The state of the stateless in new America

Abroad at home

There are dramatic developments regarding immigration under the new Trump administration in the US, and the long-term consequences for Indian-Americans are unclear. The harsh experiences of demographic change in Europe may be influencing lawmakers’ plans.

On the one hand, there is what appears to have been deliberately done under the Biden administration: the carte blanche to millions of illegal aliens to walk into the US and melt away into the general population. This has included hard-core criminal gangs as well as ordinary people who simply want a better life. As in the film El Norte, it is a dream for many from impoverished developing countries to somehow get to the fabled riches of the US. As in some parts of India, local politicians may have encouraged illegal migrants expecting loyalty from them. With notoriously lax local laws in the US (no need to prove citizenship to vote), they may have calculated that they could permanently lock in a vote-bank for themselves.

It is said that some number (70,000 to 700,000, the reported number varies) of illegal Indians have used ‘coyotes’ to get them into the US via the southern or northern borders (some may have overstayed their visas). The simple answer is that they will be extradited (if caught): some have melted away into ethnic enclaves, living in fear of the ‘migra’, like East Asian and Latino illegals. There are allegations that the first batch of 104 illegal Indian citizens was sent back in chains, handcuffed, on a military plane, with limited access to toilets. This is inhumane, if true, and cannot be countenanced.

There are also practical difficulties: many illegals have destroyed their papers, and have no incentive to prove their actual citizenship. They are, in effect, stateless. I am reminded of poor San Francisco businessman Vaishno Das Bagai, rendered a man without a country after the US cancelled his citizenship in 1928, who died by suicide. What do you do with stateless people? The facile answer is to imprison them, and Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay and Guantanamo have both been suggested as incarceration centres. But then what? It would be inhuman to simply jail them forever if they are not violent criminals.

There is also the fact that some sectors depend on foreign labour, for example agriculture (that needs fruit and vegetable pickers) and industry (some factories depend on low-wage illegal migrants), as well as the IT industry. Talented and educated immigrants are giving the US an advantage in innovation and entrepreneurship. On the other hand, if they are forced to return, say to India, that might be good for the Indian economy.

Then there is the question of birthright citizenship. The 1868-vintage 14th Amendment grants citizenship to every child born in the US. It was done for freed blacks after the Civil War: before manumission, slaves had been treated as chattel. This provision has been misused by ‘birth tourism’, wherein pregnant women show up just to deliver in the US.

Trump’s executive order cancelling birthright citizenship was opposed by 17 states; and a Federal judge has stayed the order. It will end up in the Supreme Court, and the conservative majority will probably be unwilling to override something that is spelt out in the US Constitution. It would be virtually impossible to bring a new Amendment to overturn the 14th, because the legislature is finely balanced between Republicans and Democrats. Thus, after a few months of wrangling, it is likely that the birthright citizenship will stay on the books.

There is also a curious sideshow, with US citizen activist Kshama Samant of Seattle, and friends, invading the Indian consulate there demanding that she be given a visa to visit her ailing mother. No country is obligated to give anybody a visa or a reason for denying it.

Of course, there is a more immediate concern from the points of view of the million-strong Indian origin H-1B visa holders, mostly engineers, who are stuck with the 9,800 per-country annual limit of employment-based Green Cards. This means they are generally at the mercy of their employers. It is not clear that the US government will do anything to change this status quo.

Japan, China etc are facing a demographic crisis because of low fertility rates. So is most of Europe. The US has had the advantage of attracting immigrants. With the current confusion, the net result may well be that the US will cease to attract immigrants, which would in the long run be a net loss for the country especially if smart young people prefer to stay at home.