India objects to JD Vance’s ‘foreign indentured servants’ remark amid US green-card restrictions

India has objected to US Vice-President JD Vance’s description of foreign workers as “foreign indentured servants”. The row follows the Trump administration’s suspension of several technology companies from the PERM green-card programme, amid allegations of misuse by the companies involved.

New Delhi: India has strongly objected to United States Vice President JD Vance’s description of foreign workers as “foreign indentured servants” amid the Trump administration’s decision to suspend the Permanent Labour Certification (PERM) programme.

In a statement, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said, “We believe that such descriptions are unwarranted and ignore the fact that Indian professionals in the United States are highly educated and skilled contributors to its economy and innovation ecosystem.”

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“Indeed, the history of the United States itself has been shaped by generations of immigrants whose labour, enterprise and innovation have contributed to its growth and prosperity. Resorting to terminology that carries painful historical and colonial legacy connotations is deeply offensive,” the MEA said in a release.

The Indian government’s response comes after Vance accused Microsoft of replacing American workers with non-Americans, arguing that the company should prioritise hiring US citizens rather than foreign workers.

Vance cited the company’s workforce reductions alongside its use of H-1B visas and green cards to support his allegations.

“In the last year, Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers. At the same time, the company benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards. In other words, if you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” Vance claimed.

The Trump administration’s action suspends the participation of major IT outsourcing companies in the PERM programme, which enables employers to seek permanent labour certification for foreign workers as part of the employment-based green card process.

The move prevents the companies from filing new permanent labour certification applications and halts the processing of pending applications under the programme.

US Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the decision at a press conference led by Vance, linking the action to ongoing criminal and federal investigations.

“Due to ongoing criminal investigations led by the Department of Labour’s Inspector General Anthony DiEsposito, who will get into this shortly, I am hereby suspending from the Permanent Labour Certification Program some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini,” Sonderling said.