Long read: One of America’s Most Successful Experiments Is Coming to a Shuddering Halt

It’s that time of the year when friends and family descend from their adopted western countries back to their roots. Inevitably with those from the US, conversations involve life under Trump 2.0 and it is clear that this time it is not just the fringe spewing vitriol on social media, but almost everyone seems to have encountered increased frequency of racial slur from regular people you meet in real life not just from strangers but colleagues and neighbours too. Lydia Polgreen writes in the NYT about this structural shift. She begins with one such Indian immigrant who faced protests from right wing groups for having erected a statue of Hanuman in Texas:

“Tamirisa, who emigrated to the United States from India as a young doctor 50 years ago, was stunned. He had built a life that seemed the epitome of the American ideal: a successful career as an OB-GYN, delivering about a dozen babies a month. He paid his taxes faithfully, raised his children in this tidy, affluent suburb of Houston, then sent them off to attend elite colleges and become doctors and investment bankers. He had proudly become a citizen. And this is how his adopted country repaid that devotion?

“I thought this was heaven on earth,” Tamirisa told me as we toured the temple grounds. Now, suddenly, his neighbors were taunting his faith and questioning his right to be an American.”
Whilst Tamirisa’s might sound like a special case, author Suketu Mehta says:

““Every year since I came to this country in 1977, I felt more assured of my place in America,” Mehta told me. “And now for the first time, that’s been thrown into doubt.”

A number of Indian Americans in his circle have been applying for status as overseas citizens of India, which gives people of Indian descent the right to live permanently in India and a backup plan should things truly go awry in the United States. Racialization has come as a rude shock.”

Lydia writes about migration stories across the world and rates Indians migrating to the US as one of the most successful in human history:

“Since 1965, when civil rights immigration law opened the United States to migrants from countries across the globe, hundreds of thousands of Indians have immigrated to the United States. No group has made a bigger success of its opportunity. Indian Americans’ median household income significantly outstrips that of white Americans overall; about three-quarters of Indian American adults have at least a college degree and many work in high-status, well-paying professions in places like Houston, New York and Silicon Valley.

In public life, Indian Americans have rocketed to prominence. They have led iconic American companies like Google, Microsoft and Pepsi, and are major players in culture and science — several have won a Nobel Prize. They are a growing political force in both parties, too: Three major candidates in the 2024 presidential election were of Indian ancestry.

…Now, all of a sudden, six decades of mutually beneficial migration are coming to a shuddering halt. Most Americans have quite positive views of Indian Americans. But the combination of anti-Indian rhetoric and government visa policies — not least the chaos that has enveloped the H-1B visa — has already had a powerful chilling effect. Indians last year became the largest contingent of foreign students at American universities, but this year arrivals of Indian students fell by 44 percent.”

Whilst media, both mainstream and social, have gone amok about deportation of illegal migrants from Mexico: “But Americans face their stiffest competition for jobs and homes from immigrants here legally. Because voluntary migration is such a rare and self-selecting phenomenon — over 96 percent of the world’s people live in the country of their birth — Americans are often competing against the best educated and most ambitious people from countries across the globe.

This is especially true for India, home to 1.4 billion people. It has a formidable tradition of elite science, engineering and medical education, accessible only to those who can ace a pitiless gantlet of extremely competitive tests. For decades, the United States has welcomed those graduates, who have contributed much to American prosperity and been rewarded for it with handsome salaries and comfortable lives in the suburban idylls that typify the American dream.

But as that dream feels increasingly out of reach for many young Americans, stoking resentment at perceived outsiders who are actually achieving it makes for good, if cynical, politics. The turn against highly skilled legal immigrants, especially those who worship differently and have darker skin, was perhaps an inevitable escalation of Trump’s anti-immigration movement.

For America, though, the cost may be high. The United States has been profoundly changed by Indians coming to the country. It stands to reason it will be changed by their not coming, too.

…According to the National Science Foundation, foreign students have been awarded more engineering and computer science doctorates than have U.S. citizens and permanent residents for over two decades. Top programs usually include tuition and a stipend, so American universities are spending considerable sums educating engineers who may have no choice but to leave the country rather than build their careers in America.

…But Mehta also wondered whether Indian Americans had become a bit smug about their spectacular success in America over the past six decades, trusting that their wealth and status would shield them from the kind of bigotry that once barred them from entry and citizenship. Indian Americans, he said, tell themselves: “We are the richest, best educated people. We don’t commit crimes. We go to good schools. We came here legally. We’re not like the Mexicans.”

Mehta finds this exceptionalism both understandable and dangerous. The Indians who come to the United States are not just the most ambitious and educated. They also are mostly the beneficiaries of the durable hierarchies of caste, class and religion that stratify Indian life.”

“If Indians are so great, what explains India?” he quipped.

India is changing, too. It is the world’s fastest-growing major economy, home to the world’s biggest population and an important consumer market. Given the demographic challenges the West faces, India will continue to be an important source of human talent. But it will increasingly become a consumer of it, too. In just the past few months, for example, American tech giants have announced a combined $67.5 billion in new investments in India. As foreign countries compete for opportunities, highly educated Indians will have options.”

India might not be there yet but with the best Chinese talent increasingly preferring Chinese universities and building China, America’s status as a talent magnet is already on the wane.