A mother with her two children decided to return to India, leaving their property in Texas after a massive tragedy struck them last year. The story of Priya Narayanaswamy, who came to India this April, emerged in a report by Bloomberg on the real estate crisis that the US is staring at, with Indians deciding to leave owing to the continuous targeting. South Asians have been the driving force behind building boom in several pockets in Texas.According to the report, Narayanaswamy and her husband, Anand, bought their house in 2023 for $435,000 in Keller. Keller is a suburb in the west, closer to Fort Worth. And though they wanted to live in Frisco, the price of the property was right in Keller. At that time, they had big dreams of settling down in the US. They were raising their two children as Americans.Anand was on an H-1B visa, working at Citibank through an IT-staffing firm called Iris Software, often 12 to 15 hours a day, the report said. Narayanaswamy was a human resources generalist. In August, she came home to find her husband crying. He had been laid off, which meant he could lose his visa if he couldn’t find another job quickly. Then came the bigger shock to the family. About a week later, Anand died by suicide. In his final note, he wrote that he feared he couldn’t compete with AI. The Bloomberg report said they contacted Iris Software and Citigroup, but they did not comment on the incident.Narayanaswamy was in the US on an H4 visa, which is for the dependents of H-1Bs. With Anand gone, her visa status got reduced to a six-month visitor visa, and she could no longer legally work. In October, Narayanaswamy listed the five-bedroom brick house for $465,000. She reduced the price but nobody made an offer. She said the bank agreed to forbearance on the mortgage, but now the house was likely going into foreclosure.Narayanaswamy told Bloomberg that when she watched the viral videos from the Frisco City Council meeting slamming Indians, asking H-1Bs to leave the US and go back to India, she wondered how the economy would run without Indians.(If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide or self-harm, a global list of helplines is available at blog.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines/)
