War on Immigrants

President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant
vitriol and policies are predicated on
a hyperterritorial worldview in which
immigrants are cast as job stealers and
criminals. His sweeping executive orders
now set the stage for mass deportations, and
show the most sudden and significant hardening
of immigration policy in generations. Add to this
mix the “Muslim Ban,” the attack on H-1B visa
programs, and the construction of nativist border
walls, and it appears that this U.S. administration
is indeed waging a war on immigration.

A Sikh man working in
a 24-hour grocery store in
North Shore in the New York
City borough of Staten Island
cowered in the back of the store
room, petrified. His heart raced
as federal agents stormed the area
rounding up illegal immigrants. The
man, who didn’t want to be identified
for fear of being targeted, said, “I couldn’t
go back to India as I am the family
breadwinner. America doesn’t care about
splitting up poor families.”

Trump and his supporters have fermented
a narrative that demonizes illegal immigrants as
the only culprits in our nation’s massive systematic failure that is responsible for allowing the count of
such immigrants to mushroom to 11 million. It’s a false
narrative as highlighted in the editorial titled, “What Part of ‘Illegal’ Don’t You Understand?” (on page 10 in the print issue).

Under the Trump presidency, federal agents are planning to step up
migrant deportation quotas at a rate of more than 1,000 a day,
with little regard for the havoc caused to children torn apart from
their parents.

Steeped in bigotry, racism, and xenophobia, the
political climate fermented by Trump’s rhetoric has
resulted in an alarming lack of compassion for the
plight of people like Singh and their families who come
to the U.S. to escape harsh economic realities. Under
the Trump presidency federal agents are planning
to step up migrant deportation quotas at a rate of
more than 1,000 a day, with little regard for the havoc
caused to children torn apart from their parents, and
other family splits.

If we add to this mix the prevalence of abuse
that deportees face from federal agents, the travel
ban on people from six Muslim-majority countries,
the onslaught on H-1B visa programs, and the rampant
construction of nativist border walls, it begins to
appear that the U.S.—known around the world as a
shining beacon for immigrants—is indeed waging a
war on immigration.

“MILITARY OPERATION”

Tara Raghuveer (left), deputy
director of the National
Partnership of New
Americans (NPNA), a
coalition of 37 immigrant
and refugee rights: “Over
the past several weeks the
Trump administration has
waged a war on immigrants,
refugees, Muslims,
and brown communities.”

“Over the past several weeks the Trump administration
has waged a war on immigrants, refugees,
Muslims, and brown communities,” said Tara
Raghuveer, deputy director of the National Partnership
of New Americans (NPNA), a coalition of
37 immigrant and refugee rights groups. “A lot
of folks are terrified,”
added Raghuveer. Federal
agents have stormed
homes in New York,
Atlanta, Austin, Chicago,
Los Angeles, and
other cities rounding
up undocumented immigrants.
Immigration
and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) agents have
just stepped up deportation
raids in at least 11
states during Operation
Cross Check.

President Trump
called his drive to ramp
up deportations a “military
operation.” “We’re
getting really bad dudes
out of this country, and at
a rate that nobody’s ever
seen before,” Trump told
business leaders at the
White House on February 24. “And they’re the bad ones.
And it’s a military operation.”

The U.S. military, however, is not involved. The
new enforcement policies require law enforcement
agencies to hire thousands of new agents to find,
arrest, and deport “illegal” immigrants—regardless of
whether they crossed over the border illegally or simply
find themselves out of status due to minor paperwork
infractions or imperfections. Along with ICE, local
police departments have been asked to round up such
so-called illegal immigrants.

BROWN “ILLEGALS” BECOME “BAD HOMBRES”
Under the Obama administration, roughly 1.4 million
people were considered “priorities” for deportation.
They included recent arrivals, and people with multiple
criminal violations.

However, Trump’s new enforcement policies widen
the net, stripping away restrictions on who should be
deported. Up to 8 million people in the country illegally
could be considered priorities for deportation, according
to calculations by the Los Angeles Times.

Alarmingly, Indians are the fastest growing illegal
population in the U.S. In 2014, there were nearly half
a million unauthorized Indian immigrants representing
a 43 percent spike since 2009, when the number
was 350,000, according to a recent Pew Research
Center report. All of these 500,000, most of whom have
overstayed their student, business, or tourist visas,
now run the risk of being deported.

For the most part, the
3.1 million-strong Indian
American community
with more than 200,000
millionaires has thrived
with fancy college degrees
and above-average
incomes. However,
nearly 500,000 Indians
are living in America
illegally. Under the new
directives, they could be
considered a priority for
deportation. “Since these
Indians are illegal, they
work in small familyowned
restaurants,
motels, businesses, store
fronts, gas stations, and
delis,” said immigrantrights
lawyer Mukul
Chand. “They’ve worked
unimaginably hard in
America, some for over a
decade, and they now risk losing everything!”

“ICE will not only round up ‘bad hombres,’ they are
going after Indians, South Asians, Africans, anyone really
they can catch who has entered the U.S. without
passing through an official border or overstayed their
visas,” said Chand. “Everyone who is here illegally could
potentially be considered a priority.”

DEPORTER-IN-CHIEF
Trump is being criticized heavily by immigrant-rights
groups as the “Deporter-in-chief.” They say
his overzealous “military” deportation push could result
in families being split apart and violations of due-4process
rights.

As highlighted in the editorial referenced earlier,
these folks may bear some responsibility for their illegal
status, but certainly they couldn’t have worked, lived,
gone to schools and colleges, paid taxes, and more, for
years and even decades, if the host nation was not complicit
in the act. America harbored, aided, and abided
millions of illegal immigrants—creating a precedent of
sanctioning this practice, even if only implicitly.

Hence the ill-conceived agenda of the Trump camp
to now drive them out unceremoniously is an ugly
subversion of American values. Activists have staged
protests and are broadcasting “Know Your Rights”
public service announcements over the radio in poor
immigrant neighborhoods as people fear that ICE
agents could resort to racial profiling techniques to
round up undocumented people. “We will demand that
our representatives in Congress support our nation’s
compassionate resettlement of refugees fleeing persecution,
and end the cruel and unnecessary deportations
destroying immigrant families,” said Harvardeducated
Raghuveer, who turned down a job with a
hedge fund to be a champion for immigrants.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said it
would challenge Trump’s executive orders and Homeland
Security Department memos. “These memos
confirm that the Trump administration is willing to
trample on due process, human decency, the well-being
of our communities, and even protections for vulnerable
children, in pursuit of a hyper-aggressive mass
deportation policy,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the
ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.

“Trump’s mass deportation policy takes aim at
people who go to work every day. They are not criminals.
This will end up gutting businesses that rely on
immigrant labor. It will split up families in the cruelest
way,” said immigrant rights activist Bhibu Mohanty.

“GO BACK TO YOUR OWN COUNTRY”
Since Trump’s election, hardly a day goes by without
reports of hate violence targeting Muslims, Arabs,
Sikhs, South Asians, African Americans, Jews, and Latinos.
There is no question that Trump’s victory has
brought the bigots out of the woodwork. In all, the
Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a record
900 hate crimes since the November election of Trump.

Trump says he loves Hindus, but the ground reality
is that Indians, a majority of whom are Hindus,
are among the most vulnerable groups in the United
States. In February, white nationalist Adam W. Purinton
yelled “get out of my country” at two 32-year-old Indian
men—Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani—before
he opened fire at Austins Bar and Grill in a Kansas City
suburb. He shot to death computer engineer Srinivas
Kuchibhotla, while injuring his friend and also wounding
a white American who tried to stop the gunman.

Then in March, a masked gunman opened fire on
Deep Rai, a 39-year-old Sikh man in the driveway of his
home in a Seattle suburb in Kent, after yelling “Go back
to your own country.” Rai is expected to recover.

AMERICAN DREAM SLIPPING
Under attack because of their identity, Indians
are seeing the American Dream slipping away. “I always
wondered how safe it was to stay in the United
States of America, but my husband always assured
me that only good things happen to good people,”
Srinivas Kuchibhotla’s grief stricken wife Sunayana
Dumala told reporters. “He did not deserve a death
like this.”

A few days after the killing,
Dumala described how her husband,
a young engineer from Hyderabad,
had come to the U.S.
believing America had unlimited
opportunities. “We just had
to go work for it. Most of us had
the feeling we could go do anything
we wanted in this country
if we tried and wanted it bad
enough,” said Dumala. The young
woman described the shattering
of her American Dream in a
blogpost on Facebook. “We built
our dream home, which he painted,
and installed the garage door,”
wrote Dumala. “It’s so unfortunate
that this dream of ours is now shattered.”

The shootings are part of a larger pattern. However,
the White House, speaking about the Kansas shooting,
said any loss of life is tragic, but described it as
absurd to chalk it up to Trump’s rhetoric. The relatives
of the Indian men beg to differ. They say the shootings
are connected to a climate of xenophobia and hostility
against those seen as different and foreign to the
White supremacist.

Dumala, in the same Facebook post describing her
shattered American Dream, asks the question which
plagues most Indian Americans, especially those who
have immigrated to the United States as adults: “Do we
belong? Is this the same country we dreamed of and is
it still secure to raise our families and children here?”

TIME TO STEP OUT OF THE “MODEL MINORITY” COCOON
For too long, Indian Americans have burnished
the “model minority” label, and worn it like a badge of
honor, believing somehow that they are immune to
racism. As successful doctors, scientists, professors,
and techies, they live in a bubble: comfortable, middle-class,
white neighborhoods with manicured lawns.
They are more focused on getting their kids into Ivy
League schools than registering unpleasant experiences
of racism.

“Your present life may be completely encased in
the bubble and you may choose to seal yourself off
from the realities of the world,” said author Pooja
Makhijani, who grew up in a predominantly white
neighborhood in New York. In the introduction to her
hugely popular first book Under Her Skin: How Girls
Experience Race in America, Makhijani confessed to suffering
a fleeting “I-refuse-to-be-Indian-why-can’t-you-see-that-I-am-as-white-as-you” phase. In one of her candid
essays, Makhijani recalls a childhood spent swapping
the traditional Indian lunches her mother packed
for the processed school lunches
other “luckier” kids bought.

As quoted in crossroadstoday.
com, Gurjot Singh, 39, who served
in the Marine Corps and is an Iraq
War veteran, said he was dismayed
that people think others
who look different aren’t equal
or don’t contribute equally to
the community. “This is equally
my country as it is your country,” Singh said after the
Seattle suburb shooting of the Sikh man. “It doesn’t
anger me. It hurts me.”

In undiscerning eyes, the turban has somehow
been terribly mixed up with Osama bin Laden’s headgear.
In August 2012, white supremacist Wade Michael
Page strode into the Wisconsin gurdwara brandishing a
handgun and killed six Sikhs. Despite America’s efforts
at being a pluralistic society, the Sikh Coalition says 60
percent of turban-wearing boys are harassed in schools
and the bullying has become worse after the elections.

Sixty percent of turban-wearing boys are
harassed in schools and the bullying has
become worse after the elections. Even
high-profile Sikhs like Sonny Caberwal,
who was part of the highly visible
Kenneth Cole ad campaign celebrating
“Non-Uniform Thinkers,” are not immune
from such hate.

“If you’re different, people can be mean,” entrepreneur
and model Sonny Caberwal, who wears a turban
and beard, once told reporters. Caberwal was part of
the highly visible Kenneth Cole ad campaign celebrating
“Non-Uniform Thinkers.” “It doesn’t matter if you’re
black or Hispanic in a different part of town, you can
hear things that are hurtful. They’ll say things that are
not fair. I’ve certainly faced that in my time. When you
look really different, it can happen to you with a much
higher degree of frequency,” added Caberwal.

There’s little doubt that Trump has fueled anger
against minorities and people who look different. The
Salon called out the president for not taking responsibility
for the hate crimes that are growing like kudzu.
“Here’s a plain and uncomfortable fact: Adam Purinton
and others like him are doing nothing more than following
through on the spirit and words of Donald
Trump’s xenophobia, nativism, and racism.”

THE PLIGHT OF H-1B PROFESSIONALS: “NOWHERE” MEN
AND WOMEN
It’s not easy to be an immigrant working on an
H-1B visa in the United States. It’s likely to get a lot
worse under Trump’s presidency.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to raise
the wages for H-1B workers so that Americans would
be hired instead of cheaper coders from India. Then he issued a statement on his website, saying he wanted to scrap the visas altogether. A draft executive order that leaked in January directed administration officials to “restore the integrity” of the system and prioritize and protect the “jobs, wages, and well-being of United States workers.”

Companies can send in applications for the new batch of 85,000 H-1B visas on April 1. However, Press Secretary Sean Spicer sent alarm bells ringing on March 8 by saying the President would take a “comprehensive look” at all temporary work visas. “I think there is the legal part of immigration and then the illegal part of immigration. The President’s actions that he’s taken in terms of his executive orders and other revamping of immigration policy have focused on our border security,” Spicer told reporters at a press briefing. “And then, obviously, whether it’s H-1B visas or the other one—spousal visas—other areas of student visas, I think there is a natural desire to have a full look, a comprehensive look at that,” said Spicer.

U.S. companies for years have called on Congress to increase the cap on visas for high-skilled foreign workers. Last year demand for H-1B visas was so high that it surpassed the entire year’s allocation within five days. The government resorted to a lottery to pick
H-1B visa winners.

Rishi Bhilawadikar (left), a user experience designer at a San Francisco e-commerce company, was inspired to make a movie, For Here Or To Go?, on America’s ‘dehumanized’ immigration system.

H-1B visa problems are so ubiquitous that Rishi Bhilawadikar, a user experience designer at a San Francisco e-commerce company, has made a movie, For Here Or To Go?, on America’s ‘dehumanized’ immigration system. Can I fulfill my dreams in the U.S.? Am I better off here? Will I even be allowed to stay here? Or should—or will I have to—return home? It’s a series of questions that Bhilawadikar says he and hundreds of thousands like him who are currently in some stage of the H-1B visa process ask themselves every day.

Thousands of Indian engineers who lend their computing genius to companies like Apple and Google and help launch successful start-ups in Silicon Valley live surreal lives dominated by the vagaries of the H-1B visa. “The problem for immigrants like me is that there’s no authentic legal or media or political representation. We are pretty much temporary visitors, and we are treated as temporary visitors for a very, very long time, to the tune of 15 or 20 years or so,” said Bhilawadikar, the Indian techie whose moving film on immigration is taking the festival circuit by storm.

THE PLIGHT OF H-4 SPOUSES IS EVEN WORSE
Since 2015, spouses of H-1B visa holders waiting for green cards have been eligible to work in the U.S. on H-4 dependent visas, thanks to a rule introduced by President Obama. But now, a group called Save Jobs USA is challenging that rule in court, and the Trump administration is proposing a 60-day freeze in employment authorization for H-4 visa holders. Activists say they are worried as U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions had earlier attacked the H-4 rule as an exception that “hurts American workers.”

The majority of Indian spouses come to the U.S. on H-4 visas. Immigration Voice, a national nonprofit serving high-skilled immigrants, filed a motion this week to intervene in the case on behalf of thousands of its members currently working in the U.S. on H-4 visas.

Sudarshana Sengupta, a brilliant biomedical researcher who has published papers at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, was about to launch a start-up on developing cancer immunotherapy
strategies. But now, she has to fight for her right to
work in the United States. “During the course of my research career, I have worked at and published from notable academic institutions, like Harvard University, University of Chicago, and Boston University, investigating molecular biological aspects of diseases such as cancer and certain cardiovascular conditions,” said Sengupta, who is cited in the Immigration
Voice petition. “I am currently involved in preclinical research developing effective strategies for cancer
immunotherapy, and am on the verge of launching
my own start-up in this field. However, if the H4-EAD is taken away, then I will be unable to launch my
start-up,” said Sengupta, mother to a nine-year-old
son who is a U.S. citizen.

Anuj Dhamija, who is also cited in the Immigration Voice petition, has been working legally in the U.S. since 2010 as a project manager for a Fortune 100 company. After a decades-long wait for a green card, he switched to the H4 EAD program as it allowed him to start his own home remodeling business. “I expected to create 10 new jobs in America in the construction industry. If this program ceases to exist, I will lose all my investment in the new business,” said Dhamija.

A LOSS FOR AMERICA’S STATUS IN
HIGHER EDUCATION

Nitin Nohria (left), dean of faculty at Harvard Business School warns of the decline in enrollments to American universities as a result of
the “Muslim” ban. That could translate into a loss of $35 billion to U.S. universities.

The U.S. has enjoyed a coveted status as a leading destination for international students seeking higher education. Now, universities are worried that Trump’s
decree could cause irreparable harm to U.S. higher
education. Nitin Nohria, dean of faculty at Harvard Business School pointed out that the travel ban created “anxiety and confusion” among students about internships and career goals. “The dampening effects of the ban have become clear very quickly,” Nohria told Harvard Business School alumni. “Students (including a number with citizenship from the listed countries) are questioning their career prospects and wondering whether their families will be able to join them for Commencement. Faculty are debating whether they should travel to conduct their research and teaching. Class visitors are cancelling their trips, alumni are uncertain whether to return to campus for reunions, and we are concerned that
our executive programs—which comprise two-thirds international participants—could see declines in enrollment,” added Nohria.

International students at U.S. colleges and universities surpassed one million for the first time during the 2015-16 academic year, according to the “Open Doors Report” published by the Institute of International Education (IIE). Theses international
students spent $35 billion last year and U.S. schools have become increasingly dependent on that revenue.

“Nearly 40 percent of responding U.S. institutions are reporting a drop in international student applications…” showed initial findings from a survey of
250 schools conducted in February by six higher-education groups, including the Institute of International Education. “For educational institutions in the United States, the negative effects of the ban will extend far beyond 90 days and well beyond the six countries
involved,” said Nancy Beane, president of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling which conducted the survey.

With Trump’s war on immigration, Canada is now a beacon for tolerance and inclusivity in North
America, and many Indian students say they are looking for an opportunity to study in that environment. “Canada is an immigrant-friendly country. That’s what is most important to me,” said Ranjit Lal who has
applied to do his Masters in engineering at McGill
University. “I chose Canada over the U.S. because
with Trump in the White House there are too many
uncertainties about U.S. immigration policies,” said Lal.

In the 2014-2015 academic year, 263,000 international students were enrolled in Canadian institutions, drawn by Ottawa’s liberal post-college work permit, showed figures compiled by the Canadian Bureau of
International Education. That number is likely to pop as Trump’s draconian immigration policies have
boosted Canadian universities looking to recruit the best and brightest international students from around the world.

A LOSS FOR THE AMERICAN ECONOMY
The Center for American Progress estimates “a policy of mass deportation would immediately reduce the nation’s GDP by 1.4 percent, and ultimately by
2.6 percent, and reduce cumulative GDP over 10 years
by $4.7 trillion.” The Washington think tank said that
hard-hit industries would see double-digit reductions
in their workforces. “Unauthorized workers are
unevenly spread across industries, with the highest
concentrations employed in agriculture, construction,
and leisure and hospitality. Those three
industries would be hit hardest by a removal policy,
experiencing workforce reductions of 10 percent to 18
percent, or more. Other industries would also experience
reductions in output due to a mass deportation
policy,” wrote Ryan Edwards and Francesc Ortega in the
economic impact analysis published by the Center for
American Progress.

The Western Growers farming advocacy group
said mass deportations would create a labor shortage
with not enough immigrants in the U.S. to work the
fields. “Believe me, those people who’ve been working
for us have been invaluable for us to harvest our
crops,” Tom Nassif, the president and CEO of Western
Growers farming advocacy group told reporters. “If
you shut down our ability to harvest our crops, you
send more and more of our jobs to other countries.
And that’s something I don’t think the president wants
to see happen.”

There’s an attempt to paint immigrants as “criminals,”
but most are law-abiding and scared to be on the
wrong side of the law. “The reality is that once you take
out immigration specific offenses, immigrants commit
many fewer crimes, obviously, because these are often
people who don’t want to draw attention to themselves,”
said Andrew Selee, executive vice president of
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Trump’s war on immigration has an inverse relationship to making the country great: the more he succeeds in his agenda, the worse the
country will fare. (Photo: Shutterstock)

A nation is made great not by slogans, but by its
entrepreneurs, laborers, academics, and its institutions
such as universities and hospitals. In each of these segments,
immigrants have an outsized positive impact.
Trump’s war on immigration has an inverse relationship
to making the country great: the more he succeeds
in his agenda, the worse the country will fare.

Uttara Choudhury is a contributor to The Wire and
Forbes India. She has been covering American politics, foreign
policy, diplomacy, and defense issues for two decades.