Let’s stop worrying about US immigration policy

It is a measure of how much resentment there is of us Gujaratis in certain circles that a news item about the number of Gujaratis who try and enter the US illegally every year has provoked much comment and lots of sneering on social media.

For many of this government’s critics, Gujarat has come to represent everything they abhor about the regime.

 

Gujarat, they say, is where judges pass controversial judgments that please the regime, but are later overturned by the Supreme Court. Gujarat is where all the crazy architectural ideas about destroying the heritage of governmental Delhi and replacing it with ugly buildings constructed in a Neo-Patel school of design originate.

 

   There’s more. Gujarat is where all the investments meant for other states are redirected to. Gujarat is where the two most powerful people in the country come from. Gujarat is also where India’s two richest people come from. It’s where the number of Gujarati businessmen who have made millions during the life of this government keeps increasing.

 

   I am a Gujarati so naturally I resent this caricature. There is, of course, some truth to a few of the things that are now being said. But much of it is exaggerated. And in any case, is it right to consistently pick on a single state and its people only because Gujarat has voted for the BJP for decades?

 

  Nevertheless, I concede that I was surprised when I read the items in The Times of India which said that on average, 10 Indians try to enter the United States illegally every single hour. And that 50% of them are from Gujarat. The number of Indians seeking asylum in the United States is up by 855%. And nearly half of the applications over the last three years have come from Gujarat.

 

   I find these numbers extraordinary. If Gujarat is booming – and we keep being told that it is – and if this is the golden age of Gujarati millionaires, why are so many Gujaratis trying to sneak into America?

 

   Before we go further, I have to declare an interest. Something like three fourths of my father’s family live in the United States. They left in the 1950s and in the 1960s to seek better lives in the US. My grandfather had six sons of whom four emigrated to America. My father did not. And the one brother who also stayed in India promptly sent all of his children to the US.

 

   So I have a vast extended family in America and many of my cousins and their children are US citizens. They take an interest in India, often eat Indian food at home, come here on holiday and (less with the new generation) speak Gujarati to their families.

 

   But here’s the thing. They entered America legally. They sponsored their immediate relatives and waited patiently for them to be allowed to come to the US. They are grateful to America for welcoming them and giving them a new home.

 

   And there is more. Though my America-residing relatives take an interest in Indian affairs, they do not presume to lecture those of us who still live in India how our country should be run. Some of them are practising Hindus/Jains but they do not join politically-affiliated Indian-origin religious organisations.

 

   I mention all this because the image of Gujaratis in the US that some of us have is of noisy people who travel up the bridges and through the tunnels to get to Manhattan and gather at Times Square to greet India political leaders by shouting quasi-religious slogans.

 

"Why on earth should India stand up for those who want to leave our country and are willing to break the laws of the US to enter that country?"

   Not all American Gujaratis are like that. And nobody in my family wants to vote in India or expects the Indian government to stand up for them. They went to America willingly and they respect that country’s laws and freedoms.

 

   I offer this personal story only to tell you how shocked I am when Indians in India try and get involved in American visa matters. They get agitated and ask “Why isn’t the US giving more HB1 visas? Why is it trying to limit the number of Indians who can enter into the US? Why is it deporting so many Gujaratis who have tried to sneak in to America?”

 

   Frankly, I don’t think we have any business getting involved. The US is a sovereign country and can make its own decisions about residency, visas, green cards or citizenship. We have no right to interfere.

 

   When it comes to illegal immigrants, we are on even weaker ground. Why on earth should India stand up for those who want to leave our country and are willing to break the laws of the US to enter that country? If the US wants to deport them, well then, that’s the US’s business. It has nothing to do with us.

 

   So when I see Indians getting agitated about the immigration policies of the incoming Trump administration I am, quite frankly, a little startled. Of course we should worry about Trump’s trade policy, his foreign policy and the rest. But any country’s citizenship and immigration policies are its own business.

 

   In any case, the fact that some of those complaining the most about the US’s immigration policies are people who are so much in favour of the current Indian regime strikes me as odd. If everything is so wonderful in India and in Gujarat why do so many people need so desperately to go to America to find jobs? It is not like it was in the bad old days before the Indian economy liberalised and boomed.

 

   The Gujarati exodus is a particular surprise. Why do so many people from a state where millionaires are being created every week want to risk imprisonment by trying to enter America illegally?

 

   Something doesn’t add up.

 

   Either things are not as wonderful in Gujarat as we have been told or these potential illegal immigrants have lost their minds.

 

   When I tweeted that I thought America’s immigration policies were its own business and that we should leave them to it, I received many agitated responses from supporters of this Indian regime. Some talked loftily about how the movement of people across borders was good for economic development. This may well be true, but the same people will tell you that this sure as hell does not apply to illegal immigrants to India from Bangladesh.

 

   The second response is that we should encourage emigration because India has gained so much from remittances that immigrants have sent from the US. Well, yes and no. As Indians are among the wealthiest ethnic group in the US, you would expect them to send back billions of dollars—which they do.

 

   But on all measures the remittances from the Middle East sent back by poor labourers who do not partake in the prosperity of the US amounts to a much larger figure.

 

   There are varying numbers for remittances but according to the figures provided by the finance ministry for 2021–22 remittances from the US came to 23% of total remittances. Middle East remittances however came to 29% of the total. According to another calculation (it’s from Wikipedia so you may not want to trust it) Indians in the US sent back $11.7 billion in 2017 while Middle Eastern remittances came to $38 billion.

 

   And people of Indian origin in the Middle East don’t tell us how to run the country, or complain incessantly about Hindu phobia in the countries they have voluntarily chosen to live in (and they live in Muslim countries). God knows, Indians in the Middle East don’t always have it easy. But they cope.

 

   So, let’s stop worrying about US immigration policy. It’s not our business. Let’s answer the bigger question: if the resentment of Gujaratis because we have such a good deal is justified then why are so many of us trying to get the hell out of Gujarat and India itself?

 

   Perhaps the government knows.

 

   Because I certainly don’t.