Trump’s visa freeze adds to hardships for NC’s Indian immigrants

President Trump’s rash order requiring foreign college students to leave the U.S. if they’re not taking in-person classes this fall has created chaos for thousands of young people caught between nations.

But that stab of cruelty amid a pandemic likely wasn’t a surprise to the more than 2 million Indian immigrants in the U.S. They’ve long been caught in the gears of a broken immigration system. That pain is being felt anew in North Carolina, especially around the Research Triangle where thousands of Indians work in tech and medical fields.

The latest hardship for Indians came on June 22 when the president signed an executive order freezing certain visas, including the H-1B visa for skilled workers, through the end of this year. The stated reason was to protect American jobs during the pandemic, but companies often hire Indian workers for certain high-skilled jobs because there are not enough Americans with the skills to fill them.

Steve Rao, a councilman in Morrisville near Research Triangle Park, said Trump’s executive order, “Will hurt our state and country economically and will lead to a brain drain, of the best and brightest minds in our nation going elsewhere to start companies.”

The freeze will not expel Indian workers already in the U.S., but it restricts their ability to go home to visit family, especially when a relative in India is ill. Some who were out of the U.S. at the time of the order can’t get back in.

Hemant, a 39-year-old Indian senior software developer who asked that his last name not be used, said the new complication with visas is part of his long frustration with the U.S. immigration system. He has lived in North Carolina for 15 years and is still on an H-1B visa that has been repeatedly renewed. In 2011, he applied for a green card, officially a permanent resident card, that would allow him to work in the U.S. without a time limit. He is still waiting.

There are caps by nation on green cards and because so many Indians have applied it can take several decades for Indians to gain permanent residency. Hemant, who lives in Cary with his Indian-born wife and their 2-year-old son, would like to become a U.S. citizen. But first he must live in the U.S. for five years – with a green card.

“This is the whole misery, especially for skill-based immigrants,” he said. “They don’t just come here. They are invited by the employers. But when you land here, you realize, ‘What did I do?’ I don’t want to be a second-class citizen all my life.”

Business leaders also worry about how the Kafkaesque U.S. immigration system is discouraging skilled workers from coming to the U.S. Chuck Robbins, the CEO of Cisco Systems, a major Research Triangle Park company, recently said Trump’s visa freeze should be called the “Canadian Jobs Creation Act.”

Murali Bashyam, a managing partner of the Bashyam Shah Immigration Law Group in Raleigh, frequently fields calls from companies trying to get employees into the U.S. or seeking to keep them here. He said legal immigrants are caught up in an antiquated immigration system and efforts to reform it are derailed by disagreements over illegal immigration. Rather than wait for a comprehensive immigration reform, he said, Congress should pass smaller fixes, such as changing the country cap on green cards.

“The U.S. immigration system is so old and the world has changed since then,” he said. “We should upgrade because we do want to retain foreign professional workers.”

Hemant, captured within a broken system, may be one of those the nation could lose.

“It’s ironic,” he said, “because (the U.S.) has been a beacon of liberty, but the reality is much different, especially for people from India.”

This story was originally published July 12, 2020 at 12:00 AM.