[The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the views of The South Asian Times.]
By Basab Dasgupta
President Donald Trump has vigorously embarked upon a mission to make the country free from all unwanted migrants. This includes two main groups at opposite ends of the migrant spectrum: illegal immigrants coming from Mexico, Central America, as well as countries in Asia crossing our southern border; and foreign nationals who enter the country legally but overstating their relevant skill and/or abusing visa privileges in some way; this latter group consists primarily of Indian migrants on H-1B visas.
Trump has deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) teams to search, capture, and deport illegal immigrants, especially those with criminal records, in a massive campaign. His approach to reducing the presence of an excessive number of H-1B visa holders has been more subtle, by imposing a hefty annual fee of $100,000 on new visa applicants as well as encouraging US tech companies to hire more Americans.
These two groups of migrants have different, almost complimentary issues. The Indian professionals, mostly IT engineers and some doctors, come here with high qualifications and contribute to society in a multitude of ways, including serving critical needs, paying taxes, and providing a good cultural influence. Here, the only question is whether Indian nationals are needed to the extent we are admitting them, perhaps depriving Americans who can be trained to do most of those jobs.
Illegal immigrants, on the other hand, do not bring any critical skillset, do not pay taxes, and burden our social support structure. The criminal elements among them literally harm people and destroy property. However, many of them, once in the US, end up performing jobs that Americans refuse to do. This includes agricultural jobs, construction work, various manual labor such as moving, cleaning, driving, landscaping, domestic chores, etc.
Let us try to understand the situations of both these groups more deeply. I have lived in the midwestern states of Wisconsin and Indiana for almost twenty years. I have worked with dozens, if not hundreds, of bright American engineers who can be trained to do any type of IT job, in my opinion. Most Indian IT engineers are involved in “coding of software”, not quite rocket science. Sadly, the high-tech companies have not invested in facilities for training or providing jobs to these engineers in the midwestern states. To make matters worse, they prefer hiring foreign nationals over American engineers. The reason is money.
A recruitment manager at a major tech company once told me that she had explicit instructions from her superiors to hire foreign nationals, typically Indians, over American applicants whenever possible. She called it a “two-for-one policy” because they could hire two Indian engineers for the same amount of money that is needed to hire one American engineer. This is a prevalent practice in Silicon Valley. I do not know why this was not widely publicized in mainstream media or discussed in Congress, with pressure put on tech companies to hire more Americans.
To be fair, I should point out that people from the Midwest are reluctant to move to coastal states like California and Washington, where most tech companies are located. The reasons are high cost of living, traffic, congestion and a more liberal lifestyle. The only logical solution is for high-tech companies to build campuses in the Midwest.
Only recently, Apple, Oracle, Tesla, and Google have taken steps to expand their activities beyond California by moving to Texas, with potential employment for thousands. I expect more companies to follow suit, moving part of their operations to not only Texas but other states as well, thus reducing the need for issuing H1B visas, but this transition will take years.
On the other hand, illegal immigrants are certainly not taking jobs away from American job seekers. They cannot even demonstrate their full capabilities because they live under the radar in constant fear of being caught and deported. Mexicans, by and large, are hard-working, god-fearing, and family-oriented. Given the right opportunities, they could excel in many other service and labor-oriented jobs. Mexicans do not come to the US, legally or illegally, for higher education to pursue a professional career, probably because of their family-centric life and national pride.
The main concern with their influx is that they overload our educational and healthcare systems. In addition, they are contributing to the housing crisis and the growth of impoverished neighborhoods. Many home and apartment owners refuse to rent their properties to illegals. Surprisingly, under the “Family Education Rights and Privacy Act”, the US schools cannot ask potential students about their immigration status during the admission process, nor discriminate against them based on that.
Several years ago, a mass shooter in Texas who opened fire on a mostly Hispanic crowd wrote in a manifesto, “I do not fear that illegal Mexicans will take away our jobs; I fear that their children will take away jobs from our children”. This line made an impression on me since there is considerable truth in that. Because of their hard work and family values, children of illegal aliens typically do well at school. If they are born in the US, they are automatically US citizens even if their parents entered the country illegally; indeed, they could potentially replace candidates who are US citizens. Since our public schools are free and community colleges have minimal tuition fees, we are effectively using our tax dollars to train replacements for our kids without getting anything in return.
The burden on our medical system is similar. Under the “Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act”, any person, regardless of immigration and/or insurance status, can walk into the emergency room of any hospital in the country and get full treatment for any ailment, no matter how expensive it is.
This effectively translates into providing free medical care to the illegal aliens with US taxpayers’ money and depriving US citizens of timely medical care because of limited staffing and accommodations at hospitals and resulting in long waits.
As an Indian American who came here legally and became a US citizen after years of hard work, I believe that the US must not be a “free-for-all” utopian destination but a protected sovereign country with well-defined geographical boundaries where the interests of US citizens have priority in every area.
Here is the inconvenient truth. The US does not have enough people in the workforce to fill jobs in all sectors to serve our needs. We need more people, both for manual labor and for professional jobs. Hence, we must admit new immigrants in numbers above and beyond what the traditional legal immigration process allows.
At the same time, we must address the social needs of all incoming people. Obviously, this requires modifications of many existing laws and policies regarding immigration protocol, social benefits of immigrants, and duration of their stay. Traditionally, the politicians have ignored this issue. It is inconvenient to acknowledge our need for foreign workers and even more inconvenient to propose bills and go through the exercise of bitter partisan debates to turn them into laws. Unfortunately, that is the only way allowed by our constitution.
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(California-based Basab Dasgupta has a doctorate in Physics from the University of Wisconsin and has worked with Sony as Vice President of an operating division)
