Texas Republicans spent years courting Indian voters. Then came talk of the ‘Indian takeover.’

From The Texas Tribune:

FRISCO — Burt Thakur is a U.S. citizen, a Navy veteran and a Trump supporter. Last year, he was elected to be a strong conservative voice on the City Council in the booming Dallas suburb of Frisco.

Lately, that job has required Thakur, who was born in New Delhi, to sit on the dais at Frisco City Hall and listen as a steady stream of people hurl racist invective at him and the entire Indian community. The speakers, many of whom don’t live in Frisco, rail against invaders, anchor babies, H-1B visa fraud and the “Indian takeover” of a city where nearly one in five residents are Indian.

Dylan Law, a McKinney resident who grew up in Frisco, told the council in early February that the city was falling to “unchosen, unwanted and uninvited forces.”

“Be America First,” Law implored the council, to audience cheers. “And to those who abuse the system my people built, go home before you are sent back.”

Over the last few months, Frisco has become the unwilling backdrop for a larger conflict between Republicans’ nascent relationship with Indian American voters, and the party’s rising nativist strain, which rejects anyone not born here, including naturalized citizens. The same faction that’s been targeting Muslims over the specter of Sharia law has turned its hostility toward Texas’ growing Indian community, accusing them of exploiting the H-1B visa program to steal American jobs and undercut wages.

For some conservatives, Frisco’s changing face is proof that President Donald Trump’s America First agenda must be taken to what they see as its natural conclusion: cutting off immigration to the U.S. en masse.

“We’ve got communities like Frisco that have been totally transformed, whether it’s Islamic immigration or immigration from anywhere else in Asia,” Rep. Brandon Gill, a Republican who represents parts of Frisco, told conservative YouTuber Benny Johnson. “If you go to some of these areas, you feel like you’re in a foreign country, and that’s a problem. America is for our people. We have a distinct heritage … and that’s something we as conservatives should seek to actually conserve.”

Gill and other members of Texas’ congressional delegation have called for a freeze on all legal immigration, citing concerns with the H-1B visa program, which is primarily used by high-skill Indian immigrants. Gov. Greg Abbott, following Trump’s lead, restricted H-1B visas for state workers, a move he promoted on social media to push back against complaints about H-1B visas in Texas.

Many testifying at Frisco City Council meetings or posting about the city on social media go far beyond asking for immigration reform. There’s been a surge in anti-Indian racism on social media since Trump returned to the White House, framing legal immigrants as “job stealers” and “invaders.” A clip of Boy Scouts leading the Pledge of Allegiance before a Frisco City Council meeting went viral, attracting thousands of reposts, many with hateful language, because the boys were Indian.

“If you go after Boy Scouts, 10-year-old kids doing literally the most American thing ever, how can you also say the issue is assimilation?” Thakur asked. “This parsing, this segmenting of populations by identity politics, is the worst kind of politics there is.”

Conservative YouTubers have descended on Frisco, making documentaries purporting to show widespread H-1B visa fraud, content Texas’ elected leaders have amplified. Gill has gone further, criticizing Hindu events as “Third World religious ceremonies” and saying multiculturalism will “tear our country apart.” He did not respond to emailed questions or an interview request.

Gill is married to the daughter of right-wing commentator and staunch Trump defender Dinesh D’Souza, who is Indian. In October, when D’Souza attracted a flurry of anti-Indian hate on a social media post supporting the president, he said he’d never encountered this type of rhetoric over his 40-year career.

“The Right never used to talk like this,” he said on social media. “So who on our side has legitimized this type of vile degradation? It’s a question worth thinking about.”

A new group of GOP voters

Twenty five years ago, Frisco was farmland and 35,000 people, almost all of whom were white. Like the rest of the Dallas suburbs, its population has exploded, hitting almost 250,000 residents last year.

The city has become a major hub for the Indian community, especially after a prominent Hindu cleric blessed a tract of land for a new temple in 2008. As of last year, about 19% of residents were Indian, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates — the highest concentration of any city in Texas and 10 times higher than Indians’ national representation of less than 2%.

Vijay Karthik is one of those transplants. He and his wife, Kelly, had been living in Chicago, but when they were looking for somewhere more family-friendly to raise their kids, they were drawn to Frisco for the exemplary schools, plentiful housing and good jobs.

Born in India, Karthik came to the U.S. on an H-1B visa in 1995, a few years after the pathway for highly skilled immigrants was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. Karthik never planned to stay in the U.S. after this stint, but tech companies cashing in on the dot com boom convinced him to return. He became a citizen, rose to C-suite roles at major companies and co-invented the technology behind in-flight Wi-Fi.

Like most Indians, Karthik identified as a Democrat. South Asians have long been the party’s most reliable supporters among all Asian ethnic groups, motivated in part by a sense that the Republican Party’s anti-immigration stances are not welcoming.

Vijay Karthik, a candidate for City Council Place 5, outside a coffee shop in Frisco. Manoo Sirivelu / The Texas Tribune

But that’s been shifting. A 2024 survey found Indians have been leaving the Democratic Party; their party allegiance dropped by close to 10 points since 2020. While Indian voters remain overwhelmingly left-leaning, one in three Indians planned to vote for Trump in 2024, driven largely by young men born in the U.S.

While there isn’t reliable state-level data, Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, said Indian voters in red states tend to lean more conservative.

“Trump lost the Indian American vote in 2020 and 2024, but he did gain support, and I imagine states like Texas were helping drive that,” said Ramakrishnan, who runs AAPI Data, a research and polling group that focuses on Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities.

For Karthik, moving to Frisco prompted a political reckoning. The more he learned about the Republican Party that dominated the area, the more he felt a connection.

“Our culture is very conservative,” he said. “Fiscally, heavily conservative, and culturally, we focus on education, family values, small businesses, less government. I think a lot of Indians are waking up to this, realizing we’re conservative too.”

Republicans have been working to win over Indian Americans, who are wealthier and more highly educated than the average American, and very politically engaged. In 2021, the Republican National Committee opened community centers in purple areas around the country, hoping to shore up relationships outside the party’s typical white, Christian voters.

The center in Coppell, a Dallas suburb, was christened with a Diwali ceremony. Abraham George, now chair of the Texas GOP, attended the opening and celebrated the party’s impending inroads with diverse communities.

“The RNC has recognized that they need to bring minority communities together and build communities out, so they will be on our team for the next election,” said George, who later became the first Indian to lead the Texas GOP. “We will see a great turnout from every minority community.”

In 2024, Abbott led a delegation to India, coordinated by a major donor, Arun Agarwal. During the nine-day trip, Abbott touted the $18 billion trade relationship between India and Texas and the “enduring bond forged by our hardworking, resilient peoples.”

Later that year, he hosted a Diwali celebration at the Governor’s Mansion, where he addressed a crowd of Indian community leaders and donors.

“As long as I am governor of this great state, Texas will be a land for the Indian community,” he said.

Republicans and ‘the Indian issue’

In 2024, Sreekanth Reddy worked with the Collin County GOP to hang Trump/Vance campaign signs in Hindi, Telugu, Gujarati and Tamil all over the county, part of the party’s outreach to the growing contingent of Indian voters north of Dallas.

Just two years later, he was at Frisco City Council, fighting against the rising tide of anti-Indian rhetoric that had swept through the city and his party.

Sporting a cowboy hat, Reddy described himself as a “law-abiding, taxpaying, conservative Republican American,” who is “as patriotic as anyone.”

“What exactly is the issue here?” he asked. “If this is about immigrant Indians moving into Frisco legally, who are opening businesses, running them successfully, contributing to the economy of Frisco and following the law, then I honestly do not see this as a problem.”

But many do. The H-1B visa program, created by Republicans and defended by corporations, has become a new target on the right, with some extending the criticisms to Indians who are here through other pathways or are naturalized citizens.

In January, Abbott froze all new H-1B visa applications for public universities and state agencies, saying “the program has too often been used to fill jobs that otherwise could — and should — have been filled by Texans.”

Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for Abbott, said Texas “cannot allow a program intended only to supplement the American workforce to be exploited to displace qualified U.S. workers or suppress wages.” He did not respond to a question about rising anti-Indian rhetoric in the party.

More recently, conservative content creators have claimed to have uncovered widespread H-1B visa fraud in Frisco, including ghost businesses and falsified papers. Citing those reports, Attorney General Ken Paxton has opened investigations into 30 North Texas businesses, and four members of Congress from Texas sent a letter asking the feds to investigate “reported H-1B fraud activities in North Texas.” Gill and other elected officials have pointed to these YouTube documentaries as evidence that the H-1B visa program should be abolished entirely.

Both political parties agree that the H-1B visa program could use more guardrails to ensure companies aren’t exploiting either American or foreign workers. But there is no evidence of widespread fraud, or that it’s displacing huge numbers of American workers, said Guarav Khanna, an economics professor at the University of California San Diego. Most voters agree, with more than 60%, including majorities in both parties, saying legal immigrants take jobs that Americans don’t want. And the overall economic impact has been positive, research shows, especially through contributions to innovation.

“When you’re working on a better computer, you don’t realize that innovation was likely done by an Indian immigrant in Silicon Valley,” Khanna said. “That’s less tangible, whereas suddenly seeing more Indians in your neighborhood, the way that affects your life feels much more salient.”

Since Trump took office, attention on the program has ratcheted up significantly, alongside a spike in hateful rhetoric and threats of violence against South Asians on social media. The use of South Asian slurs in online spaces rose by 115% between January 2023 and December 2025, according to Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit that tracks discrimination against Asian Americans.

If there are loopholes in the H-1B program, the federal government must address that, Reddy said. But the conversation in recent months has gone well beyond just talking about visa reform.

Earlier this year, attorney general candidate Aaron Reitz called for deportations of legal immigrants, saying the “invasion of un-assimilated and un-assimilable Indians” is turning Collin, Dallas and Harris counties into “Calcutta, Delhi and Hyderabad.” Videos of Abbott’s Diwali event have gone viral, as have clips of Sen. John Cornyn, who is in a tight primary against Paxton, speaking to the U.S.-India Chamber of Commerce.

At a recent Grapevine Republican Club event, in a Dallas suburb 30 minutes from Frisco, conversation about visa fraud quickly turned to discussion of the area’s rapid demographic change, with attendees complaining about the number of Indian families at Costco and South Asian immigrants who are newly learning to drive.

Laura Oakley, president of the Grapevine Republican Club, said Abbott needed to take more action on “the Indian issue,” saying his block on H-1B visas for state institutions wasn’t enough.

“I will say, it’s a little bit like setting a fire and then running in as a fireman and being the hero,” she told the crowd.

The last few months have been demoralizing for Indian Americans in Frisco, Reddy said, as their everyday activities like worshipping at temple or hosting community events have become social media cannon fodder.

After years of working to elect Republican candidates, Reddy decided to throw his cowboy hat into the ring for city council this year. Karthik ran too, along with other Indian community leaders who stepped up for council and school board, a show of political engagement that seems to have intensified the backlash.

Reddy and Karthik say they saw it as an opportunity to give back to a community that has given them so much. They lost, as did all the other Indian candidates, an outcome that activist social media accounts closely watched and celebrated online.

Reddy sees Indians’ slow move to the right as evidence of the assimilation that activists demand from them. But he worries this season in the spotlight will drive voters away from the party. In its February nationwide survey, AAPI Data found those fears may be well-founded: 68% of Indian voters said Trump has gone too far in restricting legal immigration.

“I think a lot of the people who voted for Trump wouldn’t now,” he said. “It’s been disappointing.”

Indian GOP leaders not immune to vitriol

Last September, Alexander Duncan, a short-lived Republican U.S. Senate candidate and online provocateur, posted on social media about a 20-foot Hindu statue that had been erected outside Houston.

“Why are we allowing a false statue of a false Hindu god to be here in Texas? We are a Christian nation!” Duncan wrote. When Hindu and religious freedom groups called on George, the GOP chair, to respond, he defended Duncan.

“Christians need to be concerned about idols and false gods,” George said on social media, noting that his father was a Pentecostal preacher. “There is only one God, and that is Jesus Christ Himself…I know it is not politically correct, but I honestly don’t care.”

In the comments, among the GOP bashing and alarm bells about the First Amendment, were a smattering of racist comments toward George. Even when pushing party priorities, like abolishing the H-1B visa program, George regularly attracts anti-Indian replies. Elijah Schaffer, a controversial MAGA influencer, said on social media that George is “why Texas is turning into Mumbai and the center of the H1B immigration fraud.”

George, who did not respond to a request for comment, is up for reelection next month and has been endorsed by a wide array of conservative groups. That election, like other GOP races featuring Indian candidates, will test how much of the anti-Indian sentiment pervading social media is spilling into the party itself.

In Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy easily won the GOP nomination for governor, despite a slew of racism from his opponent, and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who called him an “anchor baby who got your birthright citizenship from your H-1B parents.”

Vice President JD Vance, whose wife is Indian and Hindu, has tried to walk a fine line amid this recent firestorm, echoing concerns about widespread H-1B visa fraud while praising “people who have come to the United States in the past who have enriched this country, like my in-laws.”

Trump, meanwhile, recently reposted remarks by a conservative podcast host who called India and China “hellhole” countries whose immigrants haven’t integrated into American society like “European Americans.” A spokesperson for the president said in a statement to the New York Times that Trump “loves patriotic Indian Americans” and acknowledged their place in his winning 2024 coalition.

Karthik, who found a new political home in the Republican Party, said he hopes the GOP more forcefully shuts down the anti-immigrant, anti-Indian voices that have taken hold in some corners.

“The block of voters, when we come together, we can swing elections,” he said. “We’ve talked about this with the Republican Party, saying, don’t alienate us, because [Indians’] viewpoints are aligned and you can capture them.”

Disclosure: The New York Times has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.