JD Vance says ‘I love my Indian in-laws, but…’ amid India-US H-1B visa row

JD Vance says his “rhetoric may have been imperfect” after calling H-1B workers “indentured servants”, and speaks of his Indian in-laws.

4 min readOct 19, 2026 08:26 AM IST First published on: Oct 19, 2026 at 08:26 AM IST

Vice President JD Vance speaks at a midterm campaign rally at the LevelUp Training Complex in Monroe, Mich. (Photo; AP)

US Vice President JD Vance has said his “rhetoric may have been imperfect” after he called H-1B visa workers “foreign indentured servants” earlier this month. Speaking at a CBS News town hall on Saturday, October 17 , he said his target was companies and the visa system, not the workers.

He also spoke about his wife, Second Lady Usha Vance, and her South Indian parents. India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had already called his words “unwarranted” and “deeply offensive”. The row comes as the Trump administration has suspended several firms, including Indian IT companies, from a key step on the path to a US green card.

Vance speaks of his Indian in-laws

A voter at the town hall asked Vance about the remark. She said she had moved to the US five years ago, became a citizen and voted for him. She accused him of “scapegoating immigrants”.

Vance began by talking about his family. He said his wife was born in the US and that he is proud of her. Of her parents, he said: “I love my mother-in-law and father-in-law who immigrated from South India.”

Niv Agaram immigrated to the U.S. with her family about 20 years ago. After becoming a U.S. citizen, she first voted for President Trump and Vice President JD Vance. She asked Vance about the administration’s immigration policies and his rhetoric surrounding immigrants. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable for an American citizen to want to share their community with people they have something in common with,” Vance said. “And I think our immigration system has to build that.

— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 18, 2026

He then said he wanted a system that welcomes people who add value to the country, but that the system must be fair to US workers too. “Our immigration system has to balance,” he said.

‘That is on me’: what Vance said about his words

Vance took responsibility for the way he put it. “To the extent that my rhetoric has been imperfect here, that’s on me,” he said.

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He said the term was aimed at employers, not visa holders:

• He said it was “not a criticism of H1B visa holders” but of the companies that bring them in.
• In his view, some firms lay off a US worker and hire a visa holder in their place.
• He said a visa holder who argues with a boss can lose the job and be sent home, which gives the employer too much power.
• He gave the example of a company worth a trillion dollars that says it cannot find an accountant locally, then fires one already on its payroll. “That’s not fairness,” he said.

How the row began

The row started earlier this month. At a news conference, Vance called H-1B workers “indentured servants” and said foreign outsourcing firms cut the pay of American workers.

He gave these figures:

• An H-1B worker earns about $20,000 less than a US citizen in the same job.
• A worker brought in by a foreign outsourcing firm earns about $48,000 less.

He told US firms to hire more American workers and to stop bringing in cheaper labour from abroad.

The administration then suspended several companies from the Permanent Labor Certification Program, known as PERM. PERM is the first step that lets an employer sponsor a foreign worker, such as an H-1B holder, for a green card. The firms named include:

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• Microsoft
• Cognizant
• Infosys
• TCS
• Wipro
• HCL
• Capgemini

The MEA said the remarks ignored the fact that Indian professionals in the US are “highly educated and skilled contributors” to its economy. It said the history of the US was shaped by generations of immigrants, and that words with “painful historical and colonial legacy connotations” were deeply offensive.

New Delhi also said the freeze on green card filings by Indian IT firms such as TCS and Infosys goes against the shared aims of both countries. HCLTech has also commented on the suspension, in line with Infosys and TCS.

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