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The searing heat in some parts of the country did not stop the fireworks or the celebration as America stepped up to a historic milestone of 250 years. A land whose story finds the role of immigrants playing a prominent part, South Asians naturally were part of the excitement.
A community that is one of the fastest growing in the United States has come a long way to around six million today making a mark not just in technology, business, medicine and space but also in politics through representation in the House of Representatives and at State levels.
The road to success was not through luck or fluke but by the dint of hard work and overcoming obstacles like racism and bigotry. Today South Asians have the unique distinction of having top tech giants as household names; Indian/South Asian cuisine and Yoga now seem to be a part and parcel of everyday life.
The slow but rapid ascendancy of the South Asian community, especially the Indian-Americans, was not without envy that transformed itself to the fanning of racist feelings in the 1970s and 1980s in parts of the country. Roaming around as “dot busters”—a reference to the Indian women wearing that bindi on her forehead—these rednecks just about terrorized otherwise friendly neighborhoods, but soon found that this could not shake the resilience of the community or of a nation that was generally warm to foreigners.
But at 250 years of showing the world the strengths of a democracy, despite all its faults and shortcomings, there is a feeling in some quarters that perhaps America is slipping back to the ways of the past. In a political system where divisiveness has reached alarming and ugly levels, immigrant groups are seeing a deliberate attempt to keep away folks from coming to the land of opportunity in a legal way.
At one time no other embassy or consulate had people lining up at wee hours of the morning for a visa; today there are no such lines. Some of it can be fobbed off to a streamlining process through online appointments and interviews; but this cannot mask the fact that there is a systematic attempt to drop the numbers for visas in many categories, students and high skilled applicants being specially marked for attention.
There is some legitimate concern of the ballooning number of illegals in the United States with some estimates putting it around 13 million or even much higher than that. And South Asians, especially Indians, have a fair share of that figure, perhaps even being in the top ten category. But to lump every legal aspirant into a potential illegal or somehow getting tough at the source is going to solve the problem at entry is a stretch. For instance, America stands to lose billions of dollars annually through lost admissions in colleges and universities. And this is just for a start.
Time and again the H1B, or the high skills visa, has been singled out for restriction or even call for outright abolition. And there are always individuals and groups that have claimed that H1Bs put Americans out of jobs and in the poorhouse. But every time Big Business has risen to the occasion been pointing out the benefits of the high skilled visas and in all the gains for the country, going beyond dollars and cents. Still the noise on the H1B will not go away, and unlikely to.
The anxiety is more during an election year, and it hardly matters how immigrant groups are going to pressure their elected representatives or aspirants. And this year the stakes have become higher as President Donald Trump has linked the debate on immigration to communism saying “There is a resurgence of the communist menace in our land including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life.”
Hopefully this is not a return to the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the “Red Scare” of the 1950s that mercifully faded but not before taking its toll. The last thing America needs looking into the future is another spell of paranoia that takes the focus away from the real challenges.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.
