US Vice President JD Vance has defended his remark that called H-1B visa workers “foreign indentured servants”, while saying he loves his Indian in-laws. Speaking at a CBS News town hall on Saturday, October 17 (US time), he said his target was companies and the visa system, not the workers, and that the US needs a balanced immigration system. He allowed that his “rhetoric may have been imperfect”, but he did not take the remark back. 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, “You know where my family comes from, and I love my mother-in-law and father-in-law who immigrated from South India, and obviously their daughter, born in the United States of America, is now the second lady, and I’m very proud of her, and I love her very much.”
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. “I think that our immigration system has to balance,” he said.
‘That is on me’: what Vance said about his words
Vance did not withdraw the remark. He said the point stands, and that the term was aimed at employers, not visa holders. He did accept that his choice of words could have been better. “To the extent that my rhetoric has been imperfect here, that’s on me,” he said.
Story continues below this ad
In his words, “So, when I say indentured servitude, that is not a criticism of H1B visa holders; that is the criticism of the company, which brings a person who sometimes will lay off an American worker and knows that if they complain, if they have disagreement with the boss, they could just lose their job… They can be shipped back, which I think gives way too much power to the employer. Maybe my rhetoric has been imperfect here… it is the criticism of the visa system that allowed people to be treated as indentured servants, as they can be shipped to their countries of origin.”
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.
Story continues below this ad
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:
Microsoft
Cognizant
Infosys
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.