India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on 9 October 2026 sharply objected to United States Vice President JD Vance's characterisation of foreign workers as 'foreign indentured servants', calling the language deeply offensive and historically loaded. The diplomatic pushback comes as the Trump administration moved to suspend the Permanent Labour Certification (PERM) programme for several major Indian-origin IT firms.

India's Official Response

In a formal statement, the MEA said: 'We believe that 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 went further, invoking American history itself: 'Indeed, the history of the United States itself has been shaped by generations of immigrants whose labour, enterprise and innovation have contributed to its growth and prosperity. Resorting to terminology that carries painful historical and colonial legacy connotations is deeply offensive,' the MEA said in its release.

What Vance Said and Why

Vice President Vance made the remarks while accusing Microsoft of replacing American workers with foreign hires, citing a combination of layoffs and visa usage. 'In the last year, Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers. At the same time, the company benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards. In other words, if you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,' Vance claimed.

The remarks were made at a press conference where US Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the suspension of the PERM programme for several of the world's largest IT outsourcing companies.

Which Companies Are Affected

Labour Secretary Sonderling named Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini as firms suspended from the PERM programme, linking the action to active criminal and federal investigations led by the Department of Labour's Inspector General Anthony DiEsposito. The suspension prevents these companies from filing new permanent labour certification applications and halts processing of applications already pending under the programme.

What the PERM Suspension Means

The PERM programme is the gateway through which employers sponsor foreign workers for employment-based green cards. Suspending access effectively freezes the path to permanent residency for thousands of workers at the named firms, many of whom are Indian nationals on H-1B visas. The move is among the most sweeping actions taken against Indian IT outsourcing companies under the Trump administration's immigration policy overhaul.

Broader Context

This is not the first time the H-1B visa programme has drawn political fire in the United States. Critics have repeatedly alleged that outsourcing firms use the visa category to undercut American wages, while industry groups and successive Indian governments have argued that these workers fill genuine skills gaps and contribute disproportionately to US technology output. India's rare public rebuke of a sitting American vice president signals the diplomatic weight New Delhi is attaching to the issue, particularly as bilateral trade negotiations remain ongoing.