Jobs in the US for Indians (2026): the H-1B after the $100,000 fee, OPT, L-1, the green-card queue and the honest odds

The question behind every "jobs in the USA for Indians" search is simpler than the search: can I get one? In October 2026 the answer is yes if you are already in the United States on a student visa, yes if your employer has an American office that can transfer you, sometimes if you are a doctor or nurse who has passed the American exams or a researcher with a record — and, for the first time in a generation, mostly no if you are a professional sitting in India hoping an American company will sponsor an H-1B and fly you over cold.

Three things changed the odds.

The $100,000 payment. On 19 September 2025 Proclamation 10973 restricted the entry of new H-1B workers unless their petition came with a $100,000 payment; it took effect on 21 September 2025, and on 18 September 2026 Proclamation 11069 extended it to 21 September 2027, saying the payment had by then been made for more than 700 petitions. It never applied to people already in the US changing status — a student moving from F-1 to H-1B pays nothing extra — only to workers who have to be admitted from abroad. Two federal courts have since struck it down: Massachusetts on 8 June 2026 (the First Circuit refused to pause that ruling on 24 July), and the Northern District of California on 30 September 2026, in a judgment that also covers the extension. USCIS's own H-1B page says it will comply with the court's order while DHS considers next steps, and an appeal is expected. The honest reading: the fee is not being collected as this page is written, the proclamation stays on the books until September 2027, and an employer deciding whether to hire you from India prices in the chance that it comes back.

The wage-weighted lottery. From the FY2027 season (March 2026) the random H-1B draw was replaced by one weighted by pay: a job offered at the top prevailing-wage level gets four entries, an entry-level Level I job gets one. Registrations fell from 343,981 eligible for FY2026 to 211,600 for FY2027, and the biggest IT staffing firms cut theirs from 24,946 to 2,055. Consular-processing requests — the paperwork that brings a worker in from abroad rather than converting someone already in the US — fell by nearly 97% between the FY2025 and FY2027 seasons, by the White House's own count.

Stamping and the market. The interview waiver ("dropbox") ended for H-1B and H-4 renewals on 2 September 2025; from 15 December 2025 every H-1B and H-4 applicant must set their social media to public for vetting, and Indian consulates cancelled December appointments and pushed them to March–May 2026. Meanwhile layoffs.fyi counted 125,759 tech workers cut at 264 companies between 1 January and 6 August 2026 — already more than in the whole of 2025.

What this means in practice:

• If you can study in the US, or already are, you hold the best card: a US master's, OPT, then an H-1B change of status inside the country — no $100,000, a second draw in the master's cap, and a lottery that now rewards the higher-paid offer a graduate of a US programme tends to get. 71.5% of FY2027 selections went to advanced-degree holders.
• If you work for a company with US offices — the Indian IT majors, the banks, the pharma and engineering groups, any multinational — the L-1 transfer is untouched by the proclamation and needs no lottery.
• If you are genuinely accomplished — publications, patents, press, a high salary, judging panels — the O-1A visa and the EB-1A and National Interest Waiver green cards are how American employers now bring in the people the H-1B cannot.
• If you are an experienced professional in India with none of those links, the door is narrower than at any time since the 1990s. It is not shut: cap-exempt employers (universities, their hospitals, nonprofit research institutes) sponsor year-round without a lottery, and a court-cleared H-1B at a Level III or IV salary is still a real offer. But plan for a long search, and do not pay anyone to shorten it.

The rest of this page takes each of those in turn. The Indians in the US page has the community you arrive into — a page for each city, the events, the groups and the Indian businesses — the OCI card and passport renewal guides cover the consular side, and the UK twin of this page shows what the same search looks like across the Atlantic.

Every lawful way for an Indian citizen to work in the United States comes down to a handful of visa categories. There is no job-seeker visa; a B-1 business visitor may attend interviews but may not work. The fees below are the government's own in October 2026; lawyers' fees (typically $3,000–5,500 for an H-1B) come on top, and by law the employer carries the petition costs.

Three things to know before you pick a door

The spouse's work permit. An H-4 spouse may work only with an EAD, available once the H-1B holder has an approved I-140; an L-2 spouse may work from day one, because employment is "incident to status". The H-4 EAD survived its decade in court — the Supreme Court declined to hear Save Jobs USA v. DHS on 14 October 2025 — and although DHS has listed its removal on the 2026 regulatory agenda as a long-term action, no proposed rule had been published when this page was checked. Plan on it, but keep a plan B.

What is not available to Indians. TN status is for citizens of Canada and Mexico, E-3 for Australians, H-1B1 for Chile and Singapore. An advert that mentions them is not for you.

The lottery is the exception, not the rule. Institutions of higher education, their affiliated nonprofits and nonprofit or government research organisations are cap-exempt: they file H-1B petitions in any month, with no draw and no 1 October start date. For a researcher, a lecturer, a hospital physician or a data scientist at a university lab, that is the quiet route the headlines miss — and it is also the kind of petition the $100,000 proclamation allowed the government to exempt in the national interest.

The H-1B remains the main work visa and the one the policy fight is about, so it needs its own section. The cap is 65,000 a year plus 20,000 for people with a US master's or higher, and it has been exhausted every year since 2004.

The season

Employers register each beneficiary online in March ($215 each; 4–19 March in 2026), USCIS runs the selection (announced 31 March 2026), selected employers file the full petition between 1 April and 30 June, and work starts on 1 October. For FY2027 USCIS announced on 17 July 2026 that enough petitions had arrived to fill the cap, so there was no second draw.

The weighted draw

The DHS rule published on 29 December 2025 and in force from 27 February 2026 gives each registration as many entries as the Department of Labor's prevailing-wage level of the offered pay: Level IV four, Level III three, Level II two, Level I one. Those levels sit today at the 17th, 34th, 50th and 67th percentiles of the wage distribution for the occupation in the area, so a fresher's job is a Level I job and a fresher now has a quarter of the chance of a senior engineer at the same company. The first results show it: Level I offers were 17.8% of FY2027 selections, the two highest levels 46.3%, and registrations for people with at least a US master's rose from 45.1% of the pool to 66.1%. On 27 March 2026 the Department of Labor proposed moving the four levels to the 34th, 52nd, 70th and 88th percentiles — about $14,000 a year more per certified wage on its own estimate — and that rule was still a proposal when this page was checked.

What the employer pays

So a large employer spends about $3,600 in government fees before lawyers to file for you, around $7,600 if it is an H-1B-dependent consultancy — and faced $103,600 to bring you from India while the payment stood. That arithmetic is why the consulting model that brought a generation of Indians over has shrunk, and why the same companies now hire from the pool already in the country.

Exemptions, exceptions and the new scrutiny

The $100,000 never applied to a change of status, extension or amendment for someone already in the US, nor to anyone holding a valid H-1B visa, and the proclamation lets the Secretary of Homeland Security exempt individuals, companies or whole industries in the national interest. An executive order of 18 September 2026 told USCIS, the Department of Labor and the State Department to coordinate on H-1B fraud and to look at whether a sponsoring employer has laid people off in the past year. And since 5 August 2026 a USCIS officer may deny a petition that is missing evidence outright, without first sending a Request for Evidence. A clean, complete first filing matters more than it did; so does an employer with a lawyer who files them every week.

Sponsorship follows two things in the US: the industry, and the place. Both are measurable, because every approval is public.

The industries

Professional, scientific and technical services took the most new H-1B approvals in FY2025, followed by education, manufacturing, information, healthcare and finance. The headline number is the big-tech one: Amazon had the most new H-1B approvals in FY2025 (4,644), then Meta (1,555), Microsoft (1,394) and Google (1,050) — the first year four American technology companies held the top four places. TCS, with 846, was the only Indian company in the top five, and the seven largest Indian-headquartered firms together had 4,573 new approvals, 70% fewer than in FY2015. But 28,277 different employers were approved for at least one new H-1B in FY2025 and 61% of them for a single one, so the real list of sponsors is thousands of mid-sized software firms, banks, insurers, hospitals, universities, manufacturers and consultancies you have never heard of.

The occupations, and what they pay nationally (BLS medians, 2025): software developers $135,980 (1.9 million jobs, growing 10% to 2035), data scientists $120,230 (growing 35%), registered nurses $97,550, physicians and surgeons $275,930. The median H-1B salary in computer occupations was $125,000 in FY2024.

The map

• California had the most new H-1B approvals in FY2025 (21,559), then Texas (12,613), New York (11,436), New Jersey (7,729) and Virginia (7,579). By city: New York (7,811), Arlington VA (4,836), Chicago (2,923), San Jose (2,383), Santa Clara (2,286), San Francisco (2,222).
• The Bay Area — San Jose, Sunnyvale, Fremont, Santa Clara, Cupertino — has the biggest salaries, the biggest rents (a one-bedroom at $2,718 in October 2026) and the densest Indian community outside New Jersey.
• Seattle and Bellevue are Amazon and Microsoft country, with no state income tax on wages.
• New York and New Jersey — Manhattan's banks and the Jersey City, Edison and Princeton corridor — hold the largest Indian population of any metro (about 710,000 in the New York area) and the most H-1B approvals of any city.
• Dallas–Fort Worth (Irving, Plano, Frisco) and Austin are the growth story: some 270,000 Indians in the Dallas metro, headquarters relocating from California, a one-bedroom at $1,300 and no state income tax.
• Chicago (Naperville, Schaumburg), Atlanta (Alpharetta), Boston, Raleigh–Durham (Morrisville, Cary), Charlotte and Phoenix (Chandler) each have a technology, pharma or finance cluster and an established community with temples, Indian groceries and weekend schools.
• Washington DC and northern Virginia — Arlington's 4,836 approvals are the consultancies and federal contractors; many federal jobs themselves need citizenship or a clearance.

Indian Americans numbered about 5.2 million in 2023, two-thirds of them immigrants, with a median household income of $151,200 and 77% holding a bachelor's degree or higher — the best-paid, best-educated large immigrant group in the country, which is both why employers hire Indians and why the competition for each role is Indian too. The US hub has the city-by-city picture; the groups, events and directory show what is live near each, and Diwali in the US is where most newcomers first meet the community they will work in.

The single most useful fact for a job search aimed at the US is that sponsorship is public data. Every H-1B needs a Labor Condition Application, and the Department of Labor publishes them: employer, job title, worksite, wage level, wage. USCIS's H-1B Employer Data Hub lists every employer's approvals and denials by year. Sites such as H1BGrader, MyVisaJobs and h1bdata.info repackage both so you can type a company name and see whether it sponsors, how often, at what pay, and whether it files at Level I or Level IV. Use them before you apply, not after.

Where to look

• Company careers pages. Most sponsors advertise directly; the large ones have an immigration team and a standard answer to "will you sponsor?". Apply there and answer the work-authorisation questions truthfully — "will require sponsorship" is a filter, but lying to pass it is fraud you cannot undo.
• LinkedIn and Indeed. The volume boards. "H-1B sponsorship", "visa sponsorship available" and "OPT" are the words that work; "must be authorised to work in the US without sponsorship now or in the future" means no.
• University career services and campus fairs if you are a student — most H-1Bs that begin with a fresher begin here.
• Cap-exempt employers. Universities, academic medical centres, nonprofit research institutes: HigherEdJobs, each university's HR site, the hospital career pages. No lottery, any month.
• Referrals. The US market runs on them more than any other. The alumni network of your college, former colleagues who moved, the Indian professional associations and the local community groups — the groups in the app are where "my team is hiring and we sponsor" is said first.
• Recruiters and consultancies. A staffing agency is paid by the client and may not charge you. Read the consultancy section below before you sign anything with a firm that wants to "place" you.

What the employer is deciding

Understand the sum on the other side of the desk. A large employer spends roughly $3,600 in government fees and $3,000–5,500 in legal fees to file an H-1B, more if it is H-1B-dependent; it may lose the lottery and wait a year; if you are abroad it has carried the risk of a $100,000 payment since September 2025; and since September 2026 its own layoffs are a factor in how its petitions are scrutinised. Against that it weighs scarcity. You win when the skill is scarce, when the salary band is Level III or IV (more lottery entries, a cleaner approval), when you are already in the US on OPT (no proclamation payment, a known start date), or when the employer is cap-exempt. You lose when you are one of a hundred equivalent candidates at Level I.

Timing

If you are abroad and the employer must use the cap, the only start date is 1 October after a March registration — a search begun in November is for a job that starts eleven months later. Cap-exempt and L-1 jobs can start when the petition is approved, typically two to four months, or 15 business days with premium processing. Stamping appointments in India are the wild card: published estimates in spring 2026 ran from about a month in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata to three months or more in Hyderabad and Chennai, and December 2025's cancellations pushed people back by a quarter. Check the State Department's Global Visa Wait Times page the week you are selected, and book the moment the approval notice arrives.

A résumé written for an Indian recruiter will be filtered out by an American one for reasons unconnected to your ability. Change these things before you send a single application.

The résumé

• One page (two for ten-plus years), US Letter size, PDF. No photo, no date of birth, no marital status, no nationality, no father's name, no passport number, no 10th and 12th percentages. American employers avoid collecting those under anti-discrimination law, and a résumé that leads with them reads as foreign and risky. Name, city and state, phone, email, LinkedIn, GitHub if relevant.
• American spelling and American words: program, organization, color; "B.Tech" is understood, "B.E." needs "(Bachelor of Engineering)"; give the degree, the university and the year, and the CGPA only if it is excellent.
• Bullets that start with a verb and end with a number: "cut p95 latency 40% by moving 60 services to Kubernetes". Three to five per role, newest first.
• Keywords. Most applications pass through an applicant-tracking system first; mirror the advert's own nouns — the frameworks, the certifications, the exact job title.
• Work authorisation. Say it once, plainly, when asked: "F-1 OPT, STEM extension eligible until 2029; will need H-1B sponsorship", or "L-1 eligible through my current employer". Never hide it; every US application form asks.

The interview

American interviews are structured and long. Expect a recruiter screen, a technical round (for software, LeetCode-style coding and a system-design conversation; for data, SQL and a case), a hiring-manager round and one or two behavioural rounds — "tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager" — answered in the STAR shape (situation, task, action, result) with a real story and a result you can quantify. Be direct, ask questions back, say "I don't know" rather than bluff, and send a short thank-you email the same day. Interviews across the time zone are normal; ask for a slot before 10:00 Pacific if you are in India.

The offer letter

Four things on it that do not exist in India: - At-will employment. Either side may end the job at any time without notice or cause, unless a contract says otherwise. Notice is a courtesy of two weeks, not a right of two months. For an H-1B holder this is why the grace-period rules at the end of this page matter so much. - Total compensation. Base, bonus target, equity (RSUs vesting over four years), signing bonus and relocation. Negotiate — levels.fyi shows what the band actually pays, and the first number offered is rarely the last. - Non-competes. The FTC's 2024 nationwide ban never took effect: the agency dropped its appeals in September 2025 and removed the rule from the Code of Federal Regulations in February 2026, so state law governs. California, Minnesota, North Dakota and Oklahoma void most employee non-competes; most other states enforce reasonable ones. Read the clause before you sign. - Background check and I-9. Expect an education, employment and criminal check (a consent form, two to three weeks; your Indian degree is verified through a credential service). On your first day you complete Form I-9; the employer verifies your documents within three business days and, if enrolled, runs them through E-Verify against DHS and Social Security records. A mismatch is a letter to fix, not a dismissal — and the employer may not tell you which documents to present.

Two anchors first. The Department of Labor's prevailing wage for your occupation and metro is the floor an H-1B job must pay — look it up on the FLAG site before you negotiate. The market is what the data says people are actually paid: the BLS medians below, and for technology levels.fyi, whose US software-engineer median was $196,925 total compensation on 9 October 2026 (25th percentile $138,000, 75th $283,000, 90th $390,000) from nearly 48,000 submissions.

What comes off the top

• Federal income tax, 2026: single filers pay 10% up to $12,400, 12% to $50,400, 22% to $105,700, 24% to $201,775, 32% to $256,225, 35% to $640,600 and 37% above, after a standard deduction of $16,100 ($32,200 for a married couple filing jointly).
• FICA: 6.2% Social Security on earnings up to $184,500 plus 1.45% Medicare on everything — 7.65%, matched by the employer.
• State income tax: none on wages in Texas, Florida, Nevada, Tennessee, Washington (which taxes capital gains only) and a handful of others; California's top rate is 13.3%, New York's 10.9%, New Jersey's 10.75%; Georgia (5.39%), North Carolina (4.25%) and Illinois (4.95%) are flat. Some cities add their own.
• Health insurance: the employer-sponsored plan is the one you want. In 2025 the average premium was $9,325 for an individual and $26,993 for a family, of which workers paid $1,440 and $6,850 — before deductibles and co-pays. Compare plans by premium plus deductible, not premium alone.
• 401(k): you may contribute up to $24,500 in 2026, pre-tax; a typical employer match is 3–6% of salary. Take the match — it is salary — and know the money stays yours if you leave the country.

A single software engineer on $130,000 in Texas pays roughly $20,000 in federal income tax and $9,900 in FICA and keeps about $100,000 before insurance and the 401(k); in California the state takes several thousand more, and a one-bedroom in San Jose costs $2,718 a month against $1,300 in Dallas (Zumper, October 2026). The famous Texas-versus-Bay-Area argument is this line.

The Social Security problem

India and the United States have no totalisation agreement. The SSA's list of agreement countries runs from Italy (1978) to Romania (September 2026) and does not include India. So an H-1B worker pays 6.2% into Social Security from the first payslip and, unless they stay long enough to earn 40 quarters of coverage or settle, gets nothing back: no refund on departure, no credit toward EPF. Over six years on $130,000 that is about $48,000 of your money and the same again from the employer. Budget for it as a tax, not a saving. (F-1 students on OPT who are still nonresident aliens are exempt from Social Security and Medicare tax for their first five calendar years — one more reason the OPT years are financially generous.)

Relocation and the clawback

Relocation packages for a hire from abroad — flights, a month's housing, shipping, sometimes a lump sum — are normal; clawbacks if you leave within a year are legal and common. What the employer may never recover from you: the H-1B petition fees, the ACWIA fee, its lawyers' bills, or a "penalty" for leaving early. The Department of Labor's rules forbid every one of those deductions, and a complaint goes to its Wage and Hour Division.

"Jobs in the USA for Indian freshers" is, in 2026 more than ever, a study question. A graduate in India with no US degree will almost never be sponsored for an H-1B from abroad: the job is Level I, the lottery gives Level I one entry, and the employer would have borne the $100,000 risk. A graduate of a US programme has none of those problems.

The route

1. A US master's chosen for the employers around it, not the brochure. On campus you may work up to 20 hours a week in term; off campus only through CPT tied to the curriculum.
2. OPT: 12 months of work authorisation after the degree in your field, applied for on Form I-765. You may be unemployed for at most 90 days across the period.
3. STEM OPT: a further 24 months if the degree is on the STEM list and the employer is enrolled in E-Verify and signs a Form I-983 training plan; you report to your school within 10 days of any change and confirm every 6 months, and the unemployment allowance becomes 150 days in total. If your OPT expires while the extension is pending you may keep working for 180 days automatically.
4. The H-1B change of status, filed by the employer in the cap season. You get the master's-cap second draw, the weighted lottery favours the pay a US graduate commands, there is no $100,000 payment because you are not being admitted from abroad, and cap-gap — extended by the January 2025 modernisation rule — keeps your F-1 status and work authorisation alive to 1 April of the following year while a timely petition is pending, instead of 1 October.

The odds

For FY2026 USCIS selected 120,141 of 343,981 eligible registrations — about 35% overall, and higher for master's-cap entrants, who are drawn twice. FY2027's 211,600 registrations should mean better odds again, though USCIS had not published the selection rate when this page was checked; what it did say is that 71.5% of those selected held an advanced degree. Over three years of OPT and STEM OPT you get up to three draws. Most Indian STEM graduates who want to stay, do.

Three traps

• Day 1 CPT. Programmes that authorise full-time work from the first day of a second master's are a pattern USCIS scrutinises, and it revisits them when you later file for an H-1B or a green card; since 5 August 2026 an officer may deny without a Request for Evidence. If the "course" is a visa, the visa is at risk.
• The end of "duration of status". A DHS final rule published on 17 July 2026 and effective 15 September 2026 admits F-1 students to the programme end date on the I-20, for at most four years, with an extension-of-stay application if you need longer — a delayed thesis is now a filing, not a formality.
• Unemployment days. 90 (or 150) is a hard count that includes the gap between offers. Record every day.

Money

OPT is paid like any job, and because nonresident F-1 students are exempt from Social Security and Medicare tax for their first five calendar years, take-home is higher than it will be on H-1B. Premium processing of the OPT application costs $1,780 since 1 March 2026. The tuition behind all this is the real price of the American door — a two-year master's costs tens of thousands of dollars before rent — so treat the degree as the visa fee it has become, and choose the programme for the jobs around it.

American healthcare hires foreigners by the tens of thousands and the rules are clearer than in tech — the exams, not the visa, are the hard part.

Nurses

The route is NCLEX-RN (sat in India at Pearson VUE centres), a state nursing licence, and the federal VisaScreen certificate from CGFNS (now TruMerit), which checks education, licences and English and is required for the visa itself. The visa is usually an EB-3 green card rather than an H-1B, because most staff-nurse jobs do not require a bachelor's degree: professional nurses and physical therapists are on the Department of Labor's Schedule A, so the employer skips the PERM labour-market test and files the I-140 directly. For a nurse born in the Philippines that means a green card in two to four years; for a nurse born in India it means joining the EB-3 India queue, whose final-action date in October 2026 was 1 January 2014. The Schedule A shortcut saves the PERM year; it does not jump the queue. Registered nurses earned a median $97,550 in 2025 and the occupation is growing 6%. Hospital groups and staffing agencies recruit in cohorts and pay for NCLEX, VisaScreen and relocation; you pay nothing.

Doctors

Certification by ECFMG — a medical school in the World Directory, USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 CK, and a Pathway attesting clinical and communication skills — then the Match. In the 2026 Match 11,944 non-US-citizen international graduates applied and 56.4% matched — about 6,700 people, the most ever, at the lowest rate in five years — against 70% for US-citizen graduates of foreign schools, with 44,344 positions offered. Residency is on a J-1 (ECFMG-sponsored, with a two-year home-residence rule afterwards) or an H-1B (needs Step 3, offered by fewer programmes, cap-exempt at university hospitals). The J-1 rule is waived by three years' service in a shortage area through Conrad 30 (30 waivers a state) — but the programme's statutory authority lapsed for physicians who acquired J-1 status on or after 1 October 2025, and until Congress renews it a new J-1 resident should plan on the H-1B route or another waiver. Physicians and surgeons earned a median $275,930 in 2025.

Pharmacists, dentists, physiotherapists and the rest

Pharmacists sit the FPGEE and then the state board; dentists need a US DDS/DMD or an advanced-standing programme and state licensure; physiotherapists need a credential evaluation, the NPTE and a state licence, and like nurses are Schedule A for the green card. VisaScreen covers nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, audiologists, laboratory scientists and physician assistants, is valid for five years, and must be current at the visa interview.

What to check in a healthcare offer

Who pays the exams, the VisaScreen and the relocation; whether the contract has a repayment clause and for how long; the shift pattern and the state (licensure is by state, and so is tax); and, if you are on an H-1B, whether the employer is cap-exempt.

For thirty years the big door from India was an Indian IT company: join in Chennai or Pune, get posted to a client in Dallas or Edison, and perhaps stay. That door has narrowed sharply.

The majors

The seven largest Indian-headquartered IT firms had 4,573 new H-1B approvals in FY2025, down 70% from FY2015 and 37% in a single year; TCS still had 5,293 continuing-employment approvals (extensions and amendments for people already here). After the proclamation, the largest IT staffing and outsourcing firms cut their H-1B registrations from 24,946 to 2,055. What has replaced the H-1B for them is the L-1: L-1B for specialised knowledge (five years), L-1A for managers (seven), under blanket petitions that let a company with $25 million in US sales or 1,000 US employees move people without an individual filing. You must have worked for the group abroad for one continuous year in the last three, the posting is to the same group, and your spouse may work. The fee the majors now watch is the 9-11 Biometric Fee — $4,000 per H-1B and $4,500 per L-1 for employers that are 50% or more H-1B/L-1 — which from 9 September 2026 also falls on every extension, not just first petitions.

The consultancies

Below the majors sits a layer of small "consulting" firms, many Indian-owned, that sponsor H-1Bs and place workers at third-party clients. Some are legitimate staffing businesses. Many are not, and the abuses have names: - Benching. Keeping you unpaid between projects is illegal. The Department of Labor requires the LCA wage for all nonproductive time caused by the employer — no project, no permit, studying for a licence — starting no later than 30 days after you enter the US or 60 days after you become eligible to work. Only your own voluntary absence is unpaid. - Fee recovery. The employer may not deduct its business expenses — the petition fee, the ACWIA fee, the lawyer — from your pay, nor charge a "penalty" if you leave. Both are prohibited deductions. - Fake experience and proxy interviews. Doctored résumés, someone else sitting your technical interview, invented client letters. Each is fraud: under INA 212(a)(6)(C)(i) a person who by fraud or wilful misrepresentation seeks a visa or other benefit is inadmissible, with a waiver only in narrow cases, and the Justice Department prosecutes the firms — a May 2025 indictment in Dallas alleged a seven-year scheme of false job offers across H-1B and EB-2/EB-3 cases for nationals of India and four other countries. - "Bench and switch". Filing the LCA for a client job that does not exist. The 18 September 2026 executive order and the Labor Department's site visits are aimed exactly here.

If you are already with such a firm: keep every payslip and LCA; a complaint goes to the Wage and Hour Division on Form WH-4; and H-1B portability means a new employer can file for you and you may start the day the new petition is received — 68,167 change-of-employer petitions were approved in FY2025, 37% of all new starts. The honest model survives; the abusive one is the single most common way an Indian career in America ends in a fraud finding.

Every fraud aimed at Indians who want to work in America fails against one rule: the employer pays for the visa, and nobody can sell you a job. USCIS filing fees are the petitioner's, the Department of Labor forbids recovering them from your wages, and an H-1B registration is something an employer makes for a real job. Everything below follows from that.

• "H-1B sponsorship for ₹15 lakh." Agents in India and "consultancies" in New Jersey who sell a place in the lottery. If the job is real, you are being asked to pay what the law says the employer must; if it is not, your registration is fraud with your name on it. Since September 2025 a new version offers to "arrange" the $100,000 payment if you reimburse it — illegal twice over.
• The fake offer letter. A company's logo, a salary, a request for a "processing fee", "visa fee" or "background-check fee", or for your passport scan and bank details before any interview. Real employers do not charge for training materials, equipment, background checks or visa processing, and never contact you first by WhatsApp, Telegram or text — "Never pay to get paid or get a job", as the FTC puts it. Reported losses to business and job-opportunity scams in the US reached $750.6 million in 2024.
• Task scams and cheque scams. "Remote work" that asks you to deposit crypto to unlock earnings, or a cheque to buy "equipment" that bounces after you have wired the surplus back.
• "Guaranteed US job" training institutes. Weeks of "training" in a Hyderabad or Jersey City flat, a fabricated résumé, a proxy interview, a bench. See the consultancy section — the people charged are the firms, but the fraud finding is yours.
• Impersonation. Calls or emails from "USCIS" or "the embassy" about a problem with your visa and a payment to fix it. USCIS says plainly that it does not accept Western Union, MoneyGram, PayPal, Venmo or gift cards, and warns against companies offering a job in the United States from overseas or by email and against anyone who guarantees a visa faster for a fee.
• Fake consultancies with real LCAs. A firm files an LCA for a client job you never work; you are "placed" at something else, or nothing. Check the firm on the H-1B Employer Data Hub and in the LCA disclosure data; a sponsor with hundreds of approvals and no product is a staffing business at best.

Verify before you pay anything: the company's own domain and careers page, the recruiter on LinkedIn with a company email, the LCA on the Department of Labor's site, the employer's E-Verify status if you are on STEM OPT. Report to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, to USCIS, and to the Wage and Hour Division if wages are involved — and tell the groups in the app, so the next person does not pay.

Between the stamping appointment and your first payslip there is a list, and then there is the long game.

The first month

1. The visa interview. The $205 MRV fee for a petition-based visa, the DS-160, the approval notice, the LCA, the offer letter, and your social media set to public. Interviews are in person since September 2025; the $250 "visa integrity fee" created by the July 2025 budget law was not being collected at Indian consulates when this page was checked on 9 October 2026, but it is on the statute book.
2. The Social Security number. Apply online once you are in the US, then take your passport, visa and I-94 to a Social Security office; the card arrives in 5 to 10 business days. You can start work before it comes.
3. Form I-9 on day one, verified within three business days; E-Verify if your employer uses it (every STEM OPT employer does).
4. A bank account and a credit history. You start with no credit score; a secured card or a card from a bank that accepts a passport, paid in full each month, builds one in about six months. Landlords ask for a deposit of one to two months' rent and sometimes a co-signer when there is no score.
5. A driving licence from the state DMV — there is no exchange with India; the written and road tests take weeks in some states and days in others. The groups in each city know which DMV books fastest.
6. Taxes. Your employer withholds from each payslip against the W-4 you fill in; the W-2 arrives in January; you file by 15 April. You are a resident for tax if you pass the substantial presence test — 31 days this year and 183 weighted days over three years — and file a 1040; a first-year arrival often files a 1040-NR or a dual-status return, and students still exempt file Form 8843. Indian income becomes reportable once you are resident.

Keeping status

• Your H-1B is tied to the employer and the job; a material change needs an amended petition. A timely extension filed before expiry lets you keep working for the same employer for up to 240 days while it is pending.
• Layoff. You have up to 60 consecutive days (or to the end of your I-94, if sooner) to have a new employer file, change status or leave. On 11 September 2026 DHS proposed removing that grace period altogether for H-1B, L-1, O-1, E and TN workers and their families; comments run to 10 November 2026 and the current rule applies until a final rule says otherwise. If it is adopted, a laid-off worker would be out of status the next day — keep a change-of-status plan (H-4, F-1, B-2) and three contacts who sponsor, always.
• Portability. A new employer files a non-frivolous petition; you may start on receipt.

The green card

The road is PERM labour certification (the employer tests the market), I-140 (which fixes your priority date), then I-485 or a consular visa when your date is current. Employment-based green cards are capped at 140,000 a year worldwide, with a per-country ceiling that India has exceeded for two decades. The October 2026 Visa Bulletin, the first of FY2027, shows what that means for someone born in India:

A PERM filed for you in 2026 enters an EB-2 queue that is only now reaching people who filed in late 2013; an EB-1 petition is about two years behind. That is why the strategies have changed: an EB-1A (extraordinary ability) or EB-2 NIW (national interest waiver) petition needs no employer and no PERM — you file it yourself — though an NIW keeps you in the EB-2 India queue and only EB-1 shortens the wait. Both are harder than they were: USCIS approved 66.9% of EB-1A and 55.2% of NIW petitions in FY2025 and 47.5% and 42.6% in the first quarter of FY2026, after NIW filings tripled to 66,276 a year. Once your I-485 has been pending 180 days you may change jobs within the same or a similar occupation under AC21 (file Supplement J), and an approved I-140 keeps your priority date even if the employer withdraws it. Five years after the green card comes citizenship; India does not allow dual nationality, so the Indian passport is surrendered for the OCI card — and until then the passport renewal guide covers the consulates and VFS.