Frisco was a welcoming place for Indian immigrants. Then came the influencers / Texas Monthly

[00:00:01]It isn't hard to notice that North Texas is growing pretty quickly. Several local communities are on the top 10 list of fastest-growing cities in the nation, and that includes Frisco. It also offers opportunities to meet people from different walks of life. In the northeastern part of Frisco, you'll find a large Hindu temple. It has been in the community for more than a decade. But, as we have reported, there has been a recent rise of unwelcoming messaging directed at the Indian community. Our media partners at Texas Monthly are also taking a look at this issue and how influencers have become in involved now.

[00:00:30]Mark Dent worked on this story. He joins us now for tonight's discussion. In your article, Mark, you mentioned several people. Did this shift in Frisco start with a disgruntled employee, you think?

[00:00:41]>> So, not quite with a disgruntled employee, but as you were suggesting, it is about growth and the economy and about jobs. And, you know, if we look at Frisco, go back 25 years, 26 years to the year 2000, it was still a fairly small town, about 30,000 people, the vast majority of whom were white. And then, the Texas miracle has just kind of turned it into an economic boom town.

[00:01:03]New new businesses, new jobs, and new residents have flocked to Frisco, a lot of whom are from South Asia. The population right now is around 30% Asian, most of whom are Indian-Americans. And when you started to see, over the last couple of years, nationally and in Texas, there was a bit of a rise of nativism coupled with some concerns over the economy and concerns, especially, that immigrants were taking away jobs. And Frisco sort of became a focal point for those concerns about a year ago because of influencers like Mark Possienau and many others, many of whom are not from Frisco, they're from other parts of Texas, or in some cases different states, who started to visit Frisco and kind of just claimed that there's this Indian takeover going on or this Indian invasion. They started going to city council meetings where there was a lot of public comments that were against Indian-Americans, and it really just kind of blew up.

[00:02:00]>> You were able to dig into this whole H-1B visa program as it relates to Frisco. What did you learn?

[00:02:05]>> H-1B visas are a tool that companies use to hire employees from overseas. They're typically hiring people for very specialized roles, people who are highly educated. It could be roles in like engineering, cybersecurity, things like that. Nationwide, there's probably about 100,000 people who come into the country on H-1B visas every year who get approved. And you know, Frisco and the DFW area have had a lot of them. You know, look, if you go back to 2020, Frisco's had about 4,000. There's been many more in the DFW area overall and some of those people have settled in Frisco.

[00:02:42]And you know, over the last year or so, what you started to see again was like you had members of the Texas GOP complaining about H-1Bs. If you in 2024 as part of their party platform, they wanted to repeal the H-1B visa program entirely. And then you also had some influencers and online commentators alleging H-1B visa fraud. And at different companies in North Texas, particularly in Frisco, Ken Paxton, as a result of those videos, has started investigation of H-1B visas and particularly a few dozen companies that he's looking into in North Texas. Exactly where that investigation will go, you know, we don't really know, of course, yet. But the Indian-Americans who I spoke with said that these different videos, these allegations of fraud have been used to blame the entire community rather than to just say like there might be a small percentage of people who are committing fraud.

[00:03:36]>> And how talk talk to us about how Frisco has responded to all of this tension through their recent election and really through everyday life.

[00:03:45]>> Yeah, so there was a recent mayoral election in June. Mark Hill defeated Rod Villhauer in a runoff. Rod Villhauer earlier in his campaign had said that he was concerned more kind of like bring everyone together a unity type of campaign and he ends up winning this election and he was sworn in earlier this month as mayor and he he kind of reiterated that message saying like Frisco you know everyone can live in Frisco and he wanted to see the city continue to grow. And a lot of people have told me that they feel like that is the tone that's kind of started to really to kind of rise over the last few months after all this conflict for a while.

[00:04:29]But but that said you know the the Indian-Americans who I spoke with all of them they still want to live in Frisco.

[00:04:35]They say that they're going to keep living there and you know they've been they've been affected by all of these issues but that said it is still their home.

[00:04:45]>> Well our thanks to Mark Dent for joining us tonight for this discussion. You can read his entire article that's available for you right now on texasmonthly.com.