Anti-Indian Racism Among Republican Politicians is Alienating Voters

Two years ago, Vasant Bhatt, a student at the University of Houston, was actively working to help Republicans regain power. He canvassed for Sen. Ted Cruz’s reelection and rallied his community for Donald Trump, celebrating their victories in 2024. However, this week, Bhatt made a surprising move: he cast his vote for Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico and encouraged others to follow suit.

Bhatt, whose father runs a small business, initially aligned with the Republican Party because of its economic values. He appreciated the party’s strong emphasis on individual liberty and limited government, which shaped his conservative identity. Recently, though, his family’s experiences have pushed him away from the party. As an Indian American, Bhatt increasingly feels unwelcome in a political environment where racist rhetoric is becoming alarmingly prevalent.

“There are isolated individuals, but I think there’s an ecosystem as well,” Bhatt explains. He has grown accustomed to being told to “go back to India,” but he has noticed a troubling rise in anti-Indian sentiment, both in frequency and intensity. He wasn’t shocked when prominent conservative figures responded to his post by questioning his American identity. The local Young Republicans even accused him of voting based on loyalty to a foreign group rather than to Americans.

Indian Americans are known to be reliable voters, with around 70 percent participating in presidential elections. While there were indications of a slight shift to the right among this demographic—evidenced by a drop in the percentage of Indian American voters leaning Democratic from 59 percent in 2020 to 55 percent in 2024—about one-third supported Trump in 2024. This isn’t a majority, but it shows their votes are competitive. However, they have increasingly become targets for racist rhetoric from self-proclaimed “heritage Americans.” Both fringe and mainstream conservatives have accused Indian Americans of taking high-paying tech jobs from white workers and undermining national unity. Conservative commentator Chris Rufo even produced a video discussing the so-called “Indian Question,” suggesting it’s “natural” for people to prefer their own kind. This embrace of anti-Indian sentiment threatens to undo the Republicans’ recent gains with Indian American voters while pushing for immigration restrictions that could have lasting impacts.

Bhatt began noticing this shift shortly after Trump’s 2024 victory, but he says it has intensified as the midterm elections approach. In September, Bo French, the Republican candidate for Texas Railroad Commissioner, shared a photo of University of Texas fans celebrating a football win, commenting on the apparent South Asian descent of many students in the foreground. While some Texas Republicans condemned his remarks, French stood by his comments, and others defended him.

“Watching people like Jack Posobiec rationalize and defend this rhetoric, I’m not really surprised,” Bhatt remarks.

A few weeks after French’s comments, Vice President JD Vance took the opportunity to label workers on H-1B visas as “foreign indentured servants” while announcing a reduction in tech companies’ ability to hire foreign employees. India’s Ministry of External Affairs called Vance’s remarks “deeply offensive.”

The anti-Indian rhetoric has also influenced policy changes. Republican politicians have become more willing to attack legal immigrants, including Indian Americans, following Trump’s immigration crackdown, which significantly reduced unauthorized border crossings. With Trump claiming to have “solved” illegal immigration by shutting down asylum and targeting immigrants with ICE, nativists have shifted their focus to H-1B workers, many of whom are Indian immigrants.

Since returning to office, Trump has raised H-1B visa fees to over $100,000 and has quietly waged a war on legal immigration, drastically reducing the number of people allowed to enter the U.S. legally and causing naturalization rates to plummet. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security now promote the idea of “remigration,” which involves forcibly returning immigrants to their home countries regardless of their legal status. The White House has even celebrated the decline in legal immigration since Trump’s return. These policies stem from a belief among some Republicans, led by White House adviser Stephen Miller, that the issue with immigration isn’t about legality but rather the types of people coming to America. A growing faction of “heritage Americans” views all non-white immigrants as incapable of assimilating into American culture, with Indians being a primary target.

“I spent years within conservative politics, and I realized that my convictions don’t mean anything if I’m not regarded as an American or if I’m seen as a second-class citizen,” Bhatt states.

The Republican Party’s anti-Indian shift has been brewing for years. After Trump selected Vance as his running mate, far-right streamer Nick Fuentes declared a “groyper war” on the Trump-Vance campaign, claiming Vance’s marriage to an Indian American woman indicated he “doesn’t value his racial identity.” Vance denounced Fuentes as a “white supremacist,” but that was before the election.

Trump’s 2024 appeal to voters of color, including Indian Americans, surprised many who thought his nativist rhetoric would push these groups toward the Democratic Party. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon even claimed that MAGA had evolved into a multiracial, working-class coalition, which wasn’t entirely inaccurate. However, as the GOP should have been celebrating its successes in late 2024, two factions of the MAGA movement clashed over H-1B visas.

This debate disrupted political alliances, with Elon Musk—who has promoted the racist “great replacement” conspiracy—arguing that foreign-born workers are vital for American innovation. Despite being an immigrant himself, Musk faced less backlash than former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who stated that H-1Bs are necessary because American culture has “venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.” Critics pointed to Ramaswamy’s comments as evidence that Indian Americans, even those born in the U.S., are seen as unable to assimilate. On social media, opponents labeled his remarks as indicative of “thinly veiled ethnic resentment” and reiterated claims that H-1B visas primarily serve to replace American workers.

Despite Musk’s stance on visas, it’s no surprise that social media has helped elevate anti-Indian rhetoric from the fringes to mainstream conservative discourse. Conversations that would fit right in on extremist forums are now taking place on a widely used platform.

“It really started after Elon’s takeover of Twitter, and it went into full overdrive mode after the ’24 election, in November, when Vivek joined DOGE,” says Anang Mittal, a conservative strategist who previously worked for a prominent senator. “That was the beginning of, ‘Okay, it’s open season on out-and-out racism.’”

Mittal believes that Republican politicians feel they can engage in anti-Indian rhetoric without facing significant backlash, partly because Indian Americans represent a small portion of the population. With approximately 5.2 million Indian Americans in the U.S., making up just over 1.5 percent of the total population, Mittal argues that Republicans have concluded there’s little consequence for using language that portrays Indian immigrants as outsiders incompatible with American culture.

The GOP’s increasingly overt anti-Indian sentiment could cost them in upcoming elections. A February survey found that 70 percent of Indian Americans disapprove of Trump’s performance in his second term, yet it also revealed a decline in Democratic support among Indian Americans since 2020, with only 46 percent identifying as Democrats today.

These sentiments have real-world implications beyond electoral politics. Recently, authorities arrested a 19-year-old man who allegedly attempted a mass shooting at a Hindu temple in Aurora, Illinois. Law enforcement seized weapons, ammunition, Nazi paraphernalia, and a gas canister inscribed with an anti-South Asian slur, along with a manifesto in which the suspect expressed a desire to kill non-white individuals.

The manifesto echoed “a lot of the narratives that you see online,” Bhatt notes.

“When you spend months watching people generalize about your community, question your loyalties, and imply that your presence in America is unwelcome, you’re effectively painting a target on people’s backs.”