A phone call with relatives in America rarely ends with someone saying they are coming home. Politics may enter the conversation. Immigration certainly does. Then the talk drifts toward the price of ordinary American life.

Leaving is another matter.

That is why a new survey of Indian Americans caught my attention. Its headline finding sounds dramatic: four in ten Indian Americans say they have frequently or occasionally thought about leaving the United States.

Look deeper and the story becomes harder to package.

Indian Americans are questioning America. They have not stopped choosing it.

The 40 Percent Number Needs Context

The 2026 Indian American Attitudes Survey, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and conducted with YouGov, surveyed 1,000 Indian-American adults between November 25, 2025 and January 6, 2026. The nationally representative online survey included U.S. citizens and non-citizens. Its overall margin of error was plus or minus 3.6 percentage points. (carnegieendowment.org)

Fourteen percent said they had frequently thought about leaving the United States for another country. Another 26 percent had occasionally considered it.

Twenty-two percent said they had rarely thought about leaving. Thirty-seven percent had never considered it. (carnegieendowment.org)

Thinking about migration is not migration. It is not even necessarily an intention to migrate.

Carnegie concludes that these attitudes are not translating into widespread plans to leave. A majority of respondents still recommends America when presented with a hypothetical employment choice. (carnegieendowment.org)

So the 40 percent figure tells me less about an approaching exodus than about a change in how some Indian Americans calculate their future.

America is being reconsidered.

Among respondents who had ever contemplated leaving, including those who had considered it rarely, 58 percent cited frustration with U.S. politics. Cost of living followed at 54 percent. Personal safety was mentioned by 41 percent, while 20 percent cited immigration obstacles. (carnegieendowment.org)

Another part of the survey troubles me more.

Nearly half of respondents, 48 percent, said they had encountered racist social-media posts targeting Indians or Indian Americans very or somewhat often since the beginning of 2025. One in four reported having been called a slur. Nine percent said they had been physically threatened. (carnegieendowment.org)

Carnegie nevertheless found no statistically significant increase since 2020 in the overall share reporting direct personal discrimination.

Behaviour tells another part of the story.

Thirty-one percent said they had avoided discussing or engaging with politics on social media because of concerns about anti-Indian discrimination or racism. Twenty-one percent had avoided leaving and re-entering the United States. Nineteen percent reported avoiding Indian dress in public. (carnegieendowment.org)

A person does not have to leave a country to feel less secure inside it. Sometimes the adjustment is quieter.

People change what they say. They reconsider where they go.

The suitcase stays in the cupboard.

The Legal Limbo Behind the Numbers

For Indian professionals who do not yet have permanent residence, immigration uncertainty creates a different pressure.

The problem sits inside U.S. immigration law.

Employment-based immigrant visas face annual numerical limits. The law also imposes per-country limits that affect heavily oversubscribed countries such as India. For fiscal year 2026, the worldwide employment-based preference limit was 186,317. The basic per-country ceiling across the family- and employment-based preference systems was 28,862, although statutory rules can alter the effective number. (travel.state.gov)

The September 2026 Visa Bulletin shows what those rules mean in practice.

For Indian applicants in the employment-based third-preference category, the final-action date stood at January 1, 2014. The employment-based second-preference category for India was unavailable for final action in the September bulletin. (travel.state.gov)

In May, the State Department had already announced that all immigrant visas available to India under the EB-2 allocation for fiscal year 2026 had been used. Issuance was expected to resume with the new fiscal year on October 1, subject to visa availability and applicable priority dates. (travel.state.gov)

Behind those dates are ordinary lives.

A professional can work in America for years while permanent residence remains somewhere beyond the next Visa Bulletin. Careers advance. Children grow older, while a temporary immigration status coexists with a life that stopped feeling temporary years ago.

This is also why I would avoid sensational claims that every Indian applicant literally faces a century-long wait.

Backlog projections depend heavily on an applicant’s category and priority date. Future visa availability can alter the calculation again, as can a change in immigration law.

The official dates are stark enough. They need no embellishment.

They Are Thinking About Leaving. But Not Necessarily for India

Here the survey takes an unexpected turn.

Among respondents who had contemplated leaving the United States, only 25 percent identified India as a possible destination. Sixty-two percent named another country. Thirteen percent were unsure. (carnegieendowment.org)

That changes the story.

This is not simply a reverse-migration narrative in which successful Indians become disappointed with America and return home.

The choice has widened.

An Indian professional can compare America with India and still decide that neither represents the only option. The Carnegie survey does not tell us where those respondents would eventually settle. It does show why dissatisfaction with America should not automatically be translated into a desire to return to India.

I understand part of this calculation through my own family.

What Bihar and New York Taught Me

My brother-in-law and his family have built a full life in New York. They are happy there. I do not see them preparing to leave.

My family connections across South Asia, including Bihar, give me another view of migration.

People living there do not describe India to me as an abstraction. They talk about ordinary life. Infrastructure problems enter those conversations. Frustration with institutions does too.

Pakistan gives me another version of the same education.

I live in Karachi. I know how easily distance can soften the memory of small daily difficulties. They look different from several thousand kilometres away.

I have often heard migrants remember home emotionally while judging their adopted country through harder calculations.

The two calculations do not always agree.

This is why I hesitate when a survey answer about “considering leaving” becomes a prediction about actual departure.

Moving home can mean disrupting a career and moving children between schools. Financial arrangements may have to be rebuilt. Professional networks accumulated over years do not fit neatly into a suitcase.

Then there is the place you are supposedly returning to.

A holiday visit and a permanent return are not the same experience. Anyone who has lived between countries, or has close family who do, understands the difference rather quickly.

The decision eventually collides with ordinary life.

America Is Being Repriced

One question in the Carnegie survey cuts through almost everything else.

Researchers presented respondents with a hypothetical Indian professional named Rishi. He could apply for a visa to work in the United States or remain in India.

Sixty-two percent told him to apply for the American work visa.

Only 23 percent advised him to remain in India. Fourteen percent were unsure. (carnegieendowment.org)

Four in ten Indian Americans have frequently or occasionally thought about leaving America. Yet when another Indian asks whether he should try to enter, nearly two-thirds still point him toward the United States.

That tension interests me far more than the headline number.

For decades, migration to America carried an extraordinary premium in South Asia.

A U.S. career promised much higher earnings. It also offered professional mobility and access to institutions that were difficult to match at home.

The calculation now looks less automatic.

Immigration uncertainty carries a price of its own. America’s living costs matter too. A harsher social environment can enter the calculation without erasing the economic attraction that brought people there in the first place.

The Carnegie survey cannot tell us how many Indian Americans will eventually leave. It was not designed to do that. Its survey waves are cross-sectional rather than a panel following the same individuals through time, and Carnegie cautions that comparisons across waves require care because the 2026 sampling frame changed. (carnegieendowment.org)

It can tell us what people are thinking now.

Four in ten have frequently or occasionally thought about leaving. Yet 62 percent would still tell an Indian professional to apply for the American work visa.

I keep coming back to those two numbers.

The attraction remains. The certainty does not.

They are running the numbers again.