In 2007 I did the most awful thing.
I left my toddler son and wife to relocate to a foreign country.
But I am not the absent father we snicker about, from time to time, on Father’s Day.
I arrived in the U.S. in August,1995 as a graduate student at Cornell University and received U.S. Citizenship in April 2018.
In between I was either waiting to qualify for the next step in the naturalization process or was in process or was working to revert to status.
In 1999, just after I graduated, I risked losing status and I bought a one-way ticket even though I was already $40,000 in debt.
In 2001, just before Sept. 11, 2001 (9/11), I lost my job in New York and risked losing status again.
My American-born girlfriend offered to get married so I could stay. I refused, only because I did not want the label of "married for the green card."
We separated shortly thereafter.
The situation was corrected in the nick of time in both cases.
I was not so lucky the third time.
I lost status in 2007 and was forced to leave the country. I left my family in New York City, where my wife put up with demands of a job she loathed as well as motherhood without me by her side.
She did so because she needed to maintain her own green card process, which ensured my return as a spouse.
We reunited in the United States after about a year of separate lives, the most stressful days in our lives. As a family we continue to bear emotional scars, but we accept that as an "entry fee" to the promised land that we both worked to reach, our beloved home since 1995.
My experience tells me it's nearly impossible to stay out of status for long, if you start the process on the right foot and you make conscious effort to get back to status if forced out.
If one is not consistently cavalier, and one is fine with accepting some sacrifice, there is always a path back to status.
I have sympathies for those still in immigration limbo (perhaps by their own choice), but being in the country for 30 or more years without making tangible progress in the naturalization process implies that hearts are not in the right place.
It constitutes gaslighting to say the Los Angeles protests were limited in nature.
Downtown LA ("DTLA") accounts for only 1.4% of LA’s geographic area, but 21% of its jobs and 29% of wages, according to DTLA Alliance.
Small businesses saw revenue drop by 80%.
Workers at large firms worked remotely, the brunt was borne mostly by flower stands and sandwich shops, etc., who are predominantly owned by immigrants.
Veterans Administration (VA) operations were at a standstill risking sizeable homeless veteran population.
The list goes on.
It was not a peaceful demonstration if people were flying the flag of a foreign nation, while spitting on or burning the Stars and Stripes, lobbing Molotov cocktails, firing commercial grade fireworks filled with projectiles at the police, vandalizing storefronts, lighting up vehicles and police cruisers.
Repeat offenders even appeared armed with radios, and well-rehearsed plans of diversion for law enforcement agents.
None of these spells "mostly peaceful protests."
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) engaged in an awesome job, as did neighboring departments stepping in.
What moved the needle was a most visible show of force with the National Guard and the Marines, even if none was deployed on the streets.
In case you haven't noticed, you can't negotiate de-escalation with an arsonist.
But . . . but you can send him away with display of overwhelming force.
This made sure the situation this time was different from 2020 and afterwards.
Remember, it was lax regimes who made lawbreaking a communal sport.
Prioritizing illegal aliens in the naturalization process happens at a cost to legal immigrants.
My family’s forced separation, e.g., may have been caused by backlogs related to various amnesty programs.
Processing time for Indians, especially, is ridiculously long.
If you start the process starting with a H1-B, it can take two decades or more to naturalize and getting H1-B as an Indian is winning a lottery by itself.
Many from that nation are heading back because of it, a "brain drain" if you will, leaving the U.S. poorer of much promise.
Both my parents were refugees into India from Bangladesh.
I have vivid memories of how it is growing up effectively as an outsider.
In contrast, our son was never made to feel that way; just one of millions of such lived experiences. Nobody doubts that this is a country of immigrants which always welcomed newcomers who are willing to be assimilated, just as we were.
Challenges along the way make the goal more desirable.
Legal immigrants do not make the best footage for legacy, regime media cameras, but they vote. Let us not forget that in performative displays that effectively mock their decision to stick to the letter of the law.
All opinions ion the preceding column are those of the author solely, of the author alone, and do not necessarily represent that of any organization he may be part of. The author alone is responsible for any error or omission.
Partha Chakraborty, Ph.D., CFA is an economist, a statistician, and a financial analyst by training. Currently he's an entrepreneur in the field of water access, AI/ML, and wealth management in the U.S. and India. Dr. Chakraborty lives in Southern California. Read Partha Chakraborty's Reports — More Here.
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