Vance admits ‘indentured servants’ jibe was poorly put, but green-card freeze on eight tech firms stays

US Vice-President JD Vance has conceded that calling foreign tech workers “indentured servants” was badly phrased. Speaking at a televised town hall broadcast on the weekend of 17–18 October, he said that to the extent his rhetoric had been “imperfect”, “that’s on me”. He gave no sign, however, that Washington would ease the Labor Department’s suspension of green-card sponsorship at eight large technology employers, among them India’s biggest IT services companies.

Vance said the label was directed at employers, and at a visa system that in his view ties a worker’s legal status to a single job, rather than at H-1B holders themselves. “When I say indentured servitude, that is not a criticism of H1B visa holders,” he said. He also spoke warmly of the parents of his wife, Usha Vance, who emigrated to the United States from India.

How the row began

The original remark came at a White House press conference on visa fraud on Thursday, 8 October. Vance accused firms of cutting American jobs while hiring through the H-1B programme, telling them they “cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants”. He singled out Microsoft.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs responded the following day. It described the wording as “deeply offensive”, said it “carries painful historical and colonial legacy connotations”, and noted that Indian professionals in the US are highly qualified contributors to the American economy.

The green-card freeze

Alongside Vance’s remarks, Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that Microsoft, Adobe, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Cognizant and Capgemini had been suspended from the PERM programme. PERM labour certification is the first step in most employer-sponsored green-card cases. Sonderling said the department would neither accept new applications involving these companies nor process those already pending.

The move does not cancel anyone’s existing H-1B status, a point India’s foreign ministry also made, but it closes the green-card route through these employers for as long as it lasts. Vance said it would continue “as long as it needs to”. Sonderling cited multiple active federal investigations and said the eight firms had together received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and over 100,000 labour certifications since 2009. The department has not publicly named the legal provision it is relying on.

Microsoft pushes back

Microsoft president Brad Smith has called Vance’s accusations against the company “completely off base”. He said most of Microsoft’s green-card requests were for people who had worked there for years, and warned that tighter curbs could drive skilled workers out of the country.

What it means for Telugu techies

Indian nationals hold the majority of H-1B visas, and the affected companies employ large numbers of Telugu professionals, many of whom are waiting on PERM or I-140 approval. Among Telugu professionals in the US the mood is anxious. Some workers on H-1B extensions may now have to change employers to keep their green-card plans alive, and PERM reviews were already taking well over a year before the freeze.

No end date for the suspension has been announced. This report is not legal advice; workers with cases in progress at these companies should consult an immigration attorney.

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