JD Vance with his wife Usha and children at the Taj Mahal during their visit to India. (PTI photo)
US Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday (local time) paid tribute to his relatives, who have an Indian background, and described them as “great contributors” to America. VP Vance was speaking at a Turning Point USA tour at the University of Georgia about the “enriching” role of immigrants in the country as the US administration adopted a tough stance on citizenship.
According to CBS News data from the Department of Homeland Security, there were more than 70,000 detainees in custody in January, the first in 23 years.Raising concerns about delays in H-1B visas and green cards, an Indian-origin member of the crowd asked Vance, “I’m also the daughter of a legal immigrant who came here on an H-1B visa. My mom and dad, we’ve been here for over 10 years. It’s been really hard like getting a green card based on everything with quotas and everything. How can we fix the immigration system for people who have been waiting for green cards for a long time and didn’t get them in time?”“I would say you know you’ve heard me talk about H-1B fraud because I think there’s a lot of fraud in the H-1B system,” Vance responded.
And I think you can believe all you can on the one hand that there’s a lot of fraud in the H-1B system, while also believing that there are people who came to the United States in the past and enriched this country. Look, I’m married to the daughter of immigrants from India, and as you know, I love my in-laws and they are wonderful people and have been wonderful contributors to the United States of America.
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“But I also think that when you become an American citizen, whether your family has nine generations of lineage in the United States or whether your family has no generations of lineage in the United States, it’s one of the responsibilities that we should expect of citizens and I of course you know it’s always difficult to talk in detail about your situation because I don’t know that but one of the obligations of citizens is that you have to think about the best interest of the country and not the country you came from before and not what kind of group you come from you have to consider yourself an American,” he added.
“Vance also praised his father-in-law, calling him a “wonderful man.” “My father-in-law is a wonderful man,” he said. “My father-in-law, who came from India, moved to the United States, got an education and became an American citizen, never once in my life did he say to me ‘You have to do this’ or ‘You have to do this because it is in the best interest of the country you come from.'”