IIT to H-1B: JD Vance calls out academic in-laws for red flagging green cards without loyalty test
TOI correspondent from Washington: US Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday doubled down on the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration stance, signaling deep skepticism towards the H-1B visa program that considers national “loyalty” as the ultimate litmus test for immigrants.Speaking at a TurningPointUSA townhall in Georgia, Vance sidestepped a question from an Indian-origin student about the decades-long green card backlog, instead pointing to systemic fraud in the program and cultural expectations of assimilation, instead offering policy prescriptions for the estimated million-plus Indians currently stuck in the permanent residence queue.
The US Veep, who has long portrayed the H-1B program as a tool for “big tech” to suppress American wages – despite being financed by big tech early in his political career – told the young audience that the system is currently rife with abuse. He recalled his wife, Second Lady Usha Vance, and his parents as role models for successful assimilation, saying, “You can believe that there has been a lot of H-1B fraud, and also believe that there have been people who have come to the United States who have enriched this country.”“Look, I’m married to the daughter of immigrants from India… I love my in-laws and they have made great contributions to the United States. I also think that when you become an American citizen, whether you have nine generations of lineage or zero, one of your obligations is to think about the best interest of your country, not the best interest of the country you came from.” Expressing his irritation at a Ukrainian-American who pressured him to supply arms to Ukraine, he said that his father-in-law, who moved to the US and became a US citizen, never told him that he should take any decision because it was in the best interest of the country he came from. Vance argued, “The extent to which this attitude prevails among the new generation (of immigrants) makes Americans feel welcome. Being an American means taking care of Americans first, and that is the perspective we need to adopt in our immigration policy.” Vance’s in-laws, Radhakrishna “Krish” Chilukuri and Dr. Lakshmi Chilukuri, immigrated from Andhra Pradesh, India in the late 1970s. Krish Chilukuri, a mechanical engineer who studied at IIT Madras, is a lecturer in aerospace engineering at San Diego State University. Dr. Lakshmi Chilukuri is Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of California, San Diego. Both have built distinguished academic careers in California after arriving legally decades ago.While the student’s question concerned law-abiding, high-tax-paying professionals waiting decades for a green card because of country-based quotas, Vance ignored the issue, avoiding any promises to raise the 7% per-country cap, which favors smaller countries (like Nepal and Sri Lanka, whose immigrants get residency faster). Instead, he suggested that massively reducing immigration across the board was the only way to unify the American social fabric.“The system only works if everyone thinks of themselves as Americans first,” Vance said, effectively ending the exchange without addressing the specific legislative hurdles currently in the backlog.These comments were enthusiastically praised by the MAGA wing of the party, which has recently become more vocal about curbing legal immigration as well. But it was condemned by critics, some of whom pointed out that the loyalty test does not apply to Jewish Americans, many of whom openly and vocally lobby for Israel. As the 2026 midterms approach, Vance’s deliberate stance reflects the tightrope the Trump administration has walked: satisfying its restrictionist base without alienating the tech and business sectors that rely on H-1B talent.
