The Dreamers Act is a bill passed in 2021 by the House of Representatives in a vote of 298-197.
“The bill would provide conditional permanent resident status for ten years to dreamers, deferred enforced departure (DED), temporary protected status (TPS), and children of non-immigrant visa holders who may age out of status,” says Brent Renison, an immigration attorney in Portland, Oregon. This means that the Bill not only gives dreamers the security of legal citizenship in the US, it also extends that courtesy to immigrants that have come here on employment-based visas such as the popular H1B visa.
“It has affected…employment categories, mostly, people born in India or China,” says Renison.
Over the past decade or so, a lot of families have moved here from India on TPS or temporary protected status-based visas. However, their priority dates for permanent residency have moved excruciatingly slowly. Parents who brought their kids when they were in elementary school, started aging out (above 21), and the kids were forced to either go back to India or apply for an F1 or student visa, which posed its own restrictions and challenges.
The 2021 Dreamers Act or HR6, helps such families that came here on H1B, LR, or E visa from the green card backlog and puts them on the path for citizenship. If a family comes into the States with a child that is 18 years or younger and applies for an LPR then, they are on the right track to gain the security of becoming a legal citizen.
The HR6 dream and promise act provides a safety net for such families and gives them a direct path to citizenship. This is not only beneficial for individuals and families but will also have a positive impact on the economy says, Joseph Villela, director of policy and advocacy for CHIRLA: “Based on a survey, 78% of them indicated that they got their first job because of the change of status, 45% reported an increase in earnings.” 50% of the DACA beneficiaries who were surveyed also opened a bank account and 23% received their first credit card. This survey shows the various significantly positive effects change in status has on the American economy and boosting its GDP.
While DACA provided temporary relief to a lot of young adults, the 2021 Dream and Promise Act is especially comforting to the millions of undocumented citizens who lost their status or risked it during the Trump administration. “This bill gives time,” says Patrice Lawrence, the Co-Director for the UndocuBlack Network. The bill provides the temporary security of time (three years) for TPS and DED holders, and for dreamers and undocumented citizens, to adjust their status.
During this time of hoping and fighting for the rights of dreamers, undocumented citizens, TPS, and DED holders, it is important that the media focus on humanizing individual stories rather than confining people to survey numbers or certain categories. The speakers at the EMS briefing on April 9th all stated the importance of showing stories that humanize and show the realities of immigrants in the media whilst also understanding the positive contributions they make to American society.
Theresa Cardinal Brown, Bipartisan Policy Center’s Managing Director of Immigration and Cross-border Policy, stated that public opinion is especially important in local districts and states as Congress members will look specifically at those pollings. It is most effective to advocate for the rights of these individuals through constituent calls, local papers, hearsay, etc. in each district. It’s important to broaden advocacy to every state and location.
José Alonso Munoz, the National Communications Manager for United We Dream highlighted the importance to recognise and separate the political aspect and from the humanity of people that are fighting for their rights every day. All the speakers agreed that humanizing individual stories and highlighting their realities as a media platform, actively participating, and standing up for such individuals, are both extremely effective ways in which public opinion matters and will always matter in this fight.
“We need to overhaul the system” concludes Joseph Villela, director of policy and advocacy for CHIRLA.
Ravi Ragbir, co-founder of the New Sanctuary Coalition, is a Trinidadian immigrant with a criminal conviction who has been fighting his own deportation since 2006. He says the existing immigration policy with its origins in the Chinese Exclusionary Act is extremely racist, and should be totally repealed.
Ragbir claims that even though the Biden administration wants to stop deportations, an enforcement agency like ICE has the unchecked authority and power to continue doing so.
Under Trump says Ragbir, ICE terrorized immigrant communities and families to force them to ‘self deport’. Many immigrants who lost Temporary Protected Status (TPS) were forced to flee to Canada. Ragbir himself was publicly bound by ICE agents and detained for deportation, to make an example of him. Though he won his challenge, ICE continues to surveil him and target over thousand immigration leaders and advocates in a ‘campaign of terror.’
Ragbir shared his story at an ethnic media briefing on January 29, in which immigration experts reviewed President Biden’s Immigration Bill, which was sent to Congress on January 20.
After four years of cruelty and chaos, said Frank Sharry, Founder and Executive Director of America’s Voice, during which the Trump administration weaponized an already dysfunctional immigration system, the country now has a President and slight majority in Congress that is pro-immigrant.
So realistically, what we can expect from this progressive, pro-immigrant movement, said Sharry, is a plan for an immigration system that is fair, humane and functional. It’s goal will be to undo the cruelty inflicted on immigrants and refugees in recent years, and to pass transformative legislation that puts undocumented immigrants on a path to citizenship.
The Biden Immigration Proposal
According to Sharry, the Biden administration hit the road running on immigration.
In his first week, Biden signed six executive orders, issued two DHS memos to change immigration policy ,and introduced a sweeping legislative proposal.
The Bill ended the Muslim and African bans, ordered the reinstatement of DACA, stopped border wall construction, and imposed a 100-day moratorium on most deportations (though a judge in Texas has issued a temporary restraining order to thwart one of Biden’s key immigration priorities).
The proposed agenda winds down the MPP program which left thousands stranded in Mexico after being denied the right to apply for asylum, extended DED (Deferred Enforced Departure) for about 4000 Liberians, and offers guidelines to restrict the number of people at priority for arrest under immigration law.
It also has ended efforts by the Trump administration to remove undocumented immigrants from the Census count, for its use in determining congressional seats.
However, warned Sharry, Biden’s immigration bill faces a difficult path in Senate. It’s unlikely that a sweeping immigration bill will find bi-partisan support, but he pointed out that bills processed under budget reconciliation could pass through Congress by a simple majority of 51 votes.
The Biden administration is pushing the immigration issue said Sharry, because the pro-immigrant movement in the country has shifted the debate over immigration, due to activists who have reimagined how the rules around immigration – on deportation for example – need to be enforced.
“We have to give credit to the people who have been organizing from the ground up for the last 20 years,” he noted, because advocates of the immigrant rights movement have “shifted the center of the debate and made what once seemed a little radical seem common sense. “
“The public is way out in front of the politicians on this one, remarked Sharry, adding that “How this plays out politically, is that the wind is at the backs of the Biden administration.”
Public opinion has shifted in favor of immigrants, even though “Trump demonized immigrants and made it his signature issue,” stated Sharry.
It forced the public to think about immigration when friends and community members were subjected to deportation, families were being separated, and toddlers were ripped away from moms and dads at the border. The wedge issue of immigration began losing its edge.
Instead, Trump’s nativism backfired with the majority of Americans, remarked Sharry.
His view was echoed by John Yang of AAJC, a DC-based civil rights organization, who added that the American public believes in a more inclusive America. He urged the need to find ways to engage with the small segment that fears the browning of America. Ragbir added that regular citizens living amidst the trauma of job loss and the pandemic, now realize how challenging life is for non-citizens.
“It really is a racial justice bill,” said John Yang, President and Executive Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), referring to Biden’s US Citizenship Act. The new bill is important to Asian Americans, because their story “isn’t quite part of the narrative” on immigration but legislation will affect Asian Americans in a very significant way
According to AAJC, current immigration patterns show that close to 40%of all immigrants come from Asia. It’s predicted that by 2055 the largest group of immigrants will be Asian American. So the pathways to citizenship offered by the US Citizenship Act is an “exciting” drive toward ‘racial equity’ said Yang, likening it to the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) which was part of a whole civil rights legislation.
The 11 million undocumented includes almost 1.7 million Asians, about 120 thousand of whom are eligible for DACA and 15 thousand (specifically Nepalese), who qualify for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
It also includes the Reuniting Families Act which focuses on family immigration, explained Yang. Its inclusion is a victory for Asian American advocates who have fought to protect families, a cornerstone issue of Asian American immigration.
Approximately 70% immigrate to the US via this provision while only a small minority come to the US on H-1B, high tech or STEM work visas, Yang clarified. The majority of Asian Americans, like immigrants before them, he added, have come here to make better lives because they believe in American values, and want to contribute to society.
What the US Citizenship Act does for families
The US Citizenship Act adds green cards to clear the long backlog (almost 20 years for certain countries) and reunite families. It also reduces the backlog for employment based visas like the H-1B and H-4 for families stuck on temporary status, and protects children who fall out of status when they turn 21. (Read about the H-4EAD visa here)
Families on temporary status are allowed to remain in the US while they await permanent residency and family unity waivers are provided so families can sponsor their family members. The bill also promotes diversity, covering LGBTQ equality, orphans, and foreign veterans who fought alongside Americans, among other provisions.
Significantly, the bill includes legislation that will make it harder for a future president to reinstate these bans by a simple executive order.
Immigration attorney Cyrus Mehta explained that the current immigration law is ‘woefully inadequate’ with respect to legal immigration and skilled immigrants. Not enough green cards are allotted to employment based categories and investor categories based on country of birth, he said. It will take an Indian H1-B visa holder several decades before they can receive green cards, while employers have to wait years for a skilled worker to get permanent residency.
The bill attempts he said, to recapture visas that haven’t been used, in order to help reduce backlogs. Employment and business reforms also include a 60-day freeze on artificial wage increases for H-1B visas that impact employers sponsoring highly skilled workers.
The Public Charge Rule
One of most contentious immigration issues under the Trump administration was the Public Charge Rule which was implemented in a way to slow the demographic shift in the country. It administered an immigrant wealth test and assessed the use of public benefits such as healthcare, housing or nutrition, to deny people their green card.
It meant that In the middle of a pandemic, people were afraid to get healthcare, tests or vaccines, for fear of falling foul of the system.
According to Mariaelena Hincapié, Executive Director of the National Immigration Law Center, the Biden administration will begin the process of undoing the Public Charge rule, but would need to launch a robust community outreach and education program to regain the trust of immigrant families and encourage them to seek the help they need.
Immigrants need to be fully included in the Biden administration’s agenda, added Hincapié, to ensure that inclusion and equity are at the core in every federal department. Labor, Education, Health and Human Services, and the Covid Task Force, for example, should closely look “at how their policies impact immigrants in this country.”
Given what immigrants and the country have been through, said Hincapie, the last four years have felt nothing less than a war on immigrant families. But from day one, the Biden/Harris administration has shown a strong commitment to unequivocally centering immigrants in the narrative and to undoing the harm of the past.
“Today we are so hopeful,” said Hincapié, that the new administration will collectively build a twenty first century immigration system “that is truly grounded in racial, economic and gender justice.”
Meera Kymal is the Contributing Editor at India Currents
Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash
The incoming Biden-Harris administration has an opportunity to immediately revoke implementation of the public charge rule, easing anxiety for millions of immigrants who have denied themselves federal benefits over the past three years for fear of losing their ability to upgrade their immigration status.
“Public charge will be a front-burner issue for the new administration because it is so entwined with our current public health crisis and connected to the pandemic,” said Daniel Sharp, chief of the Office of Immigrant Affairs in Los Angeles County’s Department of Consumer and Business Affairs. “We do expect the new administration to prioritize the issue,” he said in an interview with EMS, noting that President-elect Joe Biden had committed to ending the rule while campaigning for office.
If Democrats take back the Senate with the Jan. 5 Georgia run-off election, the incoming Congress has an opportunity to permanently remove public charge from the immigration code, said Sharp. He noted that if it is not permanently removed, a future administration could once again implement the rule, which has had an enormously chilling impact on immigrants even before it was formally rolled out by the outgoing Trump administration.
“It is going to take a multi-year effort to undo the harm that this rule change has set in,” he said.
The public charge rule, which was introduced with the Immigration Act of 1882, is a means test used to determine ineligibility for immigration or residency status. The seldom-used rule can be used by consulates abroad to determine whether an applicant could ever become completely dependent on public benefits; and by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to deny a green card to those unable to essentially pass a wealth test. Factors such as age, the ability to speak English, and future earning capabilities are used as determinants of whether or not to grant a visa or green card.
USCIS can deny a green card to immigrants who have ever used Supplemental Security Income; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; general assistance cash benefits (welfare); Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly called food stamps); Section 8 Housing or Rental Assistance; or federally funded Medicaid.
Public charge is not invoked during the naturalization process.
Critics of the rule have called it a “cruel wealth test,” used to keep poor immigrants out of the U.S. In the early 1900s, the rule was frequently invoked to bar immigrants from the developing world for permanent residency in the U.S. In more recent years, the rule has been less frequently invoked: prior to 2019, less than one percent of all immigration cases were denied based on the public charge rule.
Currently, more than 10.3 million immigrants use some form of federal benefits.
Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, noted that when President Donald Trump hinted in 2017 that he was going to implement the little-used rule, “the news spread like wildfire in the immigrant community.”
Even before the rule was finalized in August 2019, immigrants began denying themselves federal benefits, including school lunch programs, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which are not considered in public charge determinations; immigrants nonetheless dis-enrolled their children from the benefits, fearing possible impact to their immigration status.
Kulkarni referred to data from Health Affairs which reported that 260,000 immigrant children had been dis-enrolled by their families from receiving Medicaid since 2018 and 70,000 children were no longer enrolled in SNAP.
A paper published by the Journal of Pediatrics in December noted the severe impact of the public charge rule on children. “By tying the use of vital public health programs to immigration and residency status, the Administration is forcing a choice between seeking critical services or securing status in the United Status,” said the authors of the study: Nina Patel, Swapna Reddy, and Natalia Wilson of Arizona State University. They described the rule as impacting the most vulnerable children in the nation.
“Current anti-immigrant sentiment, rhetoric, and policy changes, such as the public charge rule, have resulted in a culture of fear, misinformation, distrust, and isolation, all of which have health implications,” noted Patel, Reddy, and Wilson.
Despite the current uncertain future of the rule, Kulkarni encouraged immigrants to avail of federal benefits, especially during the pandemic. “It is so important for all of us to stay as safe and as healthy as possible at this time, when we are living under the greatest public health crisis of our lifetime.”
“People should not go without meals, COVID-testing and care, and housing benefits,” she said, noting that the Biden Administration is likely to take a “180-degree turn” to remove the rule.
Sharp noted that immigrants in California also began dis-enrolling from Medical, a state-funded program, for fear of losing their immigration status. “People were confused,” he said, adding also that students dropped their applications for federal scholarship programs, which are not considered in public charge determinations. Benefits were also dropped by U.S. citizen children living in mixed-status families with undocumented parents or siblings.
At the start of the pandemic, Sharp’s office began receiving a record number of calls from immigrants who were concerned about accessing benefits. “The people most impacted by the pandemic were not applying for public benefits,” he said.
Sharp characterized it as a “double whammy.” Undocumented people, despite being gainfully employed with deductions taken out of their paychecks, did not qualify for unemployment insurance benefits, and they were not accessing benefits for which they were qualified to receive, he said.
The public charge rule is written so as not to be invoked during a national crisis, but immigrants have little understanding about the nuances of the rule, said Sharp. National election results, which brought Biden to office, held out a glimmer of hope for immigrants “that better times are ahead in the near future,” he said, but added: “We have been down this road before. There have been so many moments of on again, off again in this tennis match of implementation.”
After the final rule was rolled out in August 2019, it was immediately blocked by several lower courts.
On Jan. 27, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the administration’s Public Charge: New Ethical Considerations for Adjustment Cases and allowed public charge to be implemented nationwide beginning Feb. 24, just as the COVID pandemic began to take force in the U.S.
On Nov. 2, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked public charge in the Cook County v. Wolf case. Amy Coney Barrett, now a Supreme Court Justice, wrote the dissenting opinion, siding with the Trump Administration’s theory that immigrants must be able to prove self-sufficiency. That case will now be heard by a full panel in the 7th Circuit. Meanwhile, immigrants in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin must continue to file the I-944 form, a declaration of self-sufficiency, with their adjustment of status applications.
On Dec. 2, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in the City and County of San Francisco v. USCIS case, blocked the rule from being implemented in 15 states, including California.
Kulkarni said it is highly unlikely that the incoming administration will appeal the Ninth Circuit ruling. Consulates abroad have been blocked from implementing the public charge rule since July.
In the run up to the election, the Trump administration has doubled down on immigration, taking another swipe at the H-1B visa program to boost its America First platform. That means US companies, which have long relied on the H-1B visa to hire highly skilled immigrant workers, will find it even more difficult and expensive to bolster their workforce with qualified foreign hires.
Anupama Nayar
At Ismael Leyva Architects (ILA) in New York, HR Manager Anupama Nayar has been processing the H-1B applications of new recruits sponsored by her company, for the last six years. “These graduates from top tier STEM programs at US campuses already have degrees from storied universities in their home country,” says Nayar. “Some also bring 1 to 2 years of work experience and cutting edge skills – like knowledge of Revit, a building design software – that make them valuable contributors to ILA.”
A Brookings Institute study supports her view. “More than half (56 %) of the world’s engineering bachelor’s degrees are earned in Asia, compared to just 4 % in the United States.” It found that US employers have “significant difficulty in finding resident workers to fill STEM and other specialty occupations,” because the US educational system is unable to supply enough highly skilled resident workers that will keep American companies globally competitive.
What gives the US an advantage is its status as the global hub of academic training – in 2020 over one million international students made up 5.5% in higher education enrollment. So US companies seeking highly skilled members, especially in the metropolises, have a wealth of talent within their reach to help bridge that gap.
At ILA, a small Manhattan-based architectural firm, Nayar fills the requirement for skilled workers by hiring masters graduates from universities like Columbia, Cornell and Pratt, to bolster its roster of highly skilled employees. Several of the new hires are qualified foreign students.
“The majority of the H-1B visas we sponsor are for students from India, China and South Korea,” says Nayar. Since 2014, ILA has sponsored up to ten applications a year through the H-1B lottery system. Once candidates and their petitions are approved, usually 5 to 6 employees receive their H-1B, a visa that’s valid for three years with a three year extension.
Nayar says every job she lists attracts almost 60% of applicants from highly qualified foreign graduates from top architecture schools; but with the pandemic and the economic downturn, hiring has slowed down. But since 2017, changes to immigration law have starkly reduced the number of H-1B visas that ILA sponsors.
“In the last 3 years it’s been difficult keeping up with immigration changes. We are reducing sponsorship because of high costs, time, increased scrutiny on petitions, and recent immigration complexities,” says Nayar. Last year she processed only three H-1B applications for ILA and received just one H-1B approval. Her company still sponsors green cards but as evolving USCIS policies create green card quota backlogs – ILA has reduced the number of permanent resident sponsorships.
Immigration wait times for Indians have more than doubled. Now, Indian-origin employees could wait a lifetime (more than 50 years) to get their green cards, the next step to the path on citizenship.
“It’s worth investing in talented employees, but the high cost of fees and sponsorships that accompany the H-1B process,” says Nayar, “makes it more difficult.”
Behind this shift is a Trump directive issued in June to ‘put American workers first’ by suspending several job-related nonimmigrant visas, including “H-1Bs, H-2Bs without a nexus to the food-supply chain, certain H-4s, as well as Ls and certain Js.”
The directive to “restore American greatness” aims at preserving jobs for American citizens in the economic recovery from the coronavirus. The Department of Labor (DOL), tightened regulations on H-1B visas by forcing companies to pay substantially higher wages to hire foreign recruits, and justified the wage increase by claiming that H-1B migrants displace native‐born American workers and reduce wages of native‐born Americans.
That move “has essentially shut down the legal immigration system,” said Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute, at an Ethnic Media services briefing on October 30. Nowrasteh, the Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, called the rise in H-1B minimum wage levels “enormously destructive.” It will force H-1B workers to find new jobs or leave the US, and deny businesses the opportunity to invest in new talent by making them unaffordable.
He pointed out that the wage increase was based on “incomparable datasets” from old economic research and will in the long term, “reduce legal immigration to the US.”
The reforms are proving to be an effective deterrent. The H-1B lottery based system is being replaced by salary-based selection and increases in wage levels. They require companies to pay high skilled workers at the 95 percentile of their profession’s category, up from the 65 percentile.
“If an employer has to pay a new hire with little or no work experience the same as employees with several years experience, foreign students become too expensive to hire. If a salary range is $50 to $60 thousand, and the new proposed wage pitches it at $80 to $90 thousand, it becomes a tough decision to hire a foreign skilled worker.”
“So of course, there’s no way we will do that,” states Nayar.
However, the idea that immigrants are taking away jobs from Americans is a myth, reports the George W. Bush Policy Institute. Rather than taking America jobs, “72% of 7.6% of immigrants were self-employed compared to 5.6% of native-born Americans and they founded more than 40% of Fortune 500 companies.” Immigrants have been responsible for half the labor force growth over the last decade and immigrant-owned businesses tend to have an average of 11 employees. In fact, Nayar’s own company ILA, was founded by an immigrant who strongly believes in giving opportunity to talented immigrants.
That sentiment, however, will not inform the immigration policies of a second Trump term. Civil rights advocates at the briefing reiterated that bans to protect the American labor market and prevent job losses caused by the virus, are likely to stay in place if Trump is re-elected; 14th Amendment protections on citizenship and naturalization could also be under attack, warned Ali Noorani, President & CEO of the National Immigration Forum.
“If we see a second term, there will be a steady stream of executive orders or even litigation to chip away at those rights.”
Noorani recommended that immigration advocates pursue opportunities to build coalitions with policy makers both conservative and moderate, to support constructive immigration reform.
Or, in a second term, the administration is likely to continue its war on immigrants.
Meera Kymal is the contributing editor at India Currents
And my brother who listened to Glen Miller and found his Soul
I came to breathe your air
Eat the salt of your earth
And build great buildings in praise of all you were to me
But you have presented me with your soul-less landscape
Your form-letters your form-experiences and your form-civilization
You have presented me only with people
Whose hearts are lost on your highways
And your abysmal wheels of progress
You have forgotten the helplessness of burning children
In your flash-fire experiences
Of Opulence, TV Westerns and Dow Jones
You only serve to numb me now, America
Till I will also begin to chant
Like a new being whose father is forgotten
‘Think of the starving millions of India
My act of contrition will put another man on the Moon’
One day I will unknowingly be speaking in this strange idiom
And somewhere in the dimming recesses of my memories
A flickering fire will finally die
And I who was so close to starvation and death
Will think only with revulsion and fear
And not sorrow
Of dirt, flies and men
Lying dead from thirst in parched fields
And stop eating candy to save my soul
Sahadev Chirayath wrote this poem in May of 1978 and lives in Buffalo, New York now. He is a Structural Engineer and has spent time with Engineers without Borders in Andhra Pradesh.
Just days before a massive filing fee increase was set to go into effect for naturalization applications, and before a first-in-history fee for asylum applications was to be imposed, a federal judge granted a nationwide temporary reprieve. See the 35-page order here.
The Trump administration sought to increase the filing fees for naturalization by over 80% , eliminate most fee waivers for low-income immigrants, and create new financial barriers for immigrants seeking asylum protection in the U.S. The fee increases, which USCIS claims are necessary to subsidize the fiscally-challenged agency, were originally scheduled to go into effect on October 2, 2020.
Federal Judge Rules that Fee Increase Will Endanger Vulnerable Immigrants
On September 29, 2020, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White of the Northern District of California, appointed by George W. Bush, ruled that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on some of their claims, and wrote:
“The public interest would be served by enjoining or staying the effective date of the Final Rule because if it takes effect, it will prevent vulnerable and low-income applicants from applying for immigrant benefits, will block access to humanitarian protections, and will expose those populations to further danger.”
The plaintiffs, which included several non-profit organizations which serve the immigrant community, also argued that defendant Chad Wolf, Acting Secretary of U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was improperly appointed, and therefore his actions, such as proposed fee increases, are unlawful.
Plaintiffs also made the case that the USCIS fee rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs federal agencies.
The Department of Homeland Security is expected to appeal.
Immigrant Rights Groups Applaud the Ruling
One of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, issued the following statement on the court’s order:
“USCIS’ Fee Rule is unlawful and incredibly destructive, and we applaud the court’s decision to protect millions of immigrants and their families.
The Rule, which disproportionately harms people of color, is a blatant attempt by the Trump administration to create financial barriers for asylum seekers, families, and would-be citizens in order to prevent them from obtaining United States residence or U.S. citizenship.
This is immoral, classist and a blatant violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The injunction will ensure that millions of low income immigrants, applicants for naturalization, asylum seekers, survivors of domestic violence and survivors of human trafficking will be able to affordably apply for the immigration benefits they are eligible for.”
What This Means for Immigrants Seeking Benefits
Until further notice, applicants will not be subjected to the fee increases as outlined in the regulation. It is expected that USCIS will issue an update regarding the impact on the order on new editions on forms that were to be implemented on October 2, as part of the fee increase.
Monitor this issue closely and refer to the USCIS website for updates.
Richard Hermanis a lawyer without borders. A nationally renowned immigration lawyer, author and activist, he has dedicated his life to advocating for immigrants and helping change the conversation on immigration. He is the founder of the Herman Legal Group, an immigration law firm launched in 1995 and recognized in U.S. World News & Report’s “Best Law Firms in America.” He is the co-author of the acclaimed book, Immigrant, Inc. —Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy (John Wiley & Sons, 2009). Richard’s poignant commentary has been sought out by many national media outlets, including TheNew York Times, USA Today, BusinessWeek, Forbes, FOX News (The O’Reilly Factor), National Public Radio, Inc., National Lawyers Weekly, PC World, Computerworld, CIO, TechCrunch, Washington Times, San Francisco Chronicle and InformationWeek.
If you are eligible for naturalization, or some other immigration benefits, now is the time to apply!
After concluding their biennial review of fee collections last month, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced a significant increase in filing fees for many applicants. The USCIS fee increase, as given in the Final rule document, will take effect from Oct 2, 2020.
The average weighted fee increase is 20%.
For the first time in U.S. history, USCIS has also introduced a fee for asylum applications and an elimination of many existing fee waivers.
The N-400 naturalization application fee will increase from $640 to $1160 for online applications and $1170 for paper applications – an 83% increase!
Not only will applicants pay higher N-400 filing fees, but they also will not have the option to apply for a fee reduction ($320), a whopping 266% increase in the filing fee, for those whose income is greater than 150% and less than 200% of the poverty level.
USCIS has also eliminated the N-400 fee waiver for those with income greater than 200% of the poverty level.
Unfortunately, while this may not have been the intention, the effect of these fee increases is to create a wealth test to become an American citizen.
This new fee structure does not correspond to the inflation rate increase in the United States during the two years from the previous assessment. Justifying the increase, the USCIS says that the fee was held below cost in the past and the new fee will reflect the full cost of providing the service.
However, this fee increase does not consider how much of a barrier finances are to immigrants looking to naturalize. Financial and administrative barriers stand in the way of naturalization for 13% of Mexican and 19% other lawful immigrants, according to a 2015 survey, published by Pew Research. Besides the financial burden, the new fee penalizes immigrants who abide by the law and forces them to turn to predatory financing to afford the USCIS fee.
It is a fact that naturalization offers many economic and social benefits to legal immigrants.
Research shows that naturalized citizens have higher employment rates and can earn up to 70% more than non-citizens
Full protection of the U.S. Constitution
Protection from potential deportation
Ability to travel overseas and live outside of the U.S. without fear of abandoning the right to the green card;
Ability to vote and have an impact on elections
Ability to sponsor parents, siblings and married children for permanent residency; and
Ability to work in more U.S. government-related jobs that require security clearances.
Non-Immigrant Workers
In the proposal, USCIS has also proposed to split the I-129 Petition for a Nonimmigrant worker (application cost of $460) into multiple forms, with most forms having a higher fee. For instance, the I-129H2A—Named Beneficiaries application fee will be $850, an 85% increase. The change would apply to all classifications sought through the Form I-129.
Registration of Permanent Residence or Adjustment of Status
The USCIS fee structure will also change for the Form I-485 applicants. An unbundling of filing fees will mean that they will have to pay extra for work authorization (Form I-765) and their travel document (Form I-131). This new structure will result in nearly doubling the fee, which will be $1130 for I-485, $550 for I-765, and $590 for I-131.
Drop in Immigration
These changes come at a time when there has been a significant decrease in legal immigrants admitted to the U.S. According to the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), there was a 7.3% (86,894 people) drop in immigration from FY 2016 to FY 2018, and the majority of the decrease has been in the immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, including children, spouses, and parents, reported Stuart Anderson for Forbes.
Certain countries, including Mexico and China, are over-represented in the declined applicants with a decrease of 7.3% for Mexico and 20% for China, adds Anderson. Numbers in other segments of immigration also indicate the direction taken by the Trump administration:
The annual ceiling for refugees and asylum seekers is set by the President in consultation with Congress. The 30,000 ceiling for FY 2019 was the lowest since the creation of the resettlement program in the 80s, according to Migration Policy. There has also been a marked change in the number of people approved for asylum, with a decrease in 43% from FY 2016 to 31% in FY 2019. The ceiling is at 18,000 for FY 2020, adds the report.
The Need to Reform USCIS
Unlike most government agencies, the USCIS relies on fees for its funds. In FY 2019, the USCIS fee carryover went into the negative for the first time since 2007, and it is expected to reach $1.5 bn this year, says Migration Policy research. The researchers add that a decreasing petition rate and greater processing times are two important factors in the turnaround: a one million drop in petitions in FY 2018 resulted in a $152 million drop in fees, and continued drop in a petition with highest fees in FY 2019 resulted in a $13 million drop. At the same time, money spent on vetting applicants and detecting benefit fraud increased significantly (an increase of $96 million for vetting and $202 million for fraud from FY2016 to FY 2020).
The Bottom Line
These facts and figures clearly indicate a need to change the priorities of the USCIS, so that it can not only support itself but also ensure that it facilitates the people depending on it for swift processing. Unfortunately, the new changes indicate a continuation of policies to make naturalization difficult for lawful immigrants and further increasing the backlog of cases.
This final rule will take effect from Oct. 2, 2020, and will apply to any application postmarked on or after this date. If you have a petition or application to submit, then consider submitting it before the date to avoid the new fees.
Richard Hermanis a lawyer without borders. A nationally renowned immigration lawyer, author and activist, he has dedicated his life to advocating for immigrants and helping change the conversation on immigration. He is the founder of the Herman Legal Group, an immigration law firm launched in 1995 and recognized in U.S. World News & Report’s “Best Law Firms in America.” He is the co-author of the acclaimed book, Immigrant, Inc. —Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy (John Wiley & Sons, 2009). Richard’s poignant commentary has been sought out by many national media outlets, including TheNew York Times, USA Today, BusinessWeek, Forbes, FOX News (The O’Reilly Factor), National Public Radio, Inc., National Lawyers Weekly, PC World, Computerworld, CIO, TechCrunch, Washington Times, San Francisco Chronicle and InformationWeek.
The Trump presidency has made more than 400 changes to US immigration policy since it took office, waging what immigration advocates are calling ‘Trump’s war on immigrants.’
The Trump administration went on the offensive in January 2017, accelerating changes to immigration policy in a series of rapidfire executive actions. A report released by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) in July catalogs more than 400 revisions which have swiftly and ‘dramatically reshaped the U.S. immigration system’ in the last four years.
The sweeping changes impact “everything from border and interior enforcement, to refugee resettlement and the asylum system, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the immigration courts, and vetting and visa processes,” states the report, and places tough restrictions on potential tourists, foreign workers and international students.
Sarah Pierce, Migration Policy Institute
“Many of the changes reflect the administrations’ really strong knowledge of immigration law,” confirmed Sarah Pierce, a policy expert who co-authored the report, at a briefing on immigration system changes hosted by Ethnic Media Services on August 7.
The new regulations reflect the administration’s willingness to enforce technicalities “that have been on books for years,” said Pierce, but have rarely been implemented. Those penalties and restrictions are now being used to restrict immigration into the country, reflecting emerging trends in the administration’s anti-immigration agenda.
What Laws have Changed?
The consensus among immigration experts at the briefing was that the Trump administration has used the current national crises to further their political agenda with executive orders that significantly reduce the flow of legal immigrants into the country.
Ignazia Rodrigues, NILC
Ignazia Rodrigues, immigration policy advocate at the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) described the push to add a citizenship question to the census as an example of the administration’s anti-immigrant policy.
Most of the changes have been implemented by executive fiat without going through Congress, explained Pierce. Acting on the rhetoric that immigration poses a threat to the nation’s security and economy, the administration has doubled down on reducing immigration into the country, driving reform through ‘layered changes’ on a series of regulations, policy and programs.
For example, under a new revision, ICE can enforce a1996 law to levy exorbitant fines of $799 a day on unauthorized immigrants who remain in the country in violation of a removal order.
In another draconian example, the Trump administration has expanded the definition of who fits the Public Charge rule, which bars foreign nationals who receive or are deemed likely to receive public benefits from becoming legal permanent residents. The rule uses the totality of the circumstances test to evaluate a broad set of metrics such as education, English proficiency, income, jobs, health and family size to deny entry to applicants.
As a result, a large number of green card holders are at risk of denial MPI reports, because at least 69% of recent green-card recipients have at least one of the negative factors that could be weighted against them under the regulation. The ruling will disfavor women, the elderly and children, as well as nationals from Central America and Mexico. Findings from MPI also show that immigrants from Africa, Asia, Latin America are less likely to be favored under the new Public Charge rule, said Pierce.
Though these changes may seem like minor technicalities, taken altogether they will have a monumental impact in dismantling and reconstructing the immigration system in the long term, and significantly change the face of U.S. immigration.
The MPI report finds that these critical changes will result in closing off humanitarian benefits, sealing the southern border, creating hurdles for both legal and unauthorized immigrants already in country and reducing legal immigration into the country.
However, the advent of the coronavirus has fueled the administration’s immigration offensive.
“The pandemic has only accelerated the pace of changes this administration has made,” said Pierce, identifying three major changes enforced since the COVID-19 crisis began, and the implication for prospective immigrants.
The administration invoked a 1944 public health law that allows the Surgeon General to restrict the entry of individuals deemed a public health threat, and block people at the US-Mexico border. The order, issued directly from the CDC director Robert Redfield, allows border security to bypass established protocols and expel children and asylum seekers from countries with communicable diseases, effectively ending asylum at the southern border. Human Rights First condemned the CDC order for “ending refugee and child protections at the border indefinitely, endangering rather than saving lives.”
Then, on April 22, President Trump signed a proclamation restricting permanent immigration in order to protect American workers and their jobs. The proclamation and the follow up June 22 proclamation restricting temporary workers, limits the entry of foreign workers (on H1B visas for example) and prospective immigrants applying for employment-based green cards from abroad. It also restricts ‘chain migration’ by temporarily suspending entry for many prospective citizens applying for family-based green cards from other countries. Effectively, citizens and green card holders are prevented from sponsoring family members – parents, siblings, spouses and children – to join them in the US.
Kalpana Peddibhotla, Immigration Attorney
Losing skilled foreign workers would negatively impact innovation and job growth especially in the high tech sector said immigration attorney Kalpana Peddibhotla, as several studies show that “foreign workers in STEM fields are critical to the innovation in the growth of patents,” and “immigrants are twice as likely to start businesses than US born natives.”
However, the restrictions continue unabated. Travel bans still exist for foreign nationals traveling from 31 different countries, said Pierce, and the President recently signed an executive order restricting the ability of federal contractors to hire foreign nationals; the new order also referenced further restrictions proposed in the future for the H1B program.
These orders achieve what the administration has been working towards long before the pandemic began, remarked Pierce. “It’s hard to imagine them walking back any of these restrictions, even after the pandemic is no longer a prevalent issue.”
It’s uncertain whether future administrations would have the time, resources and willingness to reverse the restrictions said Pierce, adding that some reversals would require careful consideration; for example, if restrictions were lifted at the southern border it could result in a surge of unauthorized arrivals.
As the country begins the slow process of recovery from multiple crises – a pandemic, an economic slowdown and racial injustice uprisings, “It’s hard for me to picture a future administration investing this much in immigration,” said Pierce.
However, she pointed out that a future president could easily reverse the original 2017 travel ban which is still in place and expanded in 2020, because it would send “a visible strong signal that the US is changing its tone on immigration.”
It’s important to note that every one of these executive actions have been contested by lawsuits filed against the administration said Peddibhotla. “This is definitely not a great way for us to be governing and managing our immigration process. But it’s incredibly important that the lawsuits continue in order to hold the administration accountable.”
Meera Kymal is a contributing editor at India Currents.
For the next year, my ability to Google will be ensured by the fact that roughly 200,000 people across 50 countries are working from home.
And, I can like your Facebook posts for, well, forever, because Mark Zuckerberg “guesses as much as 50 percent of the company’s 45,000-person workforce could be working entirely remotely in the next five to 10 years.”
These may be private sector decisions. But they impact the public’s understanding of immigrants and immigration. And that leads policymakers to value the Googler much more than the farmworker.
Look, as COVID-19 cases keep growing across California, the state’s tech industry and its nearly 1.8 million workers in 2018 — with over 805,000 of those jobs in San Francisco and San Jose — is doing fine. Their companies are growing, their bottom lines look great.
And, with the exception of those on the sector’s retail or gig front line, most are working from home.
The breathless media coverage leads us to think that this is the new reality for most workers. It is not.
Among U.S. workers, 11 percent are employed in the agricultural and food sectors — almost twice as many as those who work in tech. Of the approximately 22 million full- and part-time jobs in the ag and food sector, about 2.6 million are direct on-farm jobs, and nearly 13 million are jobs in food service, eating and drinking places.
These workers are not earning six-figure salaries. And they definitely are not working from home. (If they are working at all.)
In fact, go about two hours east of the work-from-home Silicon Valley and you find yourself in the hot fields of the Central Valley where more than 250 different crops, with an estimated value of $17 billion per year, are grown. In total, the Valley supplies 8% of U.S. agricultural output (by value) and produces a quarter of the nation’s food, including 40% of our fruits, nuts, and other table foods.
Over 675,000 people work in the agricultural industry up and down the Central Valley.
In California, like across the country, these are the jobs that require workers to go to the “office.” But, for these workers, the office is a field, a farm, or a ranch where something needs to be planted or picked, cared for, or caught.
Everything surrounding these jobs puts people at risk. Sharing a ride to work, close quarters at the workplace, homes that do not afford any modicum of social distancing. As a result, the rate of positive coronavirus tests in the Central Valley could be as high as 17.7% — more than double the 7.8% statewide average over the last seven days.
While California works to get financial and medical resources directly to these agricultural communities, the federal government turns a blind eye. Under the CARES Act, both parents must have Social Security numbers for the family to receive relief. This makes entire families, including U.S. citizen children and spouses, ineligible for much-needed COVID-19 economic assistance.
This is a dynamic playing out in communities across the country. Immigrant families, even those with U.S. citizens among them, are going without any sort of relief.
These are trying times that require all of us to sacrifice. For some, the sacrifice is social distancing and working from home, while raising a family. For others, it is losing your job altogether.
And, for others, it is doing a job that is essential to the health of the country — but detrimental to your own health.
As we approach six months of this national crisis, it is easy to lose perspective and think that our own reality is the reality of others, to believe that our protection from COVID-19 is the same protection others have.
We begin to think COVID-19 is a disease “they” get. “They” did something to put themselves at risk. “They” were not healthy enough to fight off the disease. “They” live somewhere else, do something else.
Well, more than we probably realize, “they” are putting food on our table. And, “they” are most likely to be people of color and/or immigrants.
This lack of perspective leads the nation down a slippery path where economic and social divisions widen, where moral leadership is replaced by transactional leadership, where the bottom line is more important than people.
It’s a dangerous path that leaves the least among us without support — left to fend for themselves without health care or financial relief.
There is still time for the country to get off this path, and for Congress to ensure that all of us can access the relief and support we need.
The fact is that the skilled farmworker, documented or not, putting food on our table is just as, if not more, important to our lives and livelihood as the skilled engineer putting Google on our screens.
To join the poetry reading on Monday August 24th 2020 at 6 pm PST and 9 pm EST, click on this LINK!
The South Asian diaspora is perpetually evolving, breaking new boundaries and forging new connections in every sphere. India Currents presents its second Desi Poetry Reading to discuss how South Asian immigrant communities have changed over the years, as well as attitudes surrounding diversity, multiculturalism and belonging.
This is effort is in collaboration with Matwaala, a South-Asian poetry collaborative designed to provide immigrant and POC writers with a literary platform. In their own words, Matwaala represents “voices that dare to say the unsaid and hear the unheard…voices that break down barriers…voices that dare to be South Asian, American, and simply human.” Since their formation, they have hosted a number of poetry festivals and writing workshops. Most notably, they recently spearheaded Smithsonian’s Beyond Bollywood Project, where they created a Poetry Wall in honor of South Asian writers at the Irving Museum and Archives.
This poetry reading will feature notable writers from various pockets of the South Asian community, including Geetha Sukumaran, Ravi Shankar, Ralph Nazareth, Kirun Kapoor, and youth poet Kanchan Naik. India Currents staff Srishti Prabha and Kanchan Naik will moderate the event, facilitating questions from the audience via email.
To find out more about this event and its panelists, stay tuned for updates on our Facebook and Instagram!
Kanchan Naik is a rising senior at the Quarry Lane School in Dublin, California. Aside from being the Youth Editor at India Currents, she is also the editor-in-chief of her school newspaper The Roar, Teen Poet Laureate of Pleasanton, a Global Student Square editor for Newsroom By the Bay and Director of Media Outreach at nonprofit Break the Outbreak.
On July 31, 2020 the Department of Homeland Security announced an increase to many fees for immigration and naturalization benefit requests. Although most fees are increasing, a $10 discount is offered for online submission where available.
Employment Visa Updates
Employers are understandably concerned about the potential effect the rule has on H-1B, L-1, and other immigrant employees.
For employers with more than 50 employees and more than 50% of those employees in H-1B or L-1 status, a $4,000 fee applies.
The rule expands the Public Law 114-113 fee of $4,000 to both H-1B and L-1 new employment as well as extensions of stay for employers that meet the 50 employees, 50% dependability test. The Public Law fee will apply regardless of whether the fraud fee applies. Extension requests for H-1B, L-1A, and L-1B visas filed by the same petitioner for the same employee or H-1B, L-1A, and L-1B amended petitions were previously exempt from the additional fee.
DHS will now separate the I-129 into forms based on case type and eliminate the current supplements to the I-129 form. This also allows DHS to charge separate fees for each form depending on the classification. DHS states that the current base filing fee of $460 doesn’t accurately capture the costs associated with adjudication since the fee is paid regardless of how many nonimmigrant workers will benefit from the petition or application, the type of worker evaluated, whether an employee is identified, or how long it takes to adjudicate the different nonimmigrant classifications.
The rule updates the filing fees as follows:
Case Type
Current Fee
Final Fee
Change
Percent Change
E-1E-2TN
$460
$695
$235
51 percent
H-1B
$460
$555
$95
21 percent
H-2A (named beneficiaries)
$460
$850
$390
85 percent
H-2B (named beneficiaries)
$460
$715
$255
55 percent
L-1AL-1B
$460
$805
$345
75 percent
O-1
$460
$705
$245
53 percent
H-2A (unnamed beneficiaries)
$460
$415
-$45
-10 percent
H-2B (unnamed beneficiaries)
$460
$385
-$75
-16 percent
Green Card Fee Changes
Children under the age of 14 filing for a green card with their parents were previously able to pay a reduced fee of $750 instead of the $1,140 (plus $85 biometrics fee) currently charged to older applicants. All applicants will pay $1,130 under the new rule.
DHS also chose to separate the filing fees for Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, and Form I-131, Application for Travel Document, when either filed concurrently with Form I-485 or after the Form I-485 has been accepted and is still pending. Current regulations allow individuals to pay the I-485 fee, but also file the I-765 and I-131 without additional fees if filed concurrently.
The rule claims: “Debundling allows individuals to pay for only the services actually requested. Thus, many individuals may not pay the full combined price for Forms I-485, I-131, and I-765.” The newly established fees are as follows:
Form I-131, Application for Travel Document: $590
Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization: $550
Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or adjust Status: $1,130
Individuals applying for work and travel documents along with their permanent residence application will now pay a total of $2,270.
Citizenship Fees
DHS will remove the N-400 fee waiver (Form I-942) and the reduced fee option “in order to recover full cost for naturalization services.” The rule also removes the fee waiver for the N-600, Application for Certificate of Citizenship. However, the removal of fee waivers will reduce the cost of Forms N-600 and N-600K because the increased fee would no longer need to cover the cost of the fee-waived form adjudication.
However, the N-400 would not be afforded the same price decrease as the N-600: DHS raised the naturalization fee an astounding 83% from $640 to $1,170 for the paper-based filing. With the removal of the reduced fee option, naturalization may be financially out of reach for many families.
Premium Processing
Currently, petitioners or applicants can pay $1,440 for certain employment-based petitions to be adjudicated within 15 calendar days. The new rule will change the 15-day calculation from calendar days to business days, while also excluding federal holidays and regional or national office closures due to weather or other causes.
The rule also states that the 15-day period be paused when USCIS issues a notification of approval, denial, RFE, or NOID. The rule would also clarify that a new 15 business day period will begin upon receipt of an RFE or NOID response. If an investigation is opened for fraud or misrepresentation, USCIS can retain the fee and not reach a conclusion to the request within 15 days.
The agency claims that the shift to calculating by business days will allow USCIS additional time to complete processing on a premium processing petition and could reduce the need for USCIS to suspend premium processing when request filing volumes are high.
Payment Updates
USCIS will eliminate the $30 returned check fee because the fees associated with collecting the charge were higher than the returned check fees actually collected. However, petitioners and applicants should still ensure that adequate funds are available to avoid processing delays.
Another shift that has the potential to trip up applicants and petitioners is the planned updates to certain form instructions to only allow certain payment types for certain forms. For example, USCIS may determine that it only wants to accept credit or debit card payments for naturalization. USCIS could also decide that only a check or money order is acceptable payment for a certain form. The rule does not modify the instructions at this time, but states:
“In this final rule, DHS does not restrict the method of payment for any particular immigration benefit request. This final rule clarifies the authority for DHS to prescribe certain types of payments for specific immigration benefits or methods of submission.”
Extra precautions must be taken to review form instructions every time a case is filed to avoid a processing delay due to an incorrect payment type.
Biometrics Fees
The new rule incorporates biometrics fees into the underlying immigration benefit request to “simplify the fee structure, reduce rejections of benefit requests for failure to include a separate biometric services fee, and better reflect how USCIS uses biometric information.” The fee includes FBI name checks, FBI fingerprints, Application Support Center (ASC) contractual support, and biometric service management (including federal employees at ASC locations). The rule outlines that a separate biometric services fee will be retained for Temporary Protected Status in the amount of $30, but requests for other immigration benefits will include the biometric fee.
Secure Mail Initiative
We have seen many clients suffer when the United States Postal Service (USPS) loses important immigration notifications. The rule announced that USCIS will implement Signature Confirmation Restricted Delivery (SCRD) as the sole method of delivery of secure USCIS documents. USPS states that Signature Confirmation requires that the recipient or another responsible person at the residence be present to sign for the item and then the sender will receive the signature and name of the recipient and the date, time, and location of the delivery. The rule outlines states
“USCIS and applicants can track their document using the USPS website up to when the document is delivered. Recipients will also have the ability to change their delivery location by going to the USPS website and selecting “hold for pickup” to arrange for pickup at a post office at a date and time that suits them.”
Applicants and petitioners should ensure that accurate addresses are submitted prior to the case filing.
Timeline for Rule Implementation
The fee increase is effective Oct. 2, 2020 for any immigration filings postmarked on or after that date. If you are eligible for any of the immigration benefits subject to the fee increase, you should initiate your immigration process as soon as possible to avoid the substantial increase in USCIS filing fees.
To initiate your case and save money, email info@challalaw.com or call 804-360-8482.
“They want a girl who is slim, tall, educated, and from a good family,” says matchmaker Sima Taparia, as she flips between pages of marriage biodatas. Beside Taparia, her husband laughs. “They want everything.”
Directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Smriti Mundhra, Netflix series Indian Matchmaking offers an unsanitized glance into the nitty-gritty of South Asian arranged marriages. The show follows the day-to-activities of Sima Taparia, who navigates the labyrinthian love lives of Indian and immigrant millennials. From horoscope hurdles to culture contrasts, Taparia’s job is to find a middle ground between parents and partners, spouses, and societal norms. Because of Taparia, the end-all of a successful marriage is compromised.
Although praised by audiences for its comedic timing, Indian Matchmaking has been subject to widespread criticism for its portrayal of casteism, colorism, elitism, and sexism. And the critics aren’t wrong. If I had a dollar for every time Taparia or a client equated physical attractiveness with being “tall and fair”, I could probably afford Taparia’s fees. (There’s a reason why almost everyone on Indian Matchmaking is rich, and it’s not by accident.)
The show reveals deep-seated prejudices that form the bedrock of the arranged matchmaking system. Parents often request Taparia to look for a ‘good family background’ — a euphemism for a specific caste, class, and ethnic background. Colorism is a regular facet of the show. Ankita, a surprisingly likable client, is immediately labeled as ugly by Taparia for her darker skin. She prefers the likes of Pradhyuman and Rushali Rai, who are praised for their lighter complexions.
Women above the age of 30 (case in point: Aparna) are treated like slowly rotting vegetables, who must be carted off before they cross the expiry date. And once they agree to the marriage, these women’s preferences and opinions are quickly dismissed by Taparia. Indian Matchmaking’s vision of marital compromise often targets its women, who are expected to be flexible and beautiful and witty regardless of the groom.
“The bride has to change and compromise for the family,” says Preeti, mother of 23-year old Akshay. “Not the boy. Those are the values we were raised with.”
Aside from the casual misogyny, divorcees and single parents are wholly ignored in the matchmaking process, perhaps because they’re evidence that relationships — “heavenly” as they are — don’t always work. “If anybody comes to me with a child, I mostly don’t take that case, because it is a very tough job for me to match them,” says Taparia, while discussing single mother Rupam.
It’s flippant. It’s shallow. It’s the kind of discrimination that bites you where it hurts, even when packaged as a joke.
I can understand why so many Indian Americans my age despise Indian Matchmaking. As I watched the show for the first time, I found myself deeply uncomfortable. Although presented as ‘just another reality show’, the series provided a painful lens on the worst of South Asian culture — traits that have endured generations of development and diaspora.
The criticism is real, but it’s misdirected. With Mundhra’s keen sense of direction and focus, it’s obvious why the show is popular with a global audience. To offer an accurate glimpse into South Asian society, Mundhra has a duty to present its flaws — regardless of how ugly and misguided they may be.
“Yes, it’s misogynistic, it’s objectifying people.. but this is what India is,” says stand-up comedian Atul Khatri. In his review of the show, Khatri concedes, “You know what India is..you cannot ignore it, you cannot brush it under the carpet.”
Taparia can do her best to sugarcoat the flaws of her clients — that’s her job as a matchmaker. But what Indian Matchmaking refuses to do is sugarcoat Taparia and the system that has made her what she is.
A better glimpse into arranged marriages is A Suitable Girl, which came out in 2018, and might be a better watch!
Kanchan Naik is a rising senior at the Quarry Lane School in Dublin, California. Aside from being the Youth Editor at India Currents, she is also the Director of Media Outreach for youth nonprofit Break the Outbreak, the editor-in-chief of her school newspaper The Roar and the 2019-2020 Teen Poet Laureate for the City of Pleasanton. This year, Kanchan was selected as a semifinalist for the National Student Poets Program.
