“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore

Send these, the homeless, tempest lost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

– From Emma Lazarus’ The New Colossus, as inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty

The spirit of this inscription was not evident in President Donald Trump’s elaboration of his new immigration policy in May this year.

He suggested a gradual end to family-oriented immigration wherein relatives of immigrants are eligible. Instead, preference would be accorded to higher education, the ability to contribute professionally and English language skills.

Expectedly, this is being widely debated. Like the President, his comments and policies evoke a strong response. Liberals have suggested racial undertones. From an economic viewpoint, it has been argued that the United States needs a low-skilled workforce rather than a flood of intellect.

Another viewpoint advocates that the US no longer needs immigrants. The population density in Russia or even Brazil is lower than the US. In early 2018, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services revised its mission statement that had earlier described the country as “a nation of immigrants”, possibly inspired by the title of late President Kennedy’s book. Kennedy had then caustically summed up the mood of the erstwhile authorities, adding to the Statue of Liberty inscription: 

“As long as they come from northern Europe, 

Are not too tired or too poor or slightly ill, 

Never stole a loaf of bread, never joined any questionable organisation,

And can document their activities from the past two years.”

The Immigration and Naturalisation Act of 1965 abolished an earlier quota system based on national origin, replacing it with a generous policy that reunited immigrant families and attracted skilled labour. This paved the way for a greater diversity of people from regions such as Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Organised immigration has been the bedrock of the United States. Waves of settlers, largely from an over-populated Europe poured into its empty lands over recent centuries. Since 1607, Kennedy noted in the early 1960s, over 42 million people migrated to the US. Now as per Trump, applicants will be assiduously sieved.

His apprehensions spur from a large low-skill population that has crept in, mostly illegally, from Central America. While providing much needed human resource, this has altered demographics in parts of the country. Often of mixed parentage and linguistically apart, it has led to a digression from a traditionally Caucasian English-speaking culture. His stated policy hopes to rein in these changes. 

The stress on education while curbing this phenomenon delves into another issue altogether. Trump’s vision, reportedly envisaged by his Harvard-educated son-in-law Jared Kushner, envisions America as an intellectual powerhouse. It would not be wrong to say that America, in fair measure, owes its energy to its immigrants. Take that away and you have any other nation.

Through the past century, America has been able to attract not just the “tired, poor, huddled masses” but the finest intellect from disparate parts of the world. Be it scientists who fled Nazi Germany and contributed to nuclear research or skilled Asian technologists in recent years who fuelled the digital onslaught, immigrants have contributed disproportionately to the glory of the US.

There have been numerous attempts to analyse higher motivation levels in immigrants. In an era where data analysis is credited with answers to myriad issues, immigrant backgrounds have been dissected threadbare in attempts to understand and isolate the “motivation ingredient”. In a 2014 book, The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America, Yale professors Amy Chua and her husband Jed Rubenfeld attempted to explain this phenomenon via racial analysis. They based their thesis on a study of eight ethnicities that have outperformed the national average. The success is attributed to a generalised concoction of cultural traits. A century back when most of these ethnicities did not figure in erstwhile immigration, a similar level of yearning to achieve was exhibited by their predecessors. On the other side of the country, a University of California academic, Jennifer Lee takes a contrary stand that leans towards varied ethnicity and analysis.

In his collection of essays Travels, the late Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame inferred that the factor that is “spirit” cannot be obscured. And neither can it be entirely explained or cloned. Likewise, the emotional turmoil an immigrant often harbours can’t be clinically dissected. It possibly shapes a quest for achievement to undermine the sense of loss.  

Higher skill levels would suggest that the next wave of immigrants shall often start in positions of managerial superiority to US-born Americans. The policymakers haven’t fully considered the social consequences of this. In a shooting incident in El Paso, Texas, on August 3, 2019, where 22 died and as many were injured, the suspect had published an anti-immigrant manifesto on social media. While Hispanics were his main target, the mass shooter ranted against foreign technology workers (of unspecified ethnicity) whom he blamed for job losses.

President Trump’s announcement has not yet resonated in the countries of origin as it should. Such candid poaching of any tangible resource could be a call to war. Countries like China, India, the Philippines and others, that have poured in professionals, amongst other migrants in recent decades, stand to lose valuable human capital. Even as they must figure out how to retain home-grown talent, Trump’s open call can be construed as robbery. Immigration as an intellectual resource on such an organised scale has no precedent.

The President’s stringent yardsticks for immigrants obviously don’t apply to US-born Americans. The existing disparity in education levels between legal immigrants and US-born Americans is revealing. As per a CATO Institute report of 2015, while 92 per cent of employment-based immigrants and 47 per cent of those in the diversity and family categories have a college degree or higher education level, only 29 per cent of US-born Americans of a similar age spectrum could claim comparable education levels. This, despite having access to the best higher education facilities globally available.

The comparison does not read well of Trump’s electorate and brings into question the prevalent popular intellectual and moral ethos. The malaise then is not merely with the outsider but speaks of problems within. While the government is addressing the former, it has thus far shied from the latter. 

I patronise a club in New Delhi that has a membership policy, not unlike Trump’s immigration policy. An imperial legacy, members are screened on the basis of achievement. It is the meritorious few that are selected from numerous applicants. However, once inducted, membership is for life and is hereditary. For subsequent generations, the rites of initiation are a mere formality. 

Over time, the pedigree of members has deteriorated considerably. Qualifications and achievements that are the hallmark of the newly-selected members are scarce when read in the context of subsequent generations. This has reflected on the intellectual calibre of the institution. 

Another sports club I know of adheres to a membership policy that the President may consider interesting. The tennis courts here are organised on the basis of players’ proficiency. To graduate to a court for better players than oneself, one has to challenge and upstage a player from that court. The vanquished player while making way for the winner is demoted to his challenger’s court.

In Trump’s worldview, America is the equivalent of the tennis court for the best players. He may advise Kushner to spend more time pondering how to placate US-born Americans who could feel their jobs would be at risk. However, he doesn’t have the option that the latter of the two clubs that I mentioned resorts to. After all, migration has been a one way street in America. As yet, it has.