I AM sitting in a café in Jackson Heights with Partha Bannerjee eating a quick dal and roti lunch. Jackson Heights, New York is called Little India, a wedge of narrow streets in Queens, elevated train tracks slashing a dark shadow over the Indian grocers, video and CD, sari and jewellery shops.

This is not the Little India of engineers and doctors comfortably settled in the suburbs of New Jersey, where I now live. This is the neighbourhood of cab drivers and security guards, doormen and dishwashers, of Bangladeshis and Nepalis, alongside Pakistanis and Indians, many of them undocumented.

I was born a few blocks away from here and at the time there were certainly no Indians. My parents, as a mixed couple, had a hard time finding a place until a nice Columbian couple rented the second floor apartment in their two-family house. When I was growing up, Queens was the borough of postwar American assimilation; where schoolteachers and electricians bought their first homes or comfortable apartments, and sent their children to the local public schools. In the decades since, Queens has become a third world capital. The Number 7 line, which rattles across on the overhead track, passes neighbourhoods that lie cheek by jowl – Dominicans, Greeks, Mexicans, Vietnamese.

Today, Bannerjee looks exhausted. Bannerjee is director of the New Immigrant Empowerment Project, a non-profit that runs out of a tiny storefront on a basement floor office. Since 9/11 this South Asian immigrant community has been virtually shattered. ‘We’re in crisis all the time,’ he explains, handling calls from families – from incidents of harassment to loss of jobs to detainment and deportation.

Shortly after 9/11, the Bush Administration began a programme of special registration: all men, eighteen years and older, from Muslim countries, were required to register. The programme, which was begun under the newly created department of Homeland Security, was billed as an anti-terrorism measure. In fact, it became an unwieldy dragnet that snagged hundreds of thousands of bewildered immigrants into the bureaucratic net of deportation. Many men were detained, questioned, or the process of deportation begun, usually for minor infractions such as forgetting to notify the authorities when they changed an address, or a misfiled application. Homeland Security, which was now amplified with FBI agents, began knocking on doors, pulling suspected illegal immigrants from their jobs for questioning.

 

 

Terror swept through the community – some fled to Canada, in hope of getting asylum, until it too closed its doors. Some simply packed up and went home. Others decided to lay low and not register at all. One year later, after a great deal of negative publicity and protest, the special registration programme was ended. By all accounts, it was a disaster. No terrorists were found. Lives were disrupted. The immigration department was flooded with thousands of deportation cases. Ironically, it was those who chose to stay in the shady margins – working off the books jobs – were essentially rewarded for not coming forward. And more importantly, civil liberties were deeply eroded.

In that same year Bush proposed a sweeping immigration plan that would allow America’s roughly ten million illegal immigrants to apply for permanent status. Politically, no one was happy: those on the left complained the proposal didn’t go far enough; the right immediately protested that this was a programme of asylum, which they strongly oppose.

Here in Jackson Heights, people threw parties. The Indian language papers fanned the flames of jubilation. As it turned out, the proposal was a limited one – illegal immigrants could apply for residency through their employers, renewing their status every three years, the possibility of citizenship left vague. For the dishwasher who works off the books or the man who sells nuts on a street corner in Manhattan, such a sponsorship was highly unlikely to help. As the Presidential election year began, it became clear that the immigration plan was sunk anyway – too hot an issue for the administration to try to push through. Depression set in on the streets of Jackson Heights. The community grimly braced itself for yet another long siege. Many simply gave up on the America dream.

The special registration programme and the immigration proposal are remarkable, for they come from an administration that is willing to violate the civil liberties of immigrants in the name of security and yet proposes sweeping immigration changes that will potentially admit millions of illegal migrants. These seemingly contradictory moves show that there are really two Americas: America the immigrant nation, becoming ever more global within its borders, and America the global superpower, engaged in a war of terror.

 

 

In the US, we are living in the ‘India’ moment. Everywhere you turn, there’s another article about either successful Indian immigrants who have found the American dream, Bollywood film festivals, or the rise of high-tech economic India, and the loss of American jobs to outsourcing. India – and South Asia – has never before made such an impression on the American psyche.

The success stories are certainly true. The Indian population in the US is among the most educated and well-paid in the nation; their per capita income exceeds that of native whites. Indian engineers and scientists were a major force in the high-tech Silicon Valley revolution years ago. And the second generation is filling America’s colleges and graduate schools. I’ll never forget, when on book tour a few years ago visiting many of the Ivy Leagues, I realized how many of the students were South Asian. Walking through the halls of Cornell, where I had gone as an undergraduate, I noticed flyers for the student elections, and most of the names were Indian. Even here in the comfortable suburbs of New Jersey, Indians have begun running for local office. The sense of Indian arrival is very real.

But rather than being self-congratulatory, it’s important to remember that US immigration policy has always been a mix of ideals and carefully engineered social policy according to our labour needs. At the turn of the century, when immigrants began to pour in from eastern and southern Europe, they were largely poor labourers, recruited to work the factories. In 1965, when immigration was again opened up to people of more varied national origin, it was to recruit highly trained professionals – especially doctors and engineers, which resulted in the ‘brain drain’ in India. This again, reflected the economic needs of a nation that was shifting out of an industrial-based economy.

 

 

The nineties presents a far more varied portrait for Indian and South Asian immigration – and for immigrants in general. On the one hand, there were the software engineers who surged to America under H-1B visas enjoying, for a while, lucrative work. Only a small percentage, however, were able to convert their status to any kind of permanent residency. The H1-B visas were designed to fill a labour niche: high-tech companies desperate for programmers and engineers during a boom time. These visas had little to do with immigration or citizenship.

At the same time, the nineties was also a time of working class immigration. With the US economy expanding, there was a desperate need for people to work the low-end jobs, especially as there are fewer and fewer Americans willing to take those jobs.

This is when we floated along, in a booming economy with an ambiguous, look-the-other-way immigration policy. Immigrants poured to our shores in the nineties, at rates we hadn’t seen since the turn of the century. Hundreds of thousands of those immigrants were illegal. But we needed them. Caribbean nannies minded our children. Bangladeshis bused our dishes at the restaurants. Salvadorans cleaned our offices. Mexicans sewed in our factories. Pakistanis and Indians drove our cabs. Sikhs and Guyanese worked our construction sites. You could practically hear the American dream going up, day by day: hammers banging on new construction, subways jammed with working people, the silent tap of computers in industrial parks all over the country.

Then 9/11 hit and it’s as if America woke up to realize it had become an immigrant nation – legal and illegal. America was Jackson Heights, Queens, capital of the third world.

 

 

Part of the fallout of the post-9/11 period is the question of how much of the American dream is still possible for Indian and South Asian immigrants.

America blares promise everywhere. This is the country where the possibility of remaking yourself perpetually gleams. Life is not a one-shot deal. It’s a series of doors, always opening. Ride a subway and there are ads for getting your secretarial or accountant degrees. Open your mail and you can buy land, sell your house, or refinance your home. Drive a car and notice the billboards for employment agencies. Open a newspaper and read about opening a franchise or getting a loan for a new business.

And in some sense it’s true. Americans are more likely to move or change jobs than in any other country in the world. Or there’s this fact: a great proportion of American college students are returning students – i.e., older students who go back to school. Many of these students are women – often married, who retrain themselves after raising their children. In no other country in the world do you have forty-something housewives reinventing themselves in such great numbers at universities. We are a restless, endlessly shifting culture, where another life is always possible.

 

 

In a sense, the Indian immigrant is peculiarly suited to the America of here and now. The common stereotype is of the great clash between East and West – conservative, traditional, family-bound, austere Indian culture versus a divorce-ridden, materialistic, morally and sexually loose America weaned on TV violence. There’s always a bit of truth to any stereotype – America does have a high divorce rate and extreme violence has filtered down, even to our children – witness the horrific massacre at Columbine high school. Yet it’s been my observation that the sharp differences between America and India are highly exaggerated, especially in today’s global world. More and more, the Indian immigrants who arrive here are coming from a dynamic, changing, and urbanized India, and seem particularly suited to the restless energy of America. They share with Americans a sense of hunger and ambition. And the Indian middle class, obsessed with status and degrees, has an unerring instinct for finding the right employers, schools, neighbourhoods and universities for their children; they are expert at negotiating the bewildering choices and dangers of American culture – much more so than other immigrants.

Given that Indians do in fact, come from a family-bound culture helps them in the buffeting experience of immigration. An example: in an Indian-American family, a twenty-something graduate student might still live at home and enjoy the support of his parents while doggedly pursing his MBA. His American counterpart is on his own, paying rent, and probably stacking up student loan debt.

As well, what surprises many immigrants upon coming here is that America is a deeply conservative and religious country. Drive away from the cities and churches abound, along with Jesus Loves You bumper stickers. That has always been true; after all, half of those who came on the Mayflower boat were Puritans and America was seen as their New Eden. America’s peculiar mix – traditional, conservative, small town, and regional, while wildly consumerist and mass media – is what Indians immigrate into and eventually flourish in.

 

 

If there’s any cultural challenge that remains for the Indian immigrant, it is that America is the land of the individual – a value that is inculcated into us from the moment we are born. Young Americans don’t necessarily ask their parents what they should do with their lives. They move out when they are eighteen and often live far away. Those that speak the loudest, put themselves forward make themselves heard, will succeed. Elders be damned – this is a culture of youth and brashness.

The conflict between individual versus family is played out again and again in Indian-American homes all over the country: parents pressuring their children towards the ‘right professions’ or choosing the ‘right’ mate, preferably in a semi-arranged marriage. Children not sure what they want – full American privileges or some mixture of the two. I remember, when I would give readings at universities, the Asian and South Asian students’ first question was always: ‘Your parents let you be a writer?’ They were stunned that I didn’t have some ‘safety’ degree under my belt. But I don’t think this will hold for long. The conservative, status-conscious generation is going to give way to a new generation – one that’s as interested in joining music bands, starting companies, making independent movies, writing plays, backpacking, working for nothing on start-up magazines. That, too, is part of the assimilation process. America is a culture where one is not necessarily rewarded for going by the rules. Initiative, imagination, and risk are often more valued.

 

 

Leaving behind the Indian middle class and their generally rosy prospects, however, I’d like to return to the world of Jackson Heights and the atmosphere post 9/11.

Soon after the terrorist attack came a sharp downturn in the economy. Indian software engineers, once buoyed up by good salaries, were given the pink slip and began haunting job fairs, desperate for another assignment before their H1-B visas ran out. Taxi drivers barely picked up fares; waiters and busboys melted into the shadowy margins. Many South Asians – especially Sikhs – spoke of being harassed continually. Recently, two Sikh boys in New Jersey reported being mugged; their attackers pulled off their turbans and cut off their hair. When the police began to investigate, however, it turned out the boys had concocted the story, tired of weathering catcalls and insults, and desperate to fit into America. The incident shattered the tightknit Sikh community and pointed to the pressures these young immigrants face, particularly at this moment in history.

 

 

We have become a nation with an ever-widening gap between those that live comfortably, and those that can barely survive. The loss of our industrial base, the erosion of unions, and migration of jobs overseas have contributed to a deep chasm between those who are the on ‘good’ side – the managerial, professional class – and those that fall perilously on the other. We have become a nation of working poor – people working for ten-dollars an hour, with no benefits or security. S. Mitra Kalita, in ‘Surburban Sahibs’, profiles three Indian immigrant families in suburban New Jersey. It is the story of Harish Patel that best exemplifies those immigrants who scramble to make a living, working double-shifts at low-end jobs, their piece of the American dream slipping further away.

Traditionally, the American dream is made possible generationally: the first generation may lose its social and economic status in immigrating here, the next generation does better, either through college, business or trade, and the third generation is on par with native Americans. The Indian immigration has completely overturned this pattern, given how many Indian immigrants are middle-class and well-educated, and able to settle into their new lives relatively quickly. I think of family friends from Chennai – he’s an advertising copy writer, his wife an accountant, they’ve bought their suburban house in Long Island. They can easily shop and eat south Indian food nearby. The only difference, he says, is at his son’s soccer practice, where he’s the lone Indian father reading The Economist on the sidelines.

At the same time, for other immigrants – and especially those who are undocumented – the possibility of realizing the American dream through their children becomes harder to obtain. Despite some attempts, as in California, to restrict the rights of illegal children immigrants, all immigrant children have full access to public education through high school. However, when it comes to college – the magic passport to the American middle-class – many of these immigrants fall behind. Illegal immigrants can’t receive any federal aid to help them with college, and they disappear into the same low-wage work as their parents. Poor legal immigrants may not either be able to scrape up the rising college tuition fees, or their children are needed to help support the family. Because America has become such a divided country, if these children do not find their footing or get an education, the danger of becoming part of the underclass, getting nowhere, is very high.

 

 

The promise of America is not just about material gain; it is also about a spiritual sense of reinvention, of bettering and changing the self. The early Indian immigrants in the sixties were not interested in this aspect of American culture: they came here purely for economic betterment and, if anything, became frozen culturally. One hears stories of their second-generation children complaining bitterly that their parents were stuck in fifties India – when they would go back to visit their cousins in India, they were stunned that their relatives had ‘moved on’. This is a common immigrant story. But I think it was particularly stark among the Indian immigrants of the sixties, who tended to be insular, clustered into communities that recreated their own regional identities, and focused simply on getting ahead professionally and financially. They hoped to raise their children in a kind of static bubble – which of course is impossible. The nineties changed this. India itself has become more global and the Indian immigrants coming over now – both working and middle class – are part of a much more blended and syncretic universe.

 

 

I know I have painted a portrait of our immigration that is at once dire and astoundingly optimistic. But this is the wild promise and brutal reality that is America. And it’s what distinguishes us from Europe, which is struggling with its immigrant populations and has no real history of assimilation or multiculturalism. The US has always drawn its strength – economically, culturally, spiritually – from this ever-replenishing fount of migrants. It’s what keeps this country young, optimistic, unrealistic, and yet ceaselessly changing.

That, I believe, is what the nation knows, in its heart – even with the shock and trauma of 9/11. We cannot exist without our immigrants, and never will.

My last trip back to India was book-ended by two Indian immigrants I spoke to at great length. On the plane, I shared a row of seats with a woman who told me the story of her life. She was from Gujarat, married into a wealthy industrial family; her husband left her within six months for an American woman. Her sons were left with her in-laws in India, and it took years before she could get them back. For the next few years she struggled as a single mother in Houston, working every kind of job, from dawn until midnight, leaving a pot of food for her children on the stove. Eventually she developed some entrepreneurial ideas – selling various Indian goods in the shops; cooking meals for the local families, so that she was able to send her sons to college and get them married. These days, she is working on some new business schemes with one of her daughter-in-laws. She tapped her head and said, ‘Hey, I’m a Gujarati. I can make money. And my daughter-in-law, she sees it the same way.’

 

 

On the way back, my taxi driver was from Chandigarh. He, too, was eager to talk, to tell me about his life here: how he used to make 4,000 rupees a month at a low-level computer job, and finally left to join his sister in Philadelphia; how he’d moved from doing security at the airport to now driving a cab, and could support his widowed mother who had come over to join him. He’s proud of the group of friends he’s gathered from all over India. Some of his friends even have girlfriends from Guyana. My mother, she was worried at first he told me. But now it’s okay.

But he was happiest telling me about his relationship to his old life. ‘You know, I call my boss back in India, and now he talks to me differently,’ he kept telling me. ‘He used to talk to me badly. Now he speaks to me good.’

That, it seemed, was what he was proudest of – something had shifted for him; his past need not be his lifelong fate. No matter how terrible the circumstances of so many immigrants’ lives, I’m always amazed by their endless optimism. Perhaps that’s why I’m addicted to speaking with immigrants – they always show me the US in a new way. Where I see only reason for criticism and despair, they often show me possibility and generosity, and above all, change.

The young man from Chandigarh drove me to my house. Good luck, I said to him, and gave him a good tip.