deterrence power, instruments of power, and America’s strategic identity.