Need is different from want. Indian college students are future temporary workers, if that. Going to college here doesn’t guarantee you an H1B much less a green card. The rapidly aging American population has a need for various temporary workers, but they don’t need them to stay here and become citizens. There is no political will on either the left or the right to create a real, predictable skilled immigration system that doesn’t leave Indians and their families at the mercy of legal fictions like “dual intent” papering over what is fundamentally a temporary worker program.
Silicon Valley needs and perhaps even wants Indians as permanent immigrants. Insofar as Biden is supported by Silicon Valley with donations he’ll throw them some scraps. But Indians (and Asians generally) aren’t especially politically useful to Democrats. They aren’t eligible to vote for a decade or more, and don’t turn out even then. And they create internal tensions in the coalition (e.g. voting down Prop 16 in CA). Democrats will talk a lot about loving immigrants because they’re laser focused on the Hispanic vote. But reforming the H1B system doesn’t help with that and they won’t spend any significant political capital on that.
Silicon Valley needs and perhaps even wants Indians as permanent immigrants. Insofar as Biden is supported by Silicon Valley with donations he’ll throw them some scraps. But Indians (and Asians generally) aren’t especially politically useful to Democrats. They aren’t eligible to vote for a decade or more, and don’t turn out even then. And they create internal tensions in the coalition (e.g. voting down Prop 16 in CA). Democrats will talk a lot about loving immigrants because they’re laser focused on the Hispanic vote. But reforming the H1B system doesn’t help with that and they won’t spend any significant political capital on that.