Indian American attorney Harmeet K. Dhillon, who serves as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, said she understands the immigration system from personal experience. Speaking on Christopher Rufo’s podcast, Dhillon noted that she herself came to the United States on a visa.
At the same time, she questioned whether taxpayer-funded institutions should be relying heavily on H-1B and other employment-based visa programs if qualified American workers are available. The concern, she suggested, is not about legal immigration itself but about whether public dollars are supporting hiring practices that may sideline U.S. citizens.
Her comments come as debate intensifies nationwide over the H-1B visa program, which allows U.S. employers to recruit highly skilled foreign professionals, many of them from India and China.
Dhillon has been unusually vocal online, especially when it comes to allegations of H-1B misuse. Each time a case is flagged on social media, she often steps in publicly, either asking for specifics or signaling that her office is looking into it. The engagement has made clear that the issue is on her radar.
READ: Harmeet Dhillon confirmed to lead Justice Department civil rights unit (
At the same time, Dhillon has been careful to ground the debate in her own story.
“I am an immigrant. I am grateful that my family was able to come to this country. My dad was a doctor. He provided medical services in a rural community for most of his career. And I think that’s an important role because frankly, American medical schools aren’t pumping out enough doctors to serve all of our institutions.”
Her point underscores the tension at the heart of the broader H-1B conversation. While she has raised concerns about abuse and displacement, she has also acknowledged that in certain sectors, particularly healthcare, immigrant professionals have long filled critical gaps in the American workforce.
“But why aren’t they? We should be solving that problem so that the foreign medical graduate, the foreign engineer, the foreign CEO is an exception and not a fairly significant swath of the populace. I think that needs to be solved by our society and the demand needs to change,” Dhillon stated.
READ: Trump names Harmeet K. Dhillon as Assistant Attorney General (
Dhillon, the Indian American official serving in the Trump administration, argued that concerns around the H-1B system cut across party lines. In her view, responsibility does not sit neatly with either conservatives or liberals.
Drawing on her decades as a lawyer in Silicon Valley, she said the financial incentives are hard to ignore. “I can tell you from living in Silicon Valley and being a lawyer there for decades, the economics of it are such that it makes good sense for American corporations to exploit foreign labor. It’s cheaper and you have a fiduciary duty to your bottom line to make your widget for the least amount of money and that’s what they’re doing,” Dhillon said.
She added that the Department of Justice has limited tools at its disposal. The agency can pursue institutions that clearly violate federal law and impose penalties where warranted. But she suggested the broader structural issues tied to corporate hiring practices and visa policy extend beyond what the DOJ alone can fix.