'Not gonna have weird loyalty …': Nikki Haley’s son distances from Indian roots; believes foreign hiring makes 'no sense'

Indian-American leader Nikki Haley’s son, Nalin, distanced himself from his Indian roots saying that he was not going to have any "weird loyalty" to a country he had never visited.

“All I’ve ever known is America … I’m not gonna have any sort of weird loyalty to a country where I’ve never been,” the New York Post quoted him saying.

Voicing his strong opinion against immigration into the US, he said that legal immigration made "made no sense", given a "fragile economy".


“I don’t view it as responsible to have legal immigration at a time when our economy is fragile and companies aren’t hiring Americans, and AI is taking over a lot of jobs. It makes no sense to have foreign workers come here [while] we actually are not hiring our own kids,” he said.

Born in 2001 to Nikki and Michael Haley, Nalin spent part of his childhood in New York while his mother was the US ambassador to the United Nations.

He later pursued a political science degree at Villanova University in Philadelphia and was received into the Catholic Church in South Carolina on Palm Sunday in 2025.

Haley has increasingly aligned himself with the hard-right “America First” faction. In the past, he has advocated for a total halt to both legal and illegal immigration, the elimination of H-1B visas, and limits on naturalized citizens — including dual nationals — serving in public office. He has also described dual citizenship as a “stupid idea.”