United States Vice President JD Vance Tuesday hailed praised at his Indian-origin in-laws, calling him “great contributors” to the US as he underlined that the country recognised the role of immigrants who have “enriched” it.
Speaking at a Turning Point USA tour event at the University of Georgia, Vance highlighted that while the US administration has been taking a tough stance on alleged fraud in the H1-B visa system, it would work only if the citizens thought of themselves as Americans.
His comments come amid a stricter stance adopted by the US President Donald Trump administration on immigration. In January, the number of detainees in custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement crossed 70,000 for the first time in 23 years, as per internal data of the Department of Homeland Security, quoted by CBS News.
Vance was responding to a question posed by an Indian-origin attendee regarding delays in receiving green cards for those on H1-B visas in the US. She asked, “I am also a daughter of a legal immigrant who came here on an H-1B visa. My mom and my dad, we’ve been here for over 10 years… it’s been really hard getting the green card based on quotas and everything. How do we fix the immigration system for people who have been waiting for the green cards for so long and they’re not getting it in time?”
To this, Vance responded, “I would say you know you heard me talk about H-1B fraud because I think there is a lot of fraud in the H-1B system. And I think you can all you can believe on one hand that there is a lot of fraud in the H-1B system while also believing that there are people who have come to the United States in the past who have enriched this country. Look, I am married to the daughter of immigrants from India and, you know, I love my in-laws and they’re great people and they’ve been great contributors to the United States of America.”
Vance is married to Usha Vance, who was born in San Diego to Indian-born Telugu-speaking professors. Her father, Krish Chilukuri, is an aerospace engineer from IIT-Madras, while her mother, Lakshmi, is a marine biologist and now provost at one of the colleges in UC San Diego. The family moved to the US in the 1980s.
He also said that citizens must prioritise the interests of the United States over the country they came from. “But I also think that when you become an American citizen, whether your family is nine generations of lineage in the United States or whether your family has zero generations of lineage in the United States… one of the obligations of citizens is that you have to think about the best interest of the country and not the country you came from before hand and not of any sort of group that you came from. You’ve got to think of yourself as an American.”
United States Vice President JD Vance Tuesday hailed praised at his Indian-origin in-laws, calling him “great contributors” to the US as he underlined that the country recognised the role of immigrants who have “enriched” it.
Speaking at a Turning Point USA tour event at the University of Georgia, Vance highlighted that while the US administration has been taking a tough stance on alleged fraud in the H1-B visa system, it would work only if the citizens thought of themselves as Americans.
His comments come amid a stricter stance adopted by the US President Donald Trump administration on immigration. In January, the number of detainees in custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement crossed 70,000 for the first time in 23 years, as per internal data of the Department of Homeland Security, quoted by CBS News.
Vance was responding to a question posed by an Indian-origin attendee regarding delays in receiving green cards for those on H1-B visas in the US. She asked, “I am also a daughter of a legal immigrant who came here on an H-1B visa. My mom and my dad, we’ve been here for over 10 years… it’s been really hard getting the green card based on quotas and everything. How do we fix the immigration system for people who have been waiting for the green cards for so long and they’re not getting it in time?”
To this, Vance responded, “I would say you know you heard me talk about H-1B fraud because I think there is a lot of fraud in the H-1B system. And I think you can all you can believe on one hand that there is a lot of fraud in the H-1B system while also believing that there are people who have come to the United States in the past who have enriched this country. Look, I am married to the daughter of immigrants from India and, you know, I love my in-laws and they’re great people and they’ve been great contributors to the United States of America.”
Vance is married to Usha Vance, who was born in San Diego to Indian-born Telugu-speaking professors. Her father, Krish Chilukuri, is an aerospace engineer from IIT-Madras, while her mother, Lakshmi, is a marine biologist and now provost at one of the colleges in UC San Diego. The family moved to the US in the 1980s.
He also said that citizens must prioritise the interests of the United States over the country they came from. “But I also think that when you become an American citizen, whether your family is nine generations of lineage in the United States or whether your family has zero generations of lineage in the United States… one of the obligations of citizens is that you have to think about the best interest of the country and not the country you came from before hand and not of any sort of group that you came from. You’ve got to think of yourself as an American.”
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Vance went on to praise his father-in-law, calling him “an amazing guy”. He said, “My father-in-law who moved to the United States from India, who got an education and became an American citizen, never once never in my life said ‘you have to do this’ or ‘you should do this because it’s in the best interest of the country that I came from.’”
According to a report in The Indian Express, Indians account for over 70 per cent of approximately 85,000 H-1B visas issued annually in the US, primarily for specialised IT and engineering roles. However, the recent structural changes and ongoing visa backlogs have prompted several Indian entrepreneurs and IT professionals to either return to build in India’s tech ecosystem or leverage alternative visas like O-1, EB-1 and EB-2 NIW.