US Vice-President JD Vance on Sunday clarified his remarks in which he had referred to H-1B visa workers as "foreign indentured servants", while invoking his South Indian wife and in-laws.
While Vance acknowledged that his "rhetoric may have been imperfect", he called for a balance in the American immigration system.
The Donald Trump-led administration had, earlier this month, announced the suspension of several firms, including Indian IT companies, from the Permanent Labour Certification Programme, or PERM, which is the first step towards obtaining a green card. PERM allows companies to sponsor foreign workers who have been working in the US under H-1B and other visas to become legal permanent residents.
Among the companies suspended from the programme were Microsoft, Cognizant, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini. Announcing the suspension, Vance had urged US companies to hire more American workers and to "stop importing an indentured servant to do a job that an American worker would happily do".
'Immigration system has to balance': Vance's clarification on remark
When asked about his "indentured servants" remark, Vance spoke about his in-laws, who he said had moved to America from South India.
"You know where my family comes from, and I love my mother-in-law and father-in-law who immigrated from South India, and obviously their daughter, born in the United States of America, is now the second lady, and I'm very proud of her, and I love her very much," he said.
However, he called for a balance between respecting and welcoming foreign workers and ensuring that their employment does not harm American interests.
"I think that we can have a respect and a welcome to people who want to contribute to the United States of America…but also recognize that if you're a major corporation – let's say you're a trillion dollar company and you bring in somebody, an accountant, and you say that you cannot hire an accountant from your existing labor pool, and when you're doing that, you fire an accountant that was already on the payroll. That's not fairness," he said.
Vance claimed that this was "not good" for immigrants or American workers.
"I do think that we can strike that balance in the right way. I think that our immigration system has to balance," he added.
India condemns Vance's remarks
India had earlier denounced US Vice-President JD Vance's comparison of Indian and other foreign professionals to "indentured servants" as unwarranted and deeply offensive. New Delhi had also said the US administration's freeze on green card filings by Indian IT majors such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys went against the shared ambitions of both sides.
"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 external affairs ministry said in response to Vance's remarks.