For Indian Immigrants, the Path to American Dream Has Never Been Easy

The recent decision to temporarily halt student visa appointments should come as no surprise, writes Murali Kamma.

"The US has come a long way over the last century. It is nevertheless striking how the past hostility towards immigration, especially immigration from the ‘wrong’ countries, has found echoes in the present," writes Murali Kamma.

(Photo Courtesy: Murali Kamman/Altered by The Quint)

The 2020s in the US bear little resemblance to the 1920s. The Harding-Coolidge era—commonly known as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties—was marked by deep racism, reminding one of the Ku Klux Klan, eugenics, and a highly restrictive immigration bill.

The Rising Tide of Color, which warned about ‘the threat against white world-supremacy’, was so influential that its author Lothrop Stoddard even gets a mention in The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel from 1925. Tom, a character in the novel, says, “Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it.” His white supremacist views were widely shared back then.

The US, thankfully, has come a long, long way over the last century. It is nevertheless striking how the past hostility towards immigration, especially immigration from the ‘wrong’ countries, has found echoes in the present. And it’s happening not just in America. 

Western democracies have been so unsettled that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently vowed to end the “failed experiment in open borders”, even though his nation saw a 50 percent drop in net migration last year.

“Every area of the immigration system—work, family, and study—will be tightened up so we have more control,” he declared.

That sums up what’s already happening in the US, which is led by a party that’s aligned with the Conservatives rather than Starmer’s Labour Party. These days, populism appeals to both sides of the Left-Right divide.

Indians Have a Lot to Lose Under Trump Administration

Indian students in the US today find themselves in a transformed country. They form the largest cohort of international students, and many are having second thoughts about their decision to come to America. The same could be said about other Indians on non-immigrant visas.

Would these students have taken out loans, and spent so much money, if they’d known what was at stake?

In the run-up to the 2024 US election, an intense focus on undocumented migrants deflected attention from what Donald Trump and MAGA really wanted: a drastic reduction in overall immigration. That explains why they’re cracking down on ‘foreigners’ and asking people to ‘self-deport’—an ugly nonword that doesn’t make sense because it’s contradictory. You can’t deport yourself.

Using flimsy reasons to cancel visas, deporting people without due process, and aggressively questioning the legitimacy of green cards, might seem like bait-and-switch to those who entered the US before this year. Did they make a mistake?

The Trump administration may end OPT (Optional Practical Training) for international students, and there are bound to be other changes. The recent decision to temporarily halt student visa appointments should come as no surprise.

Indians have a lot to lose, and not just students. The largest group of H1-B workers is also from India; then there are all those undocumented migrants living fearfully in the shadows.

The Right Kind of Immigrants Are Welcome

The “browning of America” comment mentioned earlier was prompted by a remarkable development. For the first time, white Afrikaners have been let into the US as refugees. Their claim of discrimination in formerly segregated South Africa, which has a law-and-order problem, was dubious at best.

Trump’s conspicuous welcome mat for them was telling—given that he’d already suspended the refugee resettlement program, which has affected tens of thousands of approved refugees, including Afghans who’d risked their lives to help US soldiers.

Immigrants, it seems, are still welcome as long as they’re the right kind. This is not new, obviously. India was a part of the Asiatic Barred Zone for 35 years. That ended in 1952, but the national origins quota system, which shut out Asians and other non-whites, wasn’t abolished until 1965.

It was the culmination of a long battle that actually began in the late 19th century. Chinese immigrants became the first group to be barred from the US because of their race. Following an arduous battle, they won the right for equal protection under the law regardless of race, and it was also because of a Chinese worker that immigrants won the right to citizenship for children born in the US. That privilege could be overturned if Trump 2.0 has its way.

'The Least Desirable Race of Immigrants...'

Until the early years of the 20th century, Indian immigrants didn’t attract much attention. But when they did, the reception was hostile. In 1911, the year of the Delhi Durbar, the US Immigration Commission called Indians “the least desirable race of immigrants admitted thus far.” In a well-publicised case, Bhagat Singh Thind, who fought for the US in World War I, couldn’t become an American. Not once, but twice, and he was denaturalised both times. 

Bhagat Singh Thind.

Murali Kamma

On the second occasion, when Thind’s citizenship was revoked because he wasn’t seen as ‘white’, he became a test case.

Consequently, according to one estimate, more than 70 naturalised Indians were stripped of their citizenship between 1923 and 1926, making them the first immigrant group to be uniformly denaturalised.

The impact was devastating. Ownership of property was tied to US citizenship, which meant that Indians lost their land, businesses, and livelihood. In one tragic case, Vaishno Das Bagai died by suicide after losing his house and store, leaving behind a widow and three young children. Thind, who married an American woman, had a happier ending, although his battle wasn’t easy. He became a US citizen in 1935.

For non-whites, it took another 30 years for the barriers to fall. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 truly changed America. But while we should be grateful for the anti-discriminatory legislation of the mid-1960s (which includes the Civil Rights Act of 1964), it’s worth remembering that those who supported the immigration bill didn’t anticipate the sweeping changes. They couldn’t have, of course, because the nation then was very different.  

Representative Emanuel Celler, a co-sponsor of the 1965 bill (also called the Hart-Celler Act), argued that the number of Asian and African immigrants wouldn’t be high, because not enough of them would be able to compete and qualify for entry. He added, “Since the people of Africa and Asia have very few relatives here, comparatively few could immigrate from those countries because they have no family ties in the US.” 

He couldn’t have been more mistaken. For over two decades now, Asian Americans have been the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group.

The 1965 bill’s Family Reunification category, which was supposed to favour Europeans, has benefitted Asians more than any other group. The ‘ethnic mix’, which Senator Edward Kennedy claimed wouldn’t ‘be upset’, did change.

A Culture War With MAGA

So, to fully understand Trump 2.0’s policies, we should also consider the impact of this immigration bill, whose 60th anniversary we mark this year. For MAGA, what’s unfolding now is a legitimate culture war against a ‘liberal’ establishment that has foisted upon them a country they don’t recognise, making them feel like ‘strangers in their own land’, as the title of a book puts it. There’s a lot else going on, for sure, but demographic change remains a key factor. 

Indian Americans have thrived as a community. We can’t deny it, and the US gets credit for making that success possible. However, we shouldn’t forget another fact that’s also undeniable.

For non-whites like Indians, who also happen to be from a region that’s not predominantly Christian, the path to the American Dream has long been steep. The challenges will continue, even as there is progress—and the current period is a stark reminder of that dichotomy.  

For Chinese observers, 2025 came not as a surprise but as a shocking reminder. Within a few weeks of Trump’s inauguration, as a blizzard of executive orders unleashed chaos and confusion, and the Elon Musk-led DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) began a full-scale assault on the civil service—sometimes gleefully, often callously—the Chinese wondered if a Cultural Revolution was underway in America.

They were right. DOGE had little to do with improving efficiency, and a lot to do with waging a war on ‘liberal’ America. Not only were the savings vastly exaggerated, but Trump’s pending ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ has been dubbed a Debt Bomb.

The relentless attacks on academia and other liberal institutions won’t stop. Despite big differences, they’re indeed reminiscent of Mao’s brutal, decade-long Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which devastated China and traumatised the Chinese for years. One only has to remember some past statements attributed to budget director Russell Vought (“We want to put them in trauma”), JD Vance (“The professors are the enemy”), and Donald Trump (The press is “truly the enemy of the people”). These chilling remarks could be straight out of Mao’s playbook. 

In 2015, when America marked the 50th anniversary of the Immigration and Nationality Act, Barack Obama, the nation’s first non-white president, was still in office, and the White House hosted a special swearing-in ceremony for newly naturalised citizens. Oddly enough, that was the year Trump decided to enter the 2016 presidential race, which he ended up winning. 

Will the White House, during Trump’s current presidency, host a citizenship swearing-in ceremony with white Afrikaners in attendance? It remains to be seen. The point about accepting them as refugees, after rescinding the program for refugees who’d already been approved, is not that Trump thinks it will make a difference demographically. It won’t, even if the entire Afrikaner population is allowed to move to the US.

Trump’s gesture was symbolic, and his MAGA supporters know that. They like Trump because he understands their anxieties and concerns. It’s the same with the anti-DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) crusade. That fight may be more serious, but the symbolism is just as important. The MAGA movement has a vision of the nation that Trump is trying to uphold.

How will Trump 2.0’s Cultural Revolution end? It’s hard to predict at this time. But what’s clear is that the window for this revolution is narrower, and the resistance they face won’t disappear. I turn again to The Great Gatsby for a well-known quote. Towards the end of the novel, the narrator says, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...” 

(Murali Kamma is a managing editor and writer based in Atlanta, Georgia. This is an opinion article, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)