Eric Schmitt

Eric Schmitt alleged that some Big Tech contractors had exposed cases of Indian visa holders sharing confidential interview questions with applicants from India.

US Senator Eric Schmitt has triggered controversy after he claimed that a “Visa Cartel" has its “own Visa Temple" in Hyderabad, referring to the Chilkur Balaji Temple, as he stepped up criticism of the US H-1B visa programme.

In a series of posts on X, the Republican senator from Missouri also shared a photograph of the Chilkur Balaji Temple, located near Hyderabad. The shrine is widely known as the “Visa Temple" due to a popular belief that prayers offered there help devotees secure overseas visas, particularly for travel to the United States.

“The ‘Visa Cartel’ has its own ‘Visa Temple’ in Hyderabad, which sees thousands of Indians circling altars and getting passports blessed for U.S. work visas," Schmitt wrote, arguing that American workers “shouldn’t have to compete against a system this gamed".

In his post, the US senator also alleged that some Big Tech contractors had exposed cases of Indian visa holders sharing confidential interview questions with applicants from India. He further claimed that American workers were being “quietly locked out" as jobs were routed through such pipelines, adding that merit, in his view, was being replaced by “ethnic favoritism".

“Enough. We must end the fraud, shutdown these networks, close the loopholes, and ensure we serve American workers," he wrote in another follow-up post.

In one post, calling the H-1B programme a “total fraud" and a “total scam," he wrote that global corporations wanted access to US markets, courts and protections, but not American workers, adding that “this betrayal must end now."

In another post, he alleged that major Big Tech companies had laid off thousands of US employees while simultaneously filing thousands of H-1B applications for similar roles. He further claimed that a large share of these foreign hires were brought in at below-median wages.

“82% of those foreign hires came in below median wages. BILLIONS now flow to India for AI training instead, subsidized by Americans," he wrote.