By Shashi Tharoor
NEW DELHI – Perhaps it should not be surprising that India should feature so prominently in the “civil war” that has emerged within US President-elect Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. Surprising or not, that is what is happening, with an India-shaped chasm having formed between MAGA’s warring factions.
On one side stand those who believe, realistically or not, that the key to restoring American greatness lies in isolationism, tax cuts, and deregulation – essentially, reducing America’s external obligations, shrinking the government, and unleashing business by hiring the best talent available from around the world. For those on the other side, however, MAGA has always been first and foremost a reaction to cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and pluralism in America. In their view, American greatness is synonymous with American whiteness.
India has become Exhibit A for both sides. By many measures, Indians are a model minority: 72% of Indian immigrants in the United States are university graduates, and Indians are among the highest-earning immigrant groups. Indians (including Indian-Americans) have led about 25% of Silicon Valley startups in the last quarter-century, as well as some of America’s tech behemoths, including Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Adobe, and IBM.
This helps to explain why the economy-first MAGA faction was perfectly happy to see Trump nominate several Indian-Americans for key positions in his administration, including Jay Bhattacharya (to direct the National Institutes of Health) and Kashyap “Kash” Patel (to head the FBI). Trump also selected Vivek Ramaswamy to co-lead, with Elon Musk, the Depart-ment of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory commission focused on slashing the federal budget.
The MAGA movement’s white-nationalist faction, however, was seething at the appointments. Trump’s nomination of Sriram Krishnan, a Chennai-born venture capitalist, to serve as a senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence pushed them over the edge. As one user wrote on X, “Did any of yall [sic] vote for this Indian to run America?”
The problem, for MAGA’s white-nationalist hardliners, extends beyond “this Indian.” On November 14, Musk – who had hired Krishnan in 2022 to run Twitter (now X) shortly after acquiring it – put out a call on X for suggestions for DOGE. Krishnan replied, “Anything to remove country caps for green cards/unlock skilled immigration would be huge.” When Trump announced Krishnan’s nomination the following month, the backlash was immediate.
One prominent MAGA activist, Laura Loomer, took to X to declare the announcement “deeply disturbing.” In a passionate, if ungrammatical, rant, she asked: How can the US possibly “control immigration” and “promote America First innovation” under a “guy who wants to REMOVE all restrictions on green card caps”? This would, she claimed, enable foreign students to go to the US and “take jobs that should be given” to Americans.
But Krishnan mentions removing only country caps, which limit the number of green cards (US permanent residency visas) that can be issued to individuals from a particular country each year. Country caps disproportionately affect individuals from large countries, particularly those, like India, with large numbers of highly skilled workers.
As David Sacks, Trump’s nominee for White House AI and crypto czar, pointed out, every country currently is “allocated the same number of green cards, no matter how many qualified applicants it has.” As a result, applicants from India have an 11-year wait, “whereas applicants from many other countries have no wait at all.”
In fact, while Indians account for an overwhelming majority of those holding H1-B visas for high-skilled workers, they are eligible for just 7% of the green cards issued (the ceiling for any single country). Sacks, Musk, and others on the economy-first side of the MAGA civil war want to use legal immigration channels to attract the world’s best and brightest in service of American “greatness.”
But for Loomer and her cohort, all immigration is fundamentally problematic, as it threatens America’s essentially Christian, European national character, and enables foreigners to “take jobs” from Americans. Immigration from India – where just 2-3% of the population is Christian, and pretty much nobody is white – is no exception. As the far-right commentator Ann Coulter told Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, earlier this year, she never would have voted for him, despite agreeing with many of his views, because he is Indian.
The recent experiences of two Congressional Democrats of Indian descent, Ro Khanna and Shri Thanedar, were no better. Khanna pointed out that Americans should be celebrating the fact that talented people from around the world, like Krishnan, want to come to the US, rather than going to China. Among the replies he received were statements like, “If they are so great, why didn’t they fix their country of origin?!” and, “We want white immigrants not invasive brown hordes.”
Likewise, Thanedar’s condemnation of the “deplorable rhetoric” targeting Indian-Americans in the H-1B debate triggered a barrage of racist abuse. One X user wrote, “Can I buy you a ticket to Mumbai? One way, of course.” Another declared, “Wow, you are a foreigner shilling for more of your compatriots to flood into my country and compete against my people?”
To be sure, racism is not the only reason some Trump supporters oppose immigration. As the responses to Khanna and Thanedar also highlight, many Americans fear increased competition for jobs, especially at a time when AI is threatening to displace workers in a fast-growing range of industries.
But there is a simple solution that should please both sides of the MAGA war: instead of importing Indian workers, the US should outsource innovation to India. If US investors channel funds toward Indian firms capable of carrying out cutting-edge research and development, the US could reap the benefits of innovation and dynamism without increasing immigration flows. But – racists beware – this would also benefit India, meaning that MAGA would have to make room for MAIGA: Make America and India Great Again!
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025.
