> You can argue how well that’s worked out for us

The elephant in the room is that many of these highly successful people who have brought great economic advantage to the US over the years happen to have brown skin.

As for why this policy is being adopted: sometimes an elephant is just an elephant. The huge price increase hurts brown people (mostly), and possibly curbs immigration. It will play well with a certain segment of Americans.

There are many subtleties to the H1-B visa debate, but I don’t think they are at play in this policy change.

I think it could be most likely to apply pressure on the US-India FTA under discussion.

Context: 50% tariff has been applied to India. Chabahar port sanctions are reintroduced. And more to come in next few weeks.