U.S Vice President J.D. Vance. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters
The Ministry of External Affairs on Friday (October 9, 2026) slammed as “unwarranted” and “deeply offensive” U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s comments in which he called foreign workers, including Indian IT professionals, “indentured servants”.
Hitting out at the U.S. government for its decision to suspend “labour certifications” from several Indian technology firms based in America, the Ministry said the steps would not “advance the shared ambitions of both countries”, indicating further trouble in the already difficult economic relationship between the two countries.
On Thursday , Mr. Vance and U.S. Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the suspension of the Permanent Labour Certification (PERM) programme for eight IT outsourcing giants, including five Indian IT multinationals operating in the U.S., and accused them of visa fraud. The list included Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, Cognizant, and HCL from India, often called the Big 5, as well as Capgemini, Microsoft, and Adobe.
“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,” the Ministry said in a strongly worded statement that reminded the Trump administration that the U.S. had been “shaped by generations of immigrants.”
“Resorting to terminology that carries painful historical and colonial legacy connotations is deeply offensive,” the Ministry added, pointing to the use of indentured labour by American and European colonial settlers in the 19th century, including in the U.S. and nearby islands to work on their farms.
The PERM programme allows companies to certify professionals who are not U.S. citizens for essential skills, qualifying them to be sponsored for a Green Card of Permanent Residency status in the country. The U.S. government said this process benefitted more than 2,30,000 H1B visa approvals and 1,00,000 permanent residencies since 2009, claiming that the eight companies had brought in hundreds of thousands of foreign workers at lower wages through a “pernicious system” that “defrauded the American worker”. About 70% of all H1B visa holders are Indian.
“You [the Companies] bring in indentured servants from outside the country. You lay off American workers. And if you’re a corporation, you make a ton of money by undercutting the wages of American workers, replacing them with people who frankly shouldn’t be in the United States of America to begin with,” Mr. Vance said.
The PERM programme enables a company to sponsor a foreign employee for permanent residence in the U.S., and it must prove to the Labour Department that it tried and failed to find a comparatively qualified American for the job.
The Ministry said that talent mobility helps both the U.S. and India, creating “opportunities for Indians” and providing U.S. companies with “cutting-edge talent, innovation, research, productivity, competitiveness and job creation, besides creating shareholder wealth in the U.S.”
Mr. Vance’s announcement came when economic ties between India and the U.S. were under strain over the lack of progress in the Free Trade Agreement talks, despite months of negotiations in Delhi and Washington and calls between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump.
Last week, after talks in Washington, the U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said no deal was “imminent”, and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also disclosed that negotiations had “plateaued” with little possible give-and-take. In addition, New Delhi is awaiting the impact of the Sanctions against Russia and Iran Act that mandates up to 100% U.S. tariffs on countries importing large quantities of Russian oil.
Mr. Trump is expected to take a decision on the tariffs on October 18, just ahead of the mid-term elections in the U.S. in early November.
Published – October 09, 2026 10:18 pm IST
