In a wide-ranging conversation with TheNews21, the author of Wild Wild East discusses migration myths, labour exploitation, American tech anxieties, and the hidden structure of the H1-B system.For decades, the H1-B visa represented aspiration for India’s middle class — a ticket to the American dream, social prestige and economic mobility. But beneath that success story, argues journalist and author Tanul Thakur, lies a far more disturbing reality of labour exploitation, immigration dependency, underpaid workers and institutional silence. In this long-form conversation with Sonali Gill of TheNews21, Thakur discusses his new book Wild Wild East and explains why he believes the H1-B system became “a machine for cheap and unfree labour.
Sonali Gill: My name is Sonali Gill. I am a journalist and copywriter, and I am interviewing Mr. Tanul Thakur, who is an acclaimed film journalist, about his latest book. If I have the name correctly, it’s called “Wild, Wild East: Exiled Americans and the Systemic Abuse of the H1-B Programme”. It’s published by Westland Books in India.
Hi Tanul, welcome.
Tanul Thakur: Hi, thank you for having me.
Sonali Gill: So, shall we start with you telling me a bit about your book?
Tanul Thakur: Yeah, the book is essentially about how the systemic abuse of the H1-B programme enslaves Indian IT workers and exiles American tech workers. Essentially, it tells the story of three individuals — two H1-B workers and one American professional — covering their lives from the late ’90s to 2025.
It’s essentially a book of narrative non-fiction, which means that it primarily unfolds through the stories of these three individuals. But it’s also intercut with chapters of what I like to call “conventional non-fiction,” where I tell readers about the history of the H1-B programme, the different guilty parties, different loopholes, and the larger picture — which includes Indian outsourcing giants, visa mills, American federal agencies and corporate America.
Along the way, there is also a lot of data-driven investigation which bolsters the stories of these individuals.
Sonali Gill: And are the three primary characters inspired by real people?
Tanul Thakur: They’re real people. You can actually look them up and find more information about them. Everything in the book is true — all the dialogues, the plot turns, everything. I’ve not made anything up. It’s a book of non-fiction.
The only thing I had to change, on their request, was the names of some companies because they requested me to do so. But they also volunteered proof to back their accounts. They shared videos, relevant audio files, documents and all of that.
And over the course of five to six years, I interviewed them repeatedly. I read more than a million of their emails and watched thousands of their videos. I also understood the unreliability of memory, so I asked them the same questions at different points, just to check their accounts. And that’s how this book came together.
Sonali Gill: Right. So that’s why you took eight years to research and write the book?
Tanul Thakur: Yeah, yeah.
Sonali Gill: And is it shaped specifically by your time as a student and a worker? Did you put in your own anecdotes as well?
Tanul Thakur: Yeah, thanks for asking that because really the kernel of the story, or the seed of the story, was incepted during my days as an H1-B worker.
I was an H1-B worker in the U.S. myself and had figured out that there was some kind of scam going on in the U.S., although I did not know the extent of it. I did not know the vastness of the canvas in terms of how many entities it implicated. But yes, I did know there was what I would call a widespread scam.
I was an H1-B worker in the U.S. from 2011 to 2013, and before that I was a student there from 2008 till 2010.
So, before the book starts, there is a short introduction of three or four pages where I tell readers who I am and what my motivation was. In that introduction I write about the fact that I had seen the scam closely. And I was lucky that I was not part of it. I was lucky that I did not have to participate in any scam myself.
In a sense, yes, the book was shaped by that. But after the introduction, I kind of recede from the surface. I had essentially written a line saying that I wanted to be something like a movie camera — relaying, revealing, recording and receding.
I didn’t want to editorialise too much and say, “Hey, here’s how you should think about these people,” or “These are good people,” or “These are bad people.” I didn’t really want to moralise. I didn’t want to put in my own experiences because beyond a point, it’s not my story.
Sonali Gill: You wanted to present their tale.
Tanul Thakur: Yeah, it’s the story I wanted to tell, but it’s not my story to tell.
Because I wasn’t part of the scam or part of that exploitative system. But yes, I had seen it up close while I was in the U.S., and I had known the accounts of a lot of other victims and remained in touch with them.
The fact that I had seen the system up close always acted like a moral torchlight for me.
Sonali Gill: Yeah, a guide.
Tanul Thakur: Yeah, a guide light that always kept me anchored.
And it also helped that the H1-B system is extremely complicated. Scholars say it is second only, in complexity, to the American tax system.
So yes, it gets super complicated and technical. That also helped because I knew the basics — what an LCA is, which is a Labour Condition Application, and things like that.
But beyond a point I haven’t really inserted my own anecdotes, although I do appear in the story after three-fourths of the book because I’m the one doing the investigation and tying things together.
But fundamentally, it’s not my story. It’s the story of these three individuals that I was lucky and privileged to tell.
Sonali Gill: Of course. And in the book, you mention a set of incentives for each player — the company hiring, the worker, the intermediaries. Is there any way for the incentive structure to be changed so that the abuse is reduced or perhaps eradicated?
Tanul Thakur: Yeah, so essentially how the system works right now is that there are two routes.
I’ll explain it briefly for your readers so they have some context.
There is a body-shop model where there is a client, then a prime vendor, then several small mom-and-pop IT body shops, then another IT body shop, and finally the H1-B worker.
So if, say, a client is paying 120 dollars, all these parties are nibbling away — actually cannibalising your paycheck — and the worker may end up getting around 25 dollars.
Sonali Gill: It’s like a network that reduces your share of the pay.
Tanul Thakur: Exactly. So that’s one model.
The second model is direct hiring by a Fortune 500 company or a Big Tech giant. But even there there is underpayment because what these companies are paying you is often not what you deserve according to local market standards.
So the body-shop players are breaking the law through wage theft, editing purchase orders and all kinds of things.
Corporate America, under the direct H1-B model, may not do those things, but they still underpay workers legally.
So what the body-shop people are doing is breaking the law, while Silicon Valley effectively changes the law.
If you ask how the incentive structure should change, it’s actually quite simple: eliminate H1-B as a tool for cheap labour.
Right now, H1-B workers are being used as cheap labour, which prioritises H1-B workers over Americans because corporations have a cheaper alternative.
At the same time, even H1-B workers themselves are underpaid because of loopholes in the prevailing wage structure.
The H1-B system allows four levels of salaries where the bottom two tiers are at the 17th and 34th percentile.
So at one level, corporations say they are bringing the “best and brightest” people to the country, while on the other hand they are not even paying them close to the median salary according to the local market.
Sonali Gill: You’re not paying them a fair wage, basically.
Tanul Thakur: Exactly. You’re not paying them a fair wage, and it’s legal, so no one raises an alarm about it.
So if any administration — Trump or otherwise — increases the wage ceiling and pushes it to the 50th or 75th percentile, corporations would stop getting subsidies through cheap H1-B labour. That would be the first major step.
Second, corporations love cheap and unfree labour.
The cheap part we discussed. The unfree part is that workers do not own the visa. The companies do.
One of the protagonists in my book, Kumar, calls it the “Dubai model.” If you get fired, you largely have to return to your country if you don’t find another job within 60 days. That’s extremely difficult.
Closely tied to that is the fact that since your employer owns the visa, you become reluctant to complain even if you’re subjected to dehumanizing conditions.
Even the Department of Labor welcomes complaints primarily when H1-B workers complain themselves. But if your employer controls your visa, you’re not likely to complain.
So if these incentive structures change, it would actually benefit both H1-B workers and Americans.
Sonali Gill: That makes a lot of sense. The way you explained it also puts it in a clearer context.
Which leads me to my next question. It’s about myth-making.
Do you think myth-making plays a role in how people follow the programme, pursue it or even understand it locally?
Tanul Thakur: Absolutely.
The myth-making unfolds at two levels.
The H1-B programme began in 1990, and there were multiple points of convergence happening simultaneously — the Indian IT boom, economic liberalisation, the opening of markets, and even the collapse of the USSR.
Essentially, the U.S. remained the ultimate path to success for a lot of Indian middle-class families.
So going to the U.S. became something much bigger than migration. You were going to the “land of opportunity.”
If you told people you were going to the U.S. or any North American country, they just assumed you had made it.
This became especially concentrated in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where there was a mass exodus to the U.S. — first through doctors in the ’70s and then accelerated by the Y2K boom.
Sonali Gill: Yes.
Tanul Thakur: So when it comes to myth-making, after a point, going to the U.S. started to signal a lot more than affluence.
It started to signal prestige. It started to signal social status. It created a halo-like image around people who had supposedly “made it.”
Sonali Gill: Who basically achieved everything there is to achieve in life.
Tanul Thakur: Absolutely.
There was almost a ring of profundity around that success.
And it also makes sense because migration brings remittances, philanthropy, charitable hospitals, temples and all of that.
Hyderabad literally has a visa temple — Chilkur Balaji.
So going to the U.S. stops being just a migration story. It mutates into something much larger and more meaningful.
And slowly, a stigma starts getting attached to returning.
If everyone from your village is in the U.S., then why did you come back?
That itself sustains exploitation because many people think, “What if I go back? That would mean losing face.”
So myth-making and meaning-making collapse into one.
But there’s another myth-making process happening at the level of the American neoliberal establishment.
Sonali Gill: Really?
Tanul Thakur: Yeah.
Because if the H1-B programme has been abused so badly for 30 years, and the number of implicated parties and victims is staggering, then why have we barely heard about it?
My book is essentially the first narrative non-fiction book on the H1-B programme.
There was another book called Sold Out in 2015, but that was more explanatory non-fiction.
So we’re talking about a programme that has been deeply abused and yet has produced only two books.
Even mainstream media coverage — in India and America — has been extremely limited.
Over the last few years there has been some conversation because Trump returned and many Americans became upset.
Of course, there are racial undertones in some cases, which are terrible.
Sonali Gill: The undertone being, “There are too many of them.”
Tanul Thakur: Exactly.
But at the same time, there are also legitimate grievances by American tech workers who are not racist, xenophobic or bigoted.
They simply want their country to provide them opportunities.
But before 2020 or 2021, there was barely any serious noise about H1-B abuse.
People simply thought H1-B meant highly successful Indians.
From the Indian side, it became a story of nationalist pride.
From the American liberal side, it became “highly skilled immigrants doing great” — the model minority narrative.
So another layer of myth-making emerged.
There is what I call in the book a “thought control ecosystem.”
This includes American corporations, academia, liberal media, think tanks and politicians.
I’m talking about respected institutions — Columbia, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Brookings, Cato and all of them.
Whether directly or indirectly, they played a huge role in sustaining this scam.
They produced dubious studies claiming H1-B workers were paid more than Americans.
When I examined those papers closely, I found major statistical violations.
The same flawed papers got amplified in media and then cited inside policy circles.
It became an echo chamber.
Sonali Gill: There’s also an echo chamber in India around the perception of the worker.
Tanul Thakur: Exactly.
Indian media took the route of nationalism — “Look how successful our workers are.”
America took the liberal route — “Immigrants are doing great.”
But by doing that, both sides erased exploited immigrants.
So even if that wasn’t the intention, they ended up perpetuating exploitation.
And many of these institutions monetised and benefited from cheap labour embedded within the H1-B system.
Sonali Gill: So what does a typical H1-B scam look like? And does gender change the experience of workers?
Tanul Thakur: Gender doesn’t fundamentally change the scam, though in some cases it can make things even more horrific.
Essentially, say you are an engineer in India.
You are told you’ll get a salary of 60,000 or 65,000 dollars and everything looks legitimate during the visa process.
Then you reach the U.S. and discover there is no actual job.
Sonali Gill: Oh wow.
Tanul Thakur: I use the phrase “transatlantic human trafficking” very deliberately.
Because under the Department of Homeland Security’s definition, if there is fraud, force or coercion for economic advantage, it qualifies as trafficking.
You arrive in the U.S. and get lumped into overcrowded guest houses with eight or ten people.
Then you go through fake training.
After that, you are given a fabricated resume showing eight years of experience.
Sonali Gill: Even if you don’t actually have the experience?
Tanul Thakur: Of course you don’t.
Then they arrange proxy interviews for you.
Once you land a job, you often still don’t know how to perform the work.
So there is something called “on-job support,” where somebody in Hyderabad or Bangalore essentially helps do your work remotely.
Then there are delayed salaries, wage theft, bench exploitation, visa payments, green-card payments, caste favoritism and all kinds of abuse.
In some cases involving women workers, sexual favours are allegedly used to waive off visa or green-card fees.
So yes, it’s absolutely the “Wild Wild East.”
Sonali Gill: It sounds like a web of abuse.
Tanul Thakur: Absolutely.
And many people ask why workers don’t complain.
Part of the reason is legal vulnerability.
But another major part is the myth-making and meaning-making we discussed earlier.
Sonali Gill: Cultural shaming.
Tanul Thakur: Exactly.
Then there’s also the fact that people stay to repay loans and survive long enough to get green cards.
And ironically, many people who eventually get green cards go on to open their own body shops.
Sonali Gill: So the cycle continues.
Tanul Thakur: Exactly.
So it would be wrong to portray H1-B workers only as victims.
Many also become perpetrators.
While working on the book, I encountered many politically uncomfortable truths.
And if one of India’s biggest success stories — IT exports — also contains these bloody seams, then we need to confront that honestly.
I joke sometimes that it’s like Gangs of Wasseypur happening in the U.S., minus the guns.
There are caste associations, Telugu associations, political networks, philanthropy, film financing — all connected to this ecosystem.
Sonali Gill: But if all this is so extensive, why is it still what you called “the best-kept secret of the diaspora”?
Tanul Thakur: That’s a great question.
There are two categories here — dishonest H1-B workers and honest H1-B workers.
The dishonest workers obviously don’t want the world knowing their secret.
They want to preserve the façade of success.
But my bigger question is actually to honest H1-B workers.
Why didn’t they speak up?
Why was there no major public intervention saying, “Guys, what are we doing?”
Because even many successful people wanted to preserve the broader narrative of H1-B success since it benefited them socially and politically.
And honestly, it says something deeply troubling about modern Indian elites.
We have become extremely self-absorbed and lacking in empathy.
Sonali Gill: My final question is about the impact on ordinary American workers.
What does this do to them?
Tanul Thakur: It’s devastating.
In my book I tell the story of Virgil Beeshwar, a self-taught IT worker from a small town in Texas.
From 1988 to 2003, his earnings rose dramatically.
Then suddenly it all stopped.
He stopped getting interview calls.
Not for a month. For years.
You get another degree, network harder, upskill yourself — but the phone never rings.
Think about what that does psychologically.
Virgil’s partner eventually left him because unemployment changed his personality.
He contemplated suicide.
There was another American worker, Kevin Flanagan, who died by suicide after his company outsourced his role and forced him to train his replacement.
And this happens repeatedly.
American workers are often asked to train cheaper H1-B replacements while corporations publicly claim they are importing the “best and brightest.”
So the psychological and economic devastation is enormous.
And it affects everyone — white Americans, Black Americans, Americans of Mexican, Iranian, Egyptian and Indian origin.
Sonali Gill: They’re all American.
Tanul Thakur: Exactly.
And yet the moment an American worker speaks up, we often dismiss them as racist.
Of course some people are racist.
But it’s unfair to dismiss every grievance that way.
Sonali Gill: It seems like a deeply one-dimensional understanding, despite all the complicity involved.
Anyway, I think those are all my questions.
Thank you very much for joining me and making the time for this.
And before we end, where can readers find your book?
Tanul Thakur: Yeah, thanks. I had a lovely chat with you.
The book is available in all major Indian bookstores and online platforms, including Amazon India in hardcover and Kindle formats.
It’s also available internationally on Amazon U.S., Canada, the UK and elsewhere.
If people are interested in the subject, I’d love for them to engage with the book, even if they disagree with it.
Because the goal is not to be combative.
The goal is to tell human stories.
Think of it as a novel where everything is true.
If you are Indian, listen to the plight of American workers.
If you are American, listen to the plight of Indian H1-B workers.
And ultimately, listen to what globalisation and inequality are doing to ordinary people everywhere.
This story has remained suppressed for nearly 30 years.
We need to start talking honestly about what we are doing to people.
Sonali Gill: All very relevant.
Thanks very much, Tanul, and have a great day.
Tanul Thakur: Thank you.
