Immigrants must think US first, says JD Vance

Immigrants who acquire US citizenship should think of themselves as Americans and not the country where they came from, US Vice President JD Vance said.

Addressing students at the University of Georgia on Tuesday, Vance said he is married to the daughter of Indian immigrants, who have greatly contributed to the US, but his father-in-law never asked him to do anything specifically in the interest of his country of origin.

“When you become an American citizen, whether your family is nine generations of lineage in the United States or whether your family has zero generations of lineage in the United States, one of the responsibilities that we must expect of citizens… is that you have to think about the best interest of the country, and not the country you came from beforehand and not of any sort of any any group that you came from,” Vance said in response to a question from a student of Indian-origin.

The student complained of fraud in the H1-B visa system and said her parents were yet to get their Green cards.

“You’ve got to think of yourself as an American. The system only works if everybody thinks of themselves as an American,” the vice president said at the event organised by Turning Point USA, a non-profit organisation that promotes conservative politics at educational institutions. Vance recalled an incident from his Senate campaign trail where an American of Ukrainian origin asked him to do something to support his country. “Sir, with all due respect, if you’re an American, your country is the United States of America, not a place that you immigrated from whenever that was,” Vance recalled telling the Ukrainian-American.

Vance said his father-in-law moved to the US from India, got educated here and became an American citizen.

“...never once, never once in my life, has he ever said, 'You have to do this,' or, 'You should do this,' because it’s in the best interest of the country that I came from,” the vice president said.

“I think to the extent that attitude dominates among the new generation of Americans, that makes Americans feel welcoming towards people because to be an American means to look out for Americans first, and that’s the perspective we have to take to our immigration policy,” Vance said.