Dinesh D’Souza’s latest broadside has reignited an old debate in a new America. On 29 April 2025, D’Souza, the conservative commentator best known for films few critics watched twice, turned his fire on Congressman Shri Thanedar, a Democrat representing Michigan’s 13th district. In a post on X, he declared that if Thanedar had stayed in India, he would have amounted to no more than a “municipal clerk or waiter,” crediting the congressman’s success solely to “diversity” initiatives. The personal attack, laced with disdain for Thanedar’s English and background, found an eager audience among D’Souza’s followers. Yet it was Thanedar’s son, Neil, who landed the sharper blow, responding that his father had not only worked his way out of poverty but had also built businesses and created jobs before serving the very country D’Souza claims to defend.
Shri Thanedar’s life reads like a classic case study of perseverance. Born in 1955 in Belgaum, Karnataka, he supported his family after his father’s retirement, earning a degree in chemistry by 18. By the early 1980s, he had moved to the United States on a scholarship, finishing a PhD in polymer chemistry at the University of Akron. His early career involved lab work, but ambition soon overtook employment. In 1990, Thanedar bought a struggling laboratory for $75,000, financed by a loan. Within two decades, the business was thriving, culminating in a sale that reportedly made millionaires of several of his staff. He went on to establish Avomeen Analytical Services with his son, a firm that made the INC 5000 list in 2015 and 2016.
Thanedar’s move into politics followed a familiar arc for immigrants who attain financial security and seek public life. Elected to the Michigan House of Representatives in 2020 and to Congress in 2022, he represents a swathe of Detroit’s core. His backstory is a blend of grit, education, and entrepreneurship, the qualities that are supposed to define American aspiration. Yet D’Souza’s post caricatured these achievements as evidence of a rigged system.
D’Souza himself has hardly walked an unblemished path. Born in Bombay in 1961, he climbed the ranks of American conservatism in the Reagan years before stumbling into infamy in 2014. That year, he pleaded guilty to a felony for making illegal campaign donations, an act that cost him eight months in a halfway house, five years’ probation and a fine of $30,000. A pardon from Donald Trump in 2018 restored his political credibility among certain circles but did little to repair his broader reputation. His films, such as Hillary’s America, performed well financially but were lambasted critically, holding the rare distinction of a 1/100 score on Metacritic.
It is against this background that D’Souza’s attack on Thanedar comes across less as critique and more as projection. The irony, noted by many commentators on X, is almost too rich: one Indian immigrant with a criminal record attacking another Indian immigrant with a doctorate and a record of job creation. Neil Thanedar, now 37 and an entrepreneur himself, wasted no time in pointing this out, noting his father’s achievements while deriding D’Souza as “just a felon.”
The backdrop to this episode is hardly trivial. On the same day Neil posted his defence, Trump signed a series of executive orders aimed at curbing sanctuary cities and expanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations. Immigration, already a deeply polarised issue in America, has become even more so. Sanctuary cities—jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities—have become lightning rods in the debate. According to The New York Times, as of January 2025, hundreds of cities and a dozen states have adopted sanctuary policies, with Texas in particular taking an aggressive stance by bussing migrants to places like New York and Chicago.
Miriam Jordan, reporting for the Times, noted Trump’s revived hardline approach seeks to penalise these jurisdictions. Yet the reality in many of these cities is far more complicated. Chicago and New York, for instance, have struggled with shelter shortages and overwhelmed services, leading even progressive mayors to seek help from Washington. The political blame game has predictably ensued, but on the ground, it is immigrants—legal, undocumented, and asylum-seeking—who feel the sharpest edge of the new policies.
D’Souza’s comments must therefore be seen in this wider context. They tap into a growing narrative on the Right that sees diversity initiatives, immigrant success, and progressive urban policies as existential threats to the American way of life. It is a view that finds purchase even among those who, like D’Souza, owe their own American success to the very openness they now deride.
Responses to the feud were predictably polarised. Some defended Thanedar’s American journey with passion. One user quipped that Thanedar spoke better English than “65% of Trump’s rally-goers,” a pointed reminder that an accent does not equate to illiteracy. Another remarked that even with an accent, Thanedar’s command of English grammar was plainly superior to many native-born Americans. Others were more cutting towards Thanedar himself, suggesting that while he may be competent, his oratorical style was an easy target for satire.
The broader issue, however, is less about individuals and more about competing visions of America. To Thanedar, America represents opportunity: a place where merit, effort, and persistence can still chart a path to success. To D’Souza, and many who think like him, America is slipping away, replaced by an identity-driven politics that they find alienating.
The irony is hard to miss. D’Souza and Thanedar are both products of migration, of chance, and of ambition. Both found ways to climb America’s greasy pole. Yet one now uses his platform to pull up the ladder, while the other tries to hold it steady for those who follow.
The skirmish between these two men reveals much about America’s soul in 2025: a country where the question of who belongs has never felt more urgent, or more bitterly contested. For every Thanedar building companies and serving constituents, there will be a D’Souza arguing that success stories like his should be the exception, not the rule.
In the end, Neil Thanedar’s defence of his father—sharp, personal, unapologetic—reflects the enduring belief that the American Dream, however battered, remains worth fighting for. The real battle is not between immigrants and natives, or between accents and grammar, but between hope and resentment.
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