JD Vance is completely wrong about Indian tech workers
JD Vance has criticised American tech companies for employing Indians, but these highly skilled and law-abiding workers prove not all immigration is equal, says Rainer Zitelmann
The Indian government has strongly condemned remarks by US Vice President JD Vance as “deeply offensive”. Vance described foreign workers employed by American software companies, including many Indians, as “indentured servants” – a term with painful historical associations of exploitation and colonial servitude.
The controversy comes amid a crackdown by the Trump administration on alleged abuses of the H-1B visa system for skilled foreign workers. On Thursday, Vance and US Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that several major Indian IT service providers, along with American technology giants Microsoft and Adobe, would be suspended from a long-established programme allowing companies to sponsor foreign employees for permanent residency.
Vance demanded that American companies employ more US citizens. His message to Microsoft was unequivocal: “You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.”
India’s Ministry of External Affairs responded on Friday, describing the remarks as “unwarranted” and the terminology as “deeply offensive”. The ministry emphasised that Indian professionals in the United States were highly educated, exceptionally skilled and made an enormous contribution to the American economy and technological innovation.
Critics point out that Microsoft laid off around 6,000 American employees while applying for thousands of H-1B visas, but Microsoft says 80 per cent of these applications concerned existing employees, with new hires representing just one per cent of its US workforce. Replacing Americans with cheaper foreign workers would certainly deserve criticism, but these figures do not prove that Microsoft did so, let alone justify attacking highly qualified Indian immigrants as a group.
Enormous contribution
Indian IT specialists make an enormous contribution to the American economy. They strengthen Silicon Valley’s innovative capacity, develop new technologies, establish businesses and create highly skilled jobs. Around 82 per cent of adult Indian immigrants have at least a bachelor’s degree, while Indian nationals received approximately 71 per cent of America’s H-1B visas for skilled workers in 2024.
Britain, too, has benefited enormously from Indian immigration. Indian professionals have made major contributions to British medicine, technology, finance and entrepreneurship. My country, Germany could only wish to attract more immigrants of the calibre of the Indian IT specialists working in America.
Instead, Germany is losing large numbers of highly educated people through emigration. According to a study by the Federal Institute for Population Research, approximately 75 per cent of the German emigrants examined held university degrees, compared with around 25 per cent of Germans remaining in the country. Meanwhile, figures from Germany’s Federal Statistical Office show that 41.8 per cent of people aged between 25 and 64 with an immigration background have no formal vocational qualification, compared with just 11.8 per cent of those without an immigration background.
Indian immigrants also perform exceptionally well when it comes to crime statistics. According to a March 2026 study by the Cato Institute, just 49 Indian immigrants per 100,000 were incarcerated in the United States, compared with 1,195 native-born Americans – approximately 96 per cent fewer.
For comparison, German police statistics for 2025 recorded 1,722 Syrian nationals and 1,508 Afghan nationals per 100,000 residents as suspects in violent crimes, compared with 158 German nationals. These figures measure suspected violent offenders rather than imprisonment and are therefore not directly comparable with the American statistics, but they illustrate why the composition of immigration matters.
Some people oppose immigration almost regardless of the immigrants’ qualifications, economic contribution or criminal behaviour – even when immigrants are exceptionally well educated and considerably less likely to be imprisoned than the native-born population
The British figures also deserve attention. According to official Ministry of Justice statistics, just 320 Indian nationals were held in prisons in England and Wales in June 2025, accounting for only three per cent of all foreign national prisoners.
The controversy surrounding Vance reveals two fundamentally different approaches to immigration. Some people oppose immigration almost regardless of the immigrants’ qualifications, economic contribution or criminal behaviour – even when immigrants are exceptionally well educated and considerably less likely to be imprisoned than the native-born population.
Others support immigration when newcomers possess skills that benefit the country, contribute to economic prosperity, integrate into society and do not stand out through high levels of criminality.
There is an enormous difference between these two positions. Treating all immigration as equally desirable makes no more sense than treating all immigration as equally harmful.