Shobhit Mathur, co‑founder and vice‑chancellor of Rishihood University in Bangalore, countered Vice President John D. Vance’s June 30, 2024 claim that H‑1B workers are "indentured servants." Mathur recounted his own path from a rented Seattle office to the launch of AWS, arguing that the visa program built the backbone of Amazon’s 60% profit share. He said the same workers who were paid $20,000 less than U.S. colleagues drove the company’s 300‑fold stock rise.
"When Amazon hired me on an H‑1B visa, the company was losing for ten straight years," Mathur told reporters. He was part of the core team that built the first Amazon Web Services cluster in a cramped cabin in a rented building. Today, AWS contributes more than 60% of Amazon’s earnings and the company’s market value has surged 300 times since those early days.
The U.S. administration’s latest move—halting green‑card sponsorship for employees of eight IT giants, including Microsoft and Infosys—comes on the heels of Vance’s remarks. Amazon and Google were not named, but the policy targets firms that routinely hire foreign talent on H‑1B visas. India's foreign ministry has lodged a formal objection, stating that talent mobility fuels innovation and job creation.
Mathur urged the U.S. to "build companies and wealth without these ‘indentured servants’," while a senior Indian diplomat warned that such rhetoric could strain bilateral ties. The Indian government expects a diplomatic response by early July, as the U.S. Congress prepares to debate the green‑card restriction. Meanwhile, Amazon’s Amazon Web Services team continues to expand, adding new data‑center hubs on the West Coast.