Columnists
US immigration policy conundrum
The recent protests in America about the immigration issues and the Donald Trump Administration’s decision to keep apart 9,000-odd H1B visas to the applicants from one nation have hit hard the category of the highly skilled Indians and other related immigrants as it can be noted that two thirds of the annual quota of 85,000 visas go to the Indian coffers. Still, the Indian-American children — who will be temporary residents — have their fate of stay and residence dependent upon the Congressional and Presidential policy deals and presentations. These kids who semi-legally are settled in the United States are called as the new “Dreamer conundrum” which President Trump will do well to strengthen the sustainability loop in the American homeland. The Lottery system, which has persisted thus to distribute the H1 visas, is a rather far cry from the “merit-based” system of stay permits and forms one of the cornerstones of the American President’s governance loop. In the trend of the local policy making, one of the Judges in the State of Hawaii has challenged the sequestration policy of Washington in the interest of the domestic and statal concerns of tourism. Apart from the foreign policy legerdemain, the domesticity imbued public policy too needs a balancing act.
The USA Today reports that “Dreamers” have a specific meaning in the dictum of US immigration. Senator Lindsay Graham decided to clear the grounds in the context of the “Dreamer” variants of the undocumented aliens in the United States. He has reportedly gone on to have contended that, “The political debate over the fate of “Dreamers” — undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children — has overlooked just how many of them are in the country today: about 3.6 million. That number of people whose lives are at risk of being uprooted is not widely known in large part because so much public attention has been focused recently on 8,00,000 mostly young Dreamers accepted into the Obama-era Differed Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).” Despite the fact that the interests of the skilled workers from India are going to be hurt with the new immigration policy and several hundred Indian immigrants gathered at the White House to protest against his directive, their perception was in consonance with the basic premise of the US President after they were personally asked to comment upon the new migrant legality as they too value the concern of homeland security threats. The USA Today further reports that, “The 3.6 million — estimate of undocumented immigrants brought to the US before their 18th birthday — come from the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit think tank that studies global immigration patterns. That is roughly a third of all undocumented immigrants in the country and does not include millions of their immediate family members who are US citizens.” Thus, the new directive can end up separating and sequestering the families who have more than always, made the “Melting Point” as the novae homestead for themselves. Still, national security concerns are of much larger influence as compared to the floss surrounding the familial concerns and the other emotive and quintessential campaign trail issues in the myriad security-related vortex of the United States of America. A number so large raises the stakes for both sides in the dispute over whether to deport Dreamers, allow them to stay under prescribed conditions or provide them with a path to citizenship.
Some observers contend that DACA’s discontinuity is a long-term strategy to accouter the immigrant community with the taint of criminalisation. One foundation working in the United States contends that “since last fall, the human rights and bodily autonomy of LGBTQ migrants, including trans-migrants and other LGBTQ communities vulnerable to detention and the potentially life-threatening consequences of deportation, have come under increasing attack. LGBTQ people are deeply impacted by the DACA decision, which affects 75,000 LGBTQ youths.” This is the concern and the qualm of the alternate way of lifers who too have become a vocal community and present their case forcefully in the American political circus and the routinised rituals of day-to-day and mundane life. One can have a look at the legislation abbreviated as DACA. The Act refers to and includes the American population of undocumented aliens who entered the American state as minors and now have to complete formalities for prolonging their stay two years before deportation and later on apply for work permits. The Bill, first proposed in 2001, intended to regularise the Dreamers sect of the aliens and the then authorities and representatives in the US Congress attempted to let these denizens be part of college education and later on pave a pathway for the ushering of permanent residence for the so-called “Dreamers”, for them to become part of the grandiloquent American dream. Hollywood, in the lighter strain of the palaver, too pits the aliens and mutants in a not-so-distant future vis-a-vis the human protagonists. There is certain comparability between the world of imagination and fanciful metaphors with the actual state of affairs of the Immigration Law in the United States. President Obama has left behind a mixed legacy on immigration. The strict approach of the DACA, which was posited as one of the achievements of the Obama Administration, was mired in retaliation that the then President of the United States was the “Deporter-in-Chief.” Harmless, humanist and high-skilled Indian-Americans can be harnessed and earmarked as the true representative of what a good Indian stands for and reflects. It’s no longer the oil-stained head of the protagonist from the Jajua town who can be looked down upon in a parochial manner.
(The writer teaches International Relations at Indian Institute of Public Administration, Delhi)
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