There was no April fool’s day needed in America this year, for 2017 is the Year of the Fool-in-Chief.
The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board took a bold step on April 2 by initiating an editorial series published so far: Our Dishonest President, Why Trump Lies, Trump’s Authoritarian Vision, and Trump’s War on Journalism. It is evident the Presidency is at risk, though policies via executive orders are being pushed out in conjunction with the Republican Congressional leadership.
Since the campaign days, it had been clear the minorities (gender, religious, ethnic, and others) were going to be at the receiving end of policies, while the white supremacists were inching to the White House.
One major dimension of the contested policies was on immigration issues. And within that xenophobic theme, Trump’s immigration plan was to: “…improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favour of the H-1B program. Mark Zuckerberg's personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities.”
Well, at the time, Indians didn’t pay as much attention to the aforesaid. That was a clever dig at fellow presidential candidate Rubio by Trump while pretending to side with minorities in the US.
On 3 April 2017, United States Department of Justice warned it would investigate companies that overlooked American workers as the H1-B visa season opened. Indian companies stop breathing!
“The Justice Department will not tolerate employers misusing the H-1B visa process to discriminate against U.S. workers,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler of the Civil Rights Division. Incidentally, a Sikh woman of Indian descent was a serious contender to head this division recently.
The White House responded by merely acknowledging the concerns; Sean Spicer wasn’t up on the curry-politics.
On March 31, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) made it harder for programmers to receive visas. Individual visa applications will be scrutinised much more. More "targeted site visits" will be conducted to evaluate whether or not the employers are "evading their obligation to make a good faith effort to recruit U.S. workers.” Indian middle-class aspiration to be US-returned was shocked!
Each year the United States grants 85,000 H1-B visas: 65,000 to those with Bachelor’s degree and 20,000 to those with Master’s or higher. Last year, USCIS received 236,000 applications; they stopped accepting them after a week. This year, the rush to get in the application is most chaotic to-date, perhaps because the contemporary US politics is most uncertain and volatile. Earlier in the year, the Trump administration already stopped the expedition process which allowed granting the visa in 15 days instead of three to six months.
In 2014 (last data available is of that year), Indians grabbed about 50% of the H1-B visas. And three Indian firms received most H1B visas then: Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro. In the same year, more than 500,000 Indian were “unauthorised immigrants,” mostly who overstayed their visa.
At campaign rallies, Trump the candidate introduced several individuals who trained foreigners to take over their jobs and promised “we won’t let this happen anymore.” The candidate Trump was supported by the Indian administration via a Hindu businessman of Indian descent, Bollywood-style.
While overwhelming Indian (and South Asian) organisations opposed Trump’s presidency in making, Indians held worship ceremonies to assure gods grant a victory to Trump; Trump taped a video message to assure Indians they would be taken care of.
Since elections, Indians on H1-B, Indians of varying religious backgrounds, and those who are wrongfully perceived to be Indians even if they choose to not identify as Indians have been targets of hate crimes and murders. Religious places of learning or worship have been targeted where folks of South Asian descent gather. The administration could have escaped by saying the bigots don’t differentiate except the Spicer comment to an Indian woman who confronted him at Apple store is very telling: “It’s such a great country that allows you to be here.”
Incidents against Indians at-large are in both ‘red’ (Republican) and ‘blue’ (Democrat) states. Popularity (more than half million views) of video last month on YouTube which was originally broadcast last August highlighted: Indians “have ravished the Midwest”, “all the jobs are taken away from Americans” and “this is a takeover.” This is a real bad news for 3 million Indians in America in particular, and Desi (South Asian) community at large.
At the same time, several Indian-American members of the President’s White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders resigned two months ago citing immigration concerns. All five Democrat Indian-Americans in US Congress denounced Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Navtej Singh Sarna, the new Indian Ambassador to the United States, in February remarked about India-US relations: “This is a relationship which is symbiotic and which has a potential of becoming even stronger for both countries.” Will it?
That statement was before the changes and crackdown initiated last week. Not to mention Senator Chuck Grassley’s H1-B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2017 which was introduced earlier this year to address US “benched” workers and doubling the annual salary of H1-B visa holders to $130,000. That is an effective deterrence for employers to hire foreign skilled workers!
Steve Brannon, the president behind the president, already feels too many South Asian are studying in US engineering schools and there are too many South Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley. Wonder how he plans to trump the 330,000 Indians waiting to become “Permanent Resident Alien.” That is more than 8% of applicants on green card waiting list.
Alien? Yes, believe it or not, that is part of the official term in the US for a green card holder. And this new Alien script has everything you don’t want, go ahead ask Sigourney Weaver!
Indian media and social media is very busy covering the H1-B mess. Congressional India Caucus and the US-India Political Action Committee (modelled after AIPAC) have their work cut out.
Concurrently, the media is laden with reports on how the Modi administration in India and the Trump administration in the US are estranging the minorities. The Left is critical of respective nation’s policies; the Right is exercising dictatorial methods.
But now the Indian-Right and the Indian Left may converge on H1-B. And so too the religious and the atheist, the Hindu and the non-Hindu, the so-called the high caste and the low caste, the feminist and the anti-feminist.
Economics has been trumping the human rights. It seems economics this time may trump the ideological stands of the Indians at home and abroad.
But will anyone influential in the Indian mainstream take the bold step like the LA Times?
Harinder Singh is an educator, thinker, author, public speaker and activist who tweets @1Force. He currently serves as the Senior Fellow, Research & Policy, at the Sikh Research Institute. He served on the boards of the National Conference on Community and Justice, The Fellowship of Activists to Embrace Humanity, The Nanakshahi Trust, among others. He regularly appears on radio and television programs globally.
Harinder Singh Source: Supplied
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