Immigration is without doubt one of the most advanced areas of the legislation—so advanced that even seasoned legal professionals wrestle to maintain tempo with shifting guidelines, altering interpretations, and unpredictable outcomes.
But regardless of this complexity, folks proceed to come back. They arrive as a result of the US has lengthy represented freedom, alternative, and the promise of a greater future. However our immigration system—deeply flawed as it’s—too typically stands of their approach.
A System in Disaster
There are far too few authorized pathways for folks to come back to the US, whether or not to reunite with household or to work for employers who genuinely want their expertise.
It’s unconscionable that extremely expert Indian-born professionals should wait many a long time for a inexperienced card. These people have already got bona fide job provides. Their employers examined the U.S. labor market. Their labor certifications have been authorized. And nonetheless they wait—generally longer than a human lifetime.
We additionally see huge delays in processing petitions for “quick kin”—spouses, mother and father, minor youngsters—people who find themselves alleged to have essentially the most direct authorized path. Add to this the unpredictability of visa stamping overseas, and households are thrown into useless uncertainty.
After which comes one of the crucial irritating issues: the federal government repeatedly shifts the goalposts. For example, a new public cost coverage permits consular officers to disclaim visas just because an individual has widespread situations like weight problems or diabetes—a discriminatory and medically unsound enlargement of the rule.
Allow us to not neglect that the Trump administration even floated a $100,000 submitting payment for H-1B petitions—one other unmistakable sign that their goal shouldn’t be equity, however exclusion. It then sought to reinterpret and make clear, however prompted extra confusion. Because of Trump’s assaults on the H-1B visa program that’s broadly utilized by Indian nationals, racists are actually brazenly concentrating on Indian Americans.
Worry as Coverage
As faulty because the immigration system already is, President Trump has weaponized it additional via cruelty. He rose to energy demonizing immigrants, and since his second inauguration in January 2025, he has embraced that cruelty brazenly.
He empowered folks like Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem to unleash ICE in unprecedented methods—detaining noncitizens for lawful speech that displeases the administration.
International college students at prestigious U.S. universities have been taken by masked ICE brokers merely for protesting Israel’s army operation in Gaza, which has resulted in over 65,000 deaths.
Visas have been revoked for people who criticized the President, together with Nobel laureates, or who voiced essential views of Charlie Kirk after his dying. All such speech is protected by the First Modification.
Even U.S. residents have been caught in these sweeps, making a degree of worry this nation has by no means skilled in fashionable occasions. America—as soon as revered as a beacon of freedom—has not seen such weaponization of immigration energy since its darkest moments.
Trump and a few Republican politicians have brazenly threatened to deport naturalized residents within the hope that they’ll denaturalize them. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has been subjected to vile racist and Islamophobic assaults, all as a result of his ascent represents immigrant energy—and that terrifies those that have applied insurance policies to subjugate them and hold them in line.
This administration has repeatedly declared that even lawful everlasting residents are merely “friends” who could also be eliminated for speech that offends these in energy. They painting immigrants as unwelcome, job-stealing, harmful interlopers—regardless of the fact that immigrants are the spine of the labor drive in building, agriculture, caregiving, know-how, and numerous different sectors.
They think about an America with out immigrants—a fantasy that has by no means existed and by no means will.
Authoritarianism Begins With Noncitizens
We should perceive this clearly: Authoritarianism not often begins with residents. It begins with noncitizens.
As soon as the rights of immigrants are trampled, as that may be extra simply achieved, this erosion expands outward. By the point residents acknowledge the hazard, the mechanisms of oppression are already in place.
This is the reason realizing our rights is important. You do not have to talk to ICE if approached on the street. Brokers want a judicial warrant—not an ICE-issued type—to arrest you.
And we want legal professionals keen to defend these rights with out worry. Legal professionals must also be ready to problem the unconstitutional detentions of noncitizens via habeas corpus petitions in federal court docket.
The March 2025 White Home memo attacking immigration legal professionals and Large Regulation professional bono packages was designed to intimidate us. It echoes the well-known line from Henry VI: “The very first thing we do, let’s kill all of the legal professionals.”
The memo claimed legal professionals have been undermining nationwide safety merely for representing asylum seekers. However beneath the Immigration and Nationality Act, folks fleeing persecution have an absolute proper to file asylum claims. Moral legal professionals don’t file fraudulent instances. Representing the weak shouldn’t be a risk to America—it’s a reflection of America at its finest.
The Path Ahead
We should vote out politicians who fear-monger on immigration and lack the braveness to reform the system. We’d like a rational immigration framework with extra authorized pathways to unite households and permit folks to work within the US.
We should reject the false narrative that immigrants hurt the nation. The reality has all the time been clear: Immigrants are good for America.
The Parsi Parable: A Lesson for Our Time
When a bunch of Zoroastrian generally known as Parsis fled Persia and sought refuge in India over a thousand years in the past, the native king despatched them a vessel stuffed to the brim with milk, signaling that his land was full.
The Parsi chief requested for a spoonful of sugar. He stirred it gently into the milk with out spilling a drop, saying: “Like this sugar, we’ll sweeten your land with out displacing anybody.”
The king understood, and the Parsis went on to complement India in immeasurable methods— economically, culturally, intellectually, and spiritually.
That story captures every part immigration really represents:
Newcomers don’t weaken a society—they enrich it.
They don’t overflow the vessel—they rework it for the higher.
Immigrant Energy At the moment
Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York is one such fashionable testomony. In his phrases:
“New York will stay a metropolis of immigrants, a metropolis constructed by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight led by an immigrant.”
That’s the energy of immigrant communities.
That’s how we resist authoritarianism.
And that’s the reason we should proceed to combat—for justice, for humanity, and for the sweetness that immigrants, like sugar in milk, deliver to each nation that welcomes them.
(This weblog is predicated Cyrus Mehta’s ready remarks as a keynote speaker at an IndiXspark occasion on November 15, 2025 in New York Metropolis)
