Indian American Congressman Shri Thanedar pushed back at Vice President JD Vance on the social media after he claimed that mass migration leads to what he called the “theft of the American Dream.”
Thanedar posted a family photo of Vance’s wife Usha’s relatives celebrating Thanksgiving in 2024 and used it to counter the vice president’s claim. Sharing the image, he wrote, “By your own logic, your wife’s entire family is ‘stealing the American dream.’”
The photo includes about 20 people of color, with Vance standing among them.
The exchange stems from Vance’s long record of attacking U.S. immigration. On social media, he wrote, “Mass migration is theft of the American Dream. It has always been this way, and every position paper, think tank piece, and econometric study suggesting otherwise is paid for by the people getting rich off of the old system.”
Vance wrote so while resharing a post of ICE of TikTok, where a video featuring a Louisiana construction company owner who said he has seen a major shift since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) started operations in the state. “No immigrants want to go to work … and it is so amazing. I’ve gotten more calls in the last week than I’ve gotten in the last 3 months,” the company owner said.
Vance has repeated these arguments in other forums as well. In a New York Post podcast, he said it is perfectly normal for people to want neighbors who share their culture. He argued that Americans are not required to speak another language and should have a common cultural baseline. More recently, he doubled down and said the only shared language in the United States is English.
Now comes the part about Vance’s own connection to the Indian community. So, who is his wife, Usha?
Who is Usha Vance?
JD Vance is married to Usha Vance, who was born in the United States to Indian immigrant parents. Vance and Usha have three children: two sons, Ewan and Vivek, and a daughter, Mirabel.
Usha grew up in the working-class suburbs of San Diego, California, with a father who was a mechanical engineer and a mother who was a molecular biologist, both of whom had moved to the U.S. from Andhra Pradesh, India.
She earned a B.A. in history from Yale University and was also a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University, where she completed an M.Phil in early modern history.
Usha met Vance in 2010 while they were both at Yale Law School, where they joined a discussion group on “social decline in white America.”
The conversations they had there later shaped Vance’s bestselling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which recounts his upbringing in the white working-class Rust Belt. The book was adapted into a 2020 film directed by Ron Howard.
In his book, Vance writes that he “fell hard” for Usha at Yale, calling her a “genetic anomaly” because she had so many qualities he admired.
He also recalls breaking the usual dating rules by telling her he was in love after just one date. The couple married in Kentucky in 2014.
READ: JD Vance: H-1B visas are for ‘super geniuses,’ not cheap labor (
Last month, Vance mentioned that he hoped Usha, who is Hindu, might one day convert to Christianity, noting that she attends church with him and he wished she would share his faith. He later clarified that she “has no plans to convert.”
Social media backslash
Like the Congressman, Vance faced online backlash for his comment, with many people pointing out the connection to his own American Indian family. A user wrote, “Wait, isn’t your wife Indian from an immigrant family?”
While another, “That means you have to send Usha, her Indian family, and your biracial kids back to India. Let us know when you buy the plane tickets. You must lead by example.”
One of the users added, “Your wife and children are stealing the American dream.”
While the other user wrote, “There’s probably a path to the Republican nomination that doesn’t involve throwing your wife, her family, and your children under the bus.”