India's foreign ministry calls Vance's remarks about Microsoft workers deeply offensive

On Friday, India's Ministry of External Affairs publicly responded to US Vice President JD Vance. Vance had called foreign employees hired by Microsoft “indentured servants,” meaning workers bound by contract. At a briefing in New Delhi, ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal read out a statement: “The use of terminology that carries a painful historical and colonial legacy is deeply offensive.” The dispute over hiring foreign engineers at American tech companies has now reached the diplomatic level.

What we know so far

The published portion of the TNW article contains few facts, and it is worth separating them. Three things are reliably established: Vance used the expression about Microsoft's foreign workers, India responded officially, and the word “offensive” came from a ministry spokesman, not an anonymous source. The article's URL contains the words “perm-suspension.” That hints at a link to the suspension of the PERM program, but the available text gives no details, and we cannot treat it as a confirmed fact. We did not see the full context of Vance's remark, or the date and circumstances in which he made it, in the source.

TNW illustrated the piece with a sign on the US Department of Labor building, which is named for Frances Perkins. That agency oversees PERM, the first step in employment-based green card processing, in which the employer certifies that hiring a foreign worker does not harm the local labor market.

Why the word “indentured” stung India

India reacted to a specific term. Indentured labour was widespread in the British Empire after the abolition of slavery. Hundreds of thousands of Indians were shipped under contract to plantations in the Caribbean, Africa and Oceania, and the conditions many of them faced differed little from slavery. It remains a sensitive historical subject in Indian politics. In New Delhi, comparing skilled programmers and engineers to indentured workers was taken as devaluing both the modern diaspora and the profession.

The situation is complicated by the fact that Indian citizens traditionally make up the overwhelming majority of H-1B work visa recipients. Large American tech companies, Microsoft among them, have built their staffing plans around this for years.

Key facts

• Who: India's Ministry of External Affairs, spokesman Randhir Jaiswal.
• Addressed to: US Vice President JD Vance.
• Trigger: description of Microsoft's foreign workers as “indentured servants.”
• Ministry's wording: “deeply offensive,” with a reference to the colonial legacy.
• Format: official briefing in New Delhi, Friday.
• Possible context: suspension of PERM (based on the article's URL, not confirmed).

What companies and specialists should do

For now, this is a diplomatic exchange, not a rule change. But HR departments and employees themselves would be wise not to wait for developments.

Companies that sponsor Indian engineers on visas should check which cases are at the PERM stage and assess in advance how a possible pause would affect the timeline for moving employees to green cards. Immigration lawyers should follow official notices from the Department of Labor rather than politicians' statements.

Specialists going through the process should keep copies of all their documents and have a fallback plan in case of delay: an H-1B extension, alternative jurisdictions, or remote work from another country. Public rhetoric changes nothing in the rules for now, but judging by this episode, the tone between the two countries has hardened. We will return to the topic when details of the PERM decision and the White House's response emerge.