November 11, 2024
BENGALURU – The presidential election on Nov 5 reminded Mr Asish, a 39-year-old Indian tech professional, that after 15 years of living in the US, he still did not have citizenship and the right to vote.
And Donald Trump’s return to the White House revived old worries about the “ripple effects” of the Republican leader’s hard stance on illegal immigration on a legal immigrant like him.
“Trump’s campaign was more against illegal immigrants, but the heavy focus on mass deportations of undocumented migrants will surely affect at least a portion of legal immigrants,” said Mr Asish, a South Indian who lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, an engineer, and a 12-year-old son, who was born in the US and is an American citizen. He gave only his first name to protect his identity.
Mr Asish has been waiting to get an employment-based green card for seven years. “An overly vigilant system will cause huge delays for the legal migration processes too,” he added.
Trump’s win has kicked off discussions among Indians in the US and at home about how his “America First” foreign policy doctrine would affect the flow of Indian people and goods.
Although Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump share a chummy personal bond, bilateral ties may be impacted by the latter’s protectionist agenda to increase import tariffs overall.
Amid an expected global realignment of economic alliances and rivalries under the new Trump administration, analysts say India might find itself in a more balanced position, but some concerns do persist.
One is immigration.
An estimated 4.8 million Indian Americans live in the US, making them the second-largest immigrant group there behind Mexicans. Around 1.6 million are naturalised citizens born and raised in the US, while 65 per cent are on work or student visas.
Most Indians with work visas apply for a green card, or permanent residency, which allows holders to live and work indefinitely in the US and provides a pathway to citizenship after several years.
A total of 140,000 employment-based green cards are available to all countries in 2024, and the employment-based green card backlog from India is estimated to be over one million.
Trump’s track record is not encouraging for Indians. In his first presidency between 2017 and 2021, he had planned to cut legal immigration by half, reducing the number of green cards from over one million to about 500,000 annually.
He increased the minimum wage for H-1B work-visa holders, making it harder for skilled Indian tech professionals to obtain them, added more documentation requirements for green card applicants, and tried to remove an Obama-era work authorisation for H-1B spouses.
Mr Asish’s wife could not work for months in 2017 because her work permit was attached to his H-1B, and she was encumbered with long processing delays, leading to “financial strain and imbalances” in their lives.
Some Indians fear these policies to restrict legal migration may return. According to a Wall Street Journal report on Nov 6, Trump’s advisers are reportedly planning to limit legal immigration, such as pausing green card applications for categories with large backlogs, affecting businesses that rely on foreign workers.
An executive order on Trump’s campaign website that he will sign on the first day of his presidency to end birthright citizenship is focused on “illegal aliens” but also includes children of legal immigrants.
The order says it will “direct federal agencies to require that at least one parent be a US citizen or lawful permanent resident for their future children to become automatic US citizens”. This means that in the future, a child born in the US but does not have a parent who is a US citizen or green card holder may not be eligible for automatic citizenship.
This will directly affect millions of Indians in the US.
“Most of us largely take legal routes like the H-1B for work or F-1 for study, but as we grow old waiting for the green card, our source of relief is that our children born in the US are citizens,” said Mr Asish.
Immigration lawyers say that changing birthright citizenship in the US would violate the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, and is bound to face litigation, but Mr Trump’s team claims to have interpreted the law correctly.
Meanwhile, some Indian residents in the US have faith in Mr Trump’s assertions that he welcomes legal migrants who contribute to the economy.
“Trump’s agenda is only illegal immigrants, which will actually open doors for legal migrants,” said Mr Arun, 38, an Indian in Dallas, Texas, who works for the US’ biggest smartphone maker. He gave only his first name so as not to jeopardise his green card approval.
Mr Arun hopes Trump will revive an earlier proposal to shift the current family-based green card system to a merit-based system, like in Canada and Australia, which would benefit skilled professionals like him “who contribute more economically”.
Ms Keerthana (not her real name), 37, who works in a US insurance company in San Francisco, said she and her husband got their green cards in 2022 after a 10-year wait that could have gone on longer if not for the “trickle-down effect” of Trump’s priorities in his previous term.
“We were the lucky ones who benefited from Trump curtailing the number of green cards allotted to family migration, that is, to parents. I think that helped fast-track H-1B immigrants like us waiting in line for green cards,” she said.
Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Nov 7 told business leaders in Sydney during a visit to Australia that the US administration under Trump “will make a distinction in immigration and mobility” to benefit skilled workers from foreign countries such as India.
He also asserted that India’s opportunities in the “reordering of supply chains” would “accelerate”.
India is optimistic about the Indo-US relationship due to the apparent bonhomie between Trump and Mr Modi, and stronger strategic partnerships between the US and India, particularly in defence and counter-terrorism. In particular, they share concerns about China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
But Trump’s agenda to increase tariffs by at least 10 per cent on all imports to boost domestic production would hurt India, for whom the US is the largest foreign market, especially for engineering products, electronics, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and gems. India exported US$77.5 billion (S$103 billion) worth of goods to the US in 2024.
In his first term, Trump terminated India’s preferential market access through the Generalised System of Preferences, and raised import duties on Indian steel and aluminium products.
“The US tariff hikes were partly retaliatory. Trump called India a ‘tariff king’ for imposing taxes on imports from the US, and exporting more than importing from there. He has been vocal about imposing higher tariffs again,” said Dr Biswajit Dhar, Distinguished Professor at the Council for Social Development in New Delhi.
“The good personal relationship between the leaders didn’t make any dent in the trade relations,” he added.
However, Japan-based global market researcher Nomura assessed that while the broader economic and geopolitical impact of Trump’s “America First” agenda is negative for Asia, especially China and South Korea, India and Malaysia should be relative beneficiaries in the electronics and semiconductor sectors.
Nomura analysts Sonal Varma and Aurodeep Nandi said: “India and the US share deep economic and strategic interests, and the US also sees India as a counterweight to China on foreign policy. So any frictions on trade and immigration will likely be more than offset by the gains accruing to India from the ongoing supply chain shifts.”
India is set to host the Quad summit in 2025. The Indo-Pacific grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the US to counterbalance China’s growing global influence “acquired traction and wheels in Trump 1.0”, with President Joe Biden intensifying the engagement with annual summits since 2021, said Mr C. Uday Bhaskar, director of the Society for Policy Studies, a think-tank based in New Delhi.
As the other partners have built up military, maritime and nuclear capabilities, India has taken a more cautious stance with a steady defence budget.
“How Trump 2.0 accommodates the anomaly, wherein India remains a partner and not a military ally of the US, and yet remains multi-aligned by way of its relations with Moscow and Beijing, will be a test for the strategic and diplomatic acumen of the new White House team,” Mr Bhaskar added.