Republican presidential candidate and Indian American Vivek Ramaswamy called the H-1B visa program "indentured servitude," and promised to end it if elected, a report by Politico said.
The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that is especially popular among Indian professionals and allows them to work in specialty occupations in the United States that require a high level of theoretical or technical expertise. Nearly three-quarters of all visas granted annually go to Indian nationals, making them the program's single largest beneficiary.
According to Politico, while serving as CEO of healthcare company Roivant until 2021, Ramaswamy hired workers through the H1-B visa program. According to the report, the company was successful in obtaining visas for 29 H-1B workers between the years of 2018 and 2023.
Maintaining that the H1-B programme is “bad for everyone involved”, the son of Indian immigrants told Politico, “The lottery system needs to be replaced by actual meritocratic admission. It’s a form of indentured servitude that only accrues to the benefit of the company that sponsored an H-1B immigrant. I’ll gut it.”
Ramaswamy, a staunch supporter of "meritocracy" in society, has stated in the past that he plans to use military force to secure borders and deport US-born children of undocumented immigrants in an effort to eliminate chain-based migration.
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