India on Friday criticized US Vice President JD Vance for describing foreign workers as "foreign indentured servants," calling the terminology "deeply offensive" and defending the contributions of Indian professionals to the US economy.
"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," India's External Affairs Ministry said.
"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," it added.
New Delhi said, "resorting to terminology that carries painful historical and colonial legacy connotations is deeply offensive."
The response came after Vance used the phrase Thursday while announcing the suspension of Microsoft's participation in the US Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program.
"You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants," Vance said.
"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. For every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants," he claimed.
US Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling also announced Thursday that Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Capgemini and Adobe had been suspended from the program.
The PERM program is a Labor Department certification process that generally serves as the first step for employers seeking to sponsor foreign workers for employment-based permanent residency.
India's External Affairs Ministry said it was aware of the US decision affecting several companies but stressed that PERM is "distinct from the H-1B visa programme."
The H-1B program allows US employers to hire foreign workers in specialized occupations, with Indian nationals accounting for the largest share of visa holders.
Reacting to the US decision, Nasscom, India's leading information technology industry association, said the number of employees transitioning from H-1B visas to permanent residency through the PERM process was "relatively limited."
"Indian technology companies have significantly reduced their dependence on H-1B visas, while steadily expanding local hiring and building a strong domestic workforce in the US," the association said.
