IIT to H-1B: J.D. Vance cites academic in-laws while raising red flag on green card without loyalty test

TOI reporter in Washington: U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance on Tuesday stepped up efforts by the Trump administration to restrict immigration, signaling greater skepticism about the H-1B visa program and casting national “loyalty” as the ultimate litmus test for immigration.Speaking at a TurningPointUSA town hall in Georgia, Vance sidestepped an Indian-American student’s question about the decades-long green card backlog and instead turned to systemic fraud in the program and cultural expectations of assimilation rather than providing policy solutions for the estimated more than 1 million Indians currently stuck in permanent residence queues.

The US vice president has long described the H-1B program as a tool for “Big Tech” to suppress Americans’ wages – despite being funded by Big Tech at the beginning of his political career – and told his young audience that the system is currently rife with abuse. “You can believe there’s a lot of H-1B fraud and also believe that there are people who come to the United States and make this country rich,” he said, citing his wife, second lady Usha Vance, and her parents as examples of successful assimilation.“Look, I’m married to the daughter of immigrants from India… I love my in-laws, and they’ve done so much for America. I also think that when you become a U.S. citizen, whether you’re nine generations or zero generations away, one of your obligations is to look out for the best interests of your country, not the country you come from,” he said. He expressed anger that a Ukrainian-American pressured him to supply arms to Ukraine, saying his father-in-law, who immigrated to the United States and became a U.S. citizen, never told him he should make the decision because it was in the best interests of his home country. “To the extent that this attitude is dominant among new generations (of immigrants), it makes Americans feel welcome. Being American means caring about Americans first, and that’s the perspective we have to take on immigration policy,” Vance said. Vance’s in-laws, Radhakrishna “Krish” Chilukuri and Dr. Lakshmi Chilukuri, immigrated from Andhra Pradesh, India, in the late 1970s. Krish Chilukuri is a mechanical engineer who attended Indian Institute of Technology Madras and is currently a lecturer in aerospace engineering at San Diego State University. Dr. Lakshmi Chilukuri is a professor of molecular biology at the University of California, San Diego. Both established distinguished academic careers in California after arriving legally decades ago.While the student’s question involved law-abiding, high-tax-paying professionals waiting decades for green cards due to national quotas, Vance sidestepped the issue by avoiding any commitment to raising the 7 percent cap per country, which would benefit smaller countries (such as Nepal and Sri Lanka, where immigrants gain residency more quickly). Instead, he proposes an across-the-board, drastic reduction in immigration as the only way to hold the American social fabric together.“This system can only work if everyone sees themselves as Americans first,” Vance said, effectively ending the exchange without addressing the specific legislative obstacles facing those currently on the backlog.The comments drew enthusiastic praise from the party’s MAGA wing, which has recently been more vocal in calling for a curb on legal immigration. But it was roundly panned by critics, some of whom noted that the loyalty test did not appear to apply to Jewish Americans, many of whom openly and verbally lobby for Israel. Vance’s revised stance reflects the tightrope the Trump administration must walk as the 2026 midterm elections approach: satisfying its restrictionist base without alienating the tech and business sectors that rely on H-1B talent.