Visible and yet invisible

Soon after reading the news item that an Indian-American woman had been appointed to lead Oregon State University, I wrote an email welcoming her to the state.  I wrote there that "it absolutely gladdens my heart that a fellow Indian-American will lead and manage the state's largest university."

Within minutes a reply from her appeared in my inbox.  Truly busy people do have time for everything because they know how to manage really well the same 24 hours that all of us have.

With Oregon Institute of Technology having an Indian-American president, it would have been three public universities with my fellow immigrants at the lead, if only the presidential appointment had not derailed at my former employer. 

When my old university appointed an Indian-American as its president, I tweeted about it, with sarcastic humor, of course:

#WesternOregonUniversity laid off a balding and graying middle-aged #IndianAmerican professor and has hired another balding and graying middle-aged Indian-American professor as its president.
So, are we even now? 🤣https://t.co/XPdMrzfWy5#HigherEd #Academia #Layoff @wounews

— Sriram K (@congoboy) April 21, 2022

That appointment was short-lived.  I suspect that the newly hired man smelled something rotten and withdrew.

The public often equates Indian-Americans with tech-support, convenience stores, and motels, and often forgets that even the Vice President is one of us.  The public doesn't always connect the dots when their health care specialists or professors and even entertainers are Indian-Americans.  I suppose we have flown under the radar because there is no history of white supremacists ill-treating us, unlike the history with other non-whites: Blacks, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, ... 

Our arrival here in America was made possible by all those other non-white groups, especially Blacks and Chinese.

The story begins in 1965:

Inspired by the Civil Rights revolution in American society, the 1965 Immigration Act explicitly abolished the discriminatory national origins quotas that had regulated entrance into the country since the 1920s. It explicitly prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence in the U.S. government’s decisions to issue immigrant visas. Instead, the law established a new system preference system based on professional status and family reunification.

America was now legally welcoming non-white immigration.  A radical departure from the previous centuries!

When Congress and President Lyndon Johnson enacted that sweeping immigration reform, they didn't really think that brown people would rush to America.  But, hey, what's good for white migration is good for brown migration too, right?

In the 1990s, Silicon technology was altering the global economic landscape at warped speeds, and the population from India flooded in; a lot more would have come here if not for the restricted number of work visas.

But, a new kind of problem has popped up.  Congress restricts the number of Indian immigrants who can become permanent residents in America.

The U.S. offers roughly a hundred and forty thousand employment-based green cards a year, a quota that covers both the person sponsored by an employer and their family members. But, by law, no more than seven per cent of nationals from a particular country are supposed to receive employment-based green cards each year. The caps were established to support diversity within the immigrant pool. Immigrants from Mexico, China, and the Philippines also far exceed their country limits, and have longer wait times because of the backlog. But because of the sheer number of Indians applying for employment-based green cards—as of September, 2021, eighty-two per cent of the petitions in the employment-based backlog were filed by Indians—their wait times are longer than that of any other immigrant group.

Many are, therefore, on work visas forever.  It is a “bonded labor situation” because the visa holders in the backlog are allowed to renew their visas in perpetuity, while their permanent residency is delayed.

That itself is a lesser problem compared to the ones faced by the children of the "bonded labor" visa workers.  If the children were not born here but came here with their parents, then into adulthood they lose their standing as dependents to be legally in this country.  "Once in college, they are usually ineligible for either in-state tuition or federal financial aid, and required to pay the fees of an international student."

This group of children, who came here legally, call themselves "Documented Dreamers or Visa Dreamers."  It is not a handful; "there are more than a quarter of a million young adults."

Indian-Americans flying under the radar means that the Documented Dreamers problem is also invisible.

This is merely one of the many problems in the highly messed up immigration system.  Every politician knows about the urgency for a comprehensive immigration reform.  But, any talk of immigration riles up the white supremacist base of the GQP.

I wonder if the political climate in America will ever change for the better in order to have rational and constructive discussions and policies on the issues that impact our collective future: Immigration, climate change, structural racism, ...