If Labour want to start apologising, it shouldn't be over economic migration

Jack Straw's admission of guilt over deciding to allow economic migration in 2004 is disingenuous, and sidesteps the real mistakes they made, and the problems we still have as a result

• 
• • Deborah Orr
  • The Guardian, Friday 15 November 2013 15.15 GMT

Jack Straw's mea culpa over Labour's 2004 immigration policy is disingenuous, writes Deborah Orr. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

Jack Straw has declared that Labour's decision to allow EU migrants from Poland and Hungary to work in Britain from 2004 was a "well-intentioned policy we messed up" and a "spectacular mistake". It's not quite an apology, but at least it's a declaration of fallibility. Straw says that inaccurate forecasts from the Home Office, suggesting far fewer people would come to the UK than id, were to blame. So it's not actually Labour's fallibility he's admitting to, really. One can understand why. If Labour started issuing mea culpas, it's hard to see where they would end.

In truth, the "spectacular mistake" of 2004 was not due to a set of duff Home Office figures, and Straw is being disingenuous in saying that it was. It wasn't about the UK's great enthusiasm for the EU either. Countries far more committed to Europe than Britain were more cautious about lifting transitional restrictions on new members. In truth, the decision fitted with Labour's general policy, which was to be enthusiastic about issuing work permits whenever possible. Labour wanted Britain to attract economic migrants. Partly, this was because the larger a working population is, the greater the economic activity, and the more revenue there is to look after those not working – of whom there was a burgeoning number in the UK at that time. But the policy was attractive to Labour for other reasons, too, some of which no Labour government could admit to.

Most glaring was Labour's fear of a resurgence of union power. They didn't want people banding together to insist on higher pay and better conditions. A steady supply of people for whom just working in Britain offered higher pay and better conditions than they would otherwise expect served to reduce cohesion in the workforce, making common purpose harder to achieve. It's easy to see why this was not a perceived benefit of immigration that Labour was keen to advertise, or even explicitly acknowledge within the party.

And anyway, there were further difficult-to-acknowledge complications. At that time, a lot of people in Britain were genuinely unemployable, the effects of the speedy economic restructuring of the 1980s and 1990s having been vastly underestimated by the previous government. Even when new jobs were created, it wasn't easy to pull families and communities that had been thrown on the economic scrapheap off it again.

Norman Tebbit famously exhorted people in areas of high unemployment to get on their bikes and look for work. Economic migrants are, by self-selection, people in a fit state to do so. A migrant workforce is keener, more flexible. But it's hard to inform your electorate of this without sounding as oblivious as Tebbit was to the hopelessness and paralysis that flourishes in ravaged communities. In short, Labour couldn't explain the problems caused by long-term unemployment without sounding as if they were indulging in victim-blame.

Also, Labour had bet the farm on being able to turn round public services systematically starved of investment for years (exacerbating the problems of long-term or inter-generational unemployment). So, in order quickly to recruit, for example, trained and experienced doctors and nurses, Labour went to developing countries to persuade qualified people that they should work in Britain. The awful effect on countries that had invested in training these people, only to have them go elsewhere to work, was a secondary concern. Once again, this is hardly a shining example of international socialism in action.

Nevertheless, economic migration was allowing Labour to do what Cameron, Osborne and their fellow neoliberals still say is impossible. Labour was growing the private sector (mainly in London) at the same time as it was growing the public sector (often outside London). This politically isolated the Conservatives very effectively for a long time, largely because the City, the Institute of Directors and the Confederation of British Industry, theoretically the people whose interests the Tories represented, were the great cheerleaders of Labour's policy on economic migration.

But yet again, Labour couldn't crow too much. "Better at being Tory than the Tories" was not a vote-winning slogan. Yet it was true. The City of London, its wants pandered to, was becoming the largest, most important financial centre in the world, even as the divide between rich and poor, north and south, haves and have-nots was widening. Britain had become so divided that consequences incredibly damaging to one group of people were fantastically advantageous to others. And anything that was advantageous to the wealthy was unchallengeable, as long as taxes were rolling in.

The most obvious of these polarising results is house prices. If you've got a house in London, you have somewhere to live that is also, by happy chance, making a good deal more money each year than the average salary, due only to its continued existence. Out-of-control inflation is generally not considered to be good economic news. Yet, the previous government, like this one, sees rising house prices as the goose that lays the golden eggs. How can they be so blind?

Rising house prices, and a lack of social housing, make London an impossible place even to park your bike, let alone wander off to get a job and a place to live. Only if a young British person's parents live in London, or have a place in London (and why wouldn't they, if they can afford it, London property being such an excellent investment?), does that person stand any chance of making a life in the capital. Of course, since many industries – thanks to lack of union power – now rely on internships for recruitment, getting a job sometimes entails a long period of working for free. So class and regional divisions are ramped up yet more. On it goes.

The most terrible consequence of Labour's political dishonesty is that it provides a foundation for yet more. By failing to admit the extent to which they did the bidding of the private sector – not just on regulation, but by allowing the City to dictate, say, immigration policy, then dressing it up as something more socially progressive – Labour, post-crash, had no defence against the Conservative argument that it was public spending that had caused the crash. Labour was proud of its record on public spending, far more proud than it was of sitting on its hands while house-price inflation ran riot, for example.

Public spending was something that Labour was prepared to admit to, so when the crash came, there Labour was, caught redhanded – except that the real blame lay with Labour's more stealthy policies, policies which, at that late stage, it was politically impossible either to start explaining or apologising for.

But this painful process of explaining and apologising should start in earnest. By bowing to the logic of the free market without explaining that economic migration is simply part of that, Labour has allowed rightwing political rhetoric to continue preaching the lie that global free markets and economic migration are separate issues. Due to Labour's own lies-by-omission, organisations such as the English Defence League and Ukip have been able to flourish. But more urgently, those lies-by-omission have allowed the Conservatives to maintain their own delusions about the efficiency and moral goodness of free markets.

If Jack Straw really thinks that allowing people from Poland and Hungary to work in Britain was a "spectacular mistake", I dread to imagine the level of hyperbole he would have to achieve in order to describe the magnitude of the many mistakes his government made, of which that one was just a tiny detail.

The Government’s shameful scapegoating of immigrants

by Yasmin Alibhai Brown in The Independent

The Home Office is on a mission to intimidate Kipling’s “fluttered folk and wild” abroad and in the UK.

It is proud to be institutionally racist, very proud indeed. It has figures to show just how many bloody foreigners have been dealt with and what awaits the others. In June a new £3,000 bond was imposed on visitors from “high risk” nations in Asia and Africa; overseas students from those continents are actively discouraged from coming to our universities. Blatantly discriminatory rules have been instituted; international treaties and human rights legislation are neglected. The nation is dishonoured again by its keepers.

On Friday, on BBC News, Home Office bully boys were shown rounding up dark-skinned folk in specially targeted multiracial localities. In Southall in  west London, outraged Asian women defied them and objected volubly. Some were from Southall Black Sisters, a collective which, for years, has defended gender and minority rights. I recognised some  – grey-haired now, but still full of indignation and passion. In previous decades they demonstrated against virginity tests for Asian women, carried out to check if they were really brides-to-be. And again against the law which denied foreign-born wives legal status for years. And again when the National Front marched through Southall.

The scenes on TV reminded me of South Africa’s pass laws. I broke down and cried inconsolably. Before this latest official  persecution, Home Office vans were spotted in inner-city areas with nasty signs telling illegal migrants to go home. The messages subliminally warned all people of colour not to get too comfortable, to assume we were safe. We who came to stay jumped through hoops of fire to gain some acceptance. But now we know it can be withdrawn. Nasty vans were not sent to areas where Australians and white South Africans hang out. The  barrister  Geoffrey Robertson, his novelist wife Kathy Lette or MP Peter Hain were not made to feel uninvited and unwanted. When will our governments stop pissing on non-white migrants? Will they ever? My kids look like me – I fear for them too.

Ukip’s Nigel Farage, now presenting himself as Mr Nice Guy, has criticised these Home Office initiatives. More bizarrely still, the Tory strategist, Australian Lynton Crosby, has privately expressed his own doubts about the vans. This is the controversial political operator who, in his own country, and the UK has used immigration as an election doodlebug. I told him at a party how much I detested these campaigns and he listened, unmoved, blasé. So why the reservations now about the hardline Home Office tactics? Is it part of Crosby’s cunning plan to disable Ukip? Or have even these unreconstructed men sensed that a line has been crossed?

London has just tried to relive the glorious multiracial Olympics. Oh how our PM and his mates loved all that colour and pizzazz. And all the while his Government forces landlords, medical staff and schools to check passports and exclude those who can’t prove they belong. Immigration detention centres, run by private companies, treat inmates like vermin. Not many white faces in there. Western Europeans have always migrated and still do, as if that is their birthright. But the movement of people from elsewhere is a threat, a menace, even when millions are dispossessed by Western geopolitical games and economic interests.

In our times, we are not permitted to call racism by its name when debating immigration. That discourse is strictly regulated. Immigration is now allegedly completely decoupled from prejudices. Furthermore, it is claimed that Britons are not “allowed” to talk about immigration for fear of being branded “racist”. When did we not talk about the “problems of immigration”? Has there been a single year when known public individuals did not express “brave” views against migration or express xenophobia? Today neo-Powellite nationalists like David Goodhart are lauded as messiahs and the twinned Frank Field and Nicholas Soames regurgitate the messages of anti-immigration lobbyists with enviable access to the media. Britons who are fair and open-minded are appalled by the ceaseless hostility towards incomers. They daren’t speak out because of the overpowering pressure to follow the populist line. Trolls are out to get us too.

The Tories always use the race/immigration card. They don’t even pretend inclusion any more. Shawn Bailey, the Tory black “street” mascot in Downing Street has been dumped; Sayeeda Warsi is back in the ghetto. Meanwhile New Labour, even while encouraging immigration, did not defend it and instead assuaged small island protectionists. But the most culpable are the black and Asian MPs and peers, an unprecedented number now in power, soon to be joined by Doreen Lawrence. So far hardly any have spoken out about the Home Office travesties. Those Southall women had more guts. They could form a cross-party faction and expose the racist immigration policies. Together they would be strong enough to make an impact. But the MPs and peers sit tight, treacherously let the state repeat and exceed the iniquities of the past suffered by their own people, families, possibly themselves. I think I am going to cry again.

In truth bosses want cheap labour - People are told EU migrants steal jobs

 

The Conservatives are determined to be seen as the anti-Europe party, but an EU referendum that took Britain out of the union would be a disaster for the party

• 
• • Deborah Orr
  • The Guardian, Friday 17 May 2013 20.01 BST

Island nation … leaving the EU won’t isolate the UK. It will isolate England. Photograph: David Parry / PA Wire

Having a referendum on membership of the EU is a bit like having a referendum on membership of the moon's gravitational pull. You can vote to leave it all you like, but it will still be there, exerting the natural influence of its mass. Even China has EU regulations on its statute book, because it needs them to trade with Europe. The best that can be said of a possible withdrawal is that at last Westminster will have only itself to blame. Oh, and of course there will be an end to the regular convulsions of drama over the possibility of having a referendum on membership of the EU. Which admittedly does sound nice.

The poor old Tories – Europe drives them so bonkers. They're like cartoon characters whose eyes turn into pound-signs, except their pupils are shaped like crosses, for votes. The Conservatives are keen to be seen as the anti-Europe party. But Ukip has stolen their thunder. This is a disaster for the Tories for two reasons.

First, it destroys a carefully cultivated Tory image, whereby they can make tough-looking gestures to play to the grassroots.

Second, it destroys the second most important electoral advantage the Conservatives have left (the most important being the first-past-the-post voting system). The coalition has weakened the left's long-standing electoral problem, which was that the leftish vote was split while the rightish vote was a one-stop shop. Ukip has provided a protest vote for disenchanted Tories, just as – up until the moment when David Cameron promised Nick Clegg a rose garden – the Lib Dems provided an alternative to Labour. Now, they are more likely, if anything, to provide another alternative to the Conservatives. Oh, the irony.

Beyond party politics, however, there is not much logic in Conservative Europhobia. In fact, it runs contrary to many of the Conservatives' other long-cherished beliefs. How can people who were so against devolution for the UK's member states be so determinedly in favour of devolving away from Brussels? That's an easy one, isn't it? Devolution within the UK takes power away from Westminster, while leaving the EU will, the poor darlings imagine, give it more. But Scotland will want to stay in Europe, as Nigel Farage's short shrift in Edinburgh this week demonstrated. Wales will want to stay in Europe. Northern Ireland will want to stay in Europe. Withdrawal from the EU won't isolate the UK. It will isolate England, making lukewarm support for full independence, especially in Scotland, a great deal more attractive. The Conservatives, despite their interminable resentment of Europe, really haven't thought this through.

More intractable is the Conservatives' supposed commitment to globalisation and free trade, and supposed horror of protectionism and restrictive practices. Europe, for all its reputation as some kind of dastardly machine for the promotion of crypto-communism, is really just a hothouse environment in which the promised fruits of neoliberalism are forced into ripening more quickly. Whether or not it was right to huddle under the glass with so much of the rest of the continent (and at the risk of labouring a metaphor to death), the process of hardening off out in the global garden is likely to kill a few tubers.

Not Conservative tubers, though. The most deep hypocrisy of the right is seen in its attitude to immigration. The Conservatives are keen to promote themselves as the anti-immigration party, and shake their heads in disgust over the mass immigration that took place under Blair and Brown. However, Labour policy on immigration dates back to the "prawn cocktail offensive", under which New Labour persuaded the City of London that it would look after its interests. Look after them, Labour did, not only turning a blind eye to all kinds of tax dodges, but also obliging the Confederation of British Industry and the Institute of Directors, both of which are institutions stuffed with Tories whose political views took a poor second place to their passion for keeping wages down. Were the Tories to manage to get a referendum on Europe, win it, and put a curb on EU immigration, then, yes, there would be British jobs for British workers, probably alongside a nice non-EU regulation setting the minimum wage at the same level as universal benefit in order to make employing someone pay. People are told that immigrants stole their jobs. In truth, it was employers who wanted a ready supply of workers unused to the living conditions that it took the second world war for the ordinary people of Britain to achieve. The goal of neoliberal globalisation is supposedly a redistribution of wealth around the planet. It also, as the EU itself is discovering, redistributes poverty.

There can be no doubt that the EU is not an entirely successful experiment. It most definitely went too far, too fast. Certainly, there can be few people in Britain who are not now relieved to be outside the eurozone. But, even within Britain one can see the trouble with having disparate parts of the country, with disparate economic needs, all dancing to the same economic tune. Only too well.

The truth is that what's needed is for devolved and local government to be strengthened, and given more fiscal powers. But although the Conservatives like to proclaim their hatred of centralised and distant government, they are not too keen on that. Again, of course, it's all about power. If local government were to become more powerful, then Westminster would find itself either the government of the home counties or simply a mini-EU, passing legislation that allowed the regions of Britain to trade fairly and equally; legislation that would no doubt look uncannily similar to EU legislation. Because it's not the EU that is an extra layer of government that no one really needs – it's Westminster. The European parliament is an institution with a democratic deficit precisely because it exists only to enact what the heads of member states have agreed. Local government in Britain is similarly hampered by the directives of Westminster. Across Europe, national governments are struggling against the advent of their own irrelevance, desperate to stop the leak of any more power either above or below, even as countries fall to government by technocrat. The nation state itself is in crisis, and the denizens of Westminster are the people least likely to see or accept that.

A Britain outside Europe would be governed by multinationals, who would be attracted by low taxes and a population compelled to work, however disabled or ill or elderly they may be. Of course, the Conservatives are keen on a referendum. But they fail to understand that if they got their way, it would be a pyrrhic victory. All those who believe that mass immigration was some sort of politically correct leftwing conspiracy would soon get wise to the fact that they'd been had. In the end, if the Conservatives got their wish, and took Britain out of Europe, they'd be finished.

For Indian women in America, a sea of broken dreams

By Narayan Lakshman in the Hindu

When Pavitra’s Delta Air Lines flight flew into Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on a crisp blue July morning back in 2008, her heart pounded with excitement. Though it was a dangerous time economically and few companies were hiring, her husband landed a good job with a major IT firm and was assigned to projects across the U.S.

Pavitra, who had a bachelor’s degree from India and some work experience, had made a careful plan to embark on a course of higher studies — permitted under her current H-4 visa — and then seek employment. It was all coming together for her, it seemed. But she was in for a rude shock.

Within months of her settling down in a strange new land, she found out that not only were higher studies a financially draining option, given the lack of funding for spouses of H1-B visa-holders, she was also unable to pursue a graduate programme because with her three-year Indian undergraduate degree she was not considered eligible for graduate enrolment in the U.S.

With a paucity of viable alternatives, she turned her attention to the job market, an effort that proved even more futile. “I tried applying for a job but as soon as the recruiters came to know of my H-4 visa status, they would say they do not sponsor H1-B,” Pavitra said.

Matters then took a turn for the worse. Trapped in a labyrinth of visa-related restrictions, she began to feel she had no purpose in life. “I started going through depression, loss of enthusiasm and self-esteem. I started having chronic migraines every day,” she said. As migraine attacks went, hers were so severe that she could not even open her eyes, often threw up, and had chills.

“I had to call my husband every day at work, saying I am ill and he used to come home running. Life for him was very difficult, juggling between work commitments and my doctor visits,” she said. He was unable to look for better work opportunities since he was worried and wanted to look after her.

Now in the midst of a mind-numbing routine of hobbies, she asks herself: “Where am I in my life today? Still a dependent, still need to start my career fresh at this age.” And her future looks cloudy too, as it is a shaky prospect to start and raise a family on a single income, and whenever she tries to get back in the job market, “getting back my self-confidence, independence, self-esteem... [is] going to be a struggle for me.”

If Pavitra’s situation were an idiosyncratic case of misery in the wilderness of American suburbia, it may not be a collective concern. Yet that is not the case and, to be specific, 1,00,000 to 1,50,000 people, mostly women, from India, other parts of Asia and the rest of the world are stuck in this deadening reality of joblessness and social isolation, rapid erosion of self-esteem, and attendant toxic malfunctions in their personal lives.

Let’s step back and consider the facts and numbers in question.

The issue of H-4’s debilitating impact on its holders is not a new one. In fact, writing on cases of abuse of H-4 women by their H1-B husbands in The Hindu in 2008, Shivali Shah, a New York-based lawyer, explained that the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service does not provide H-4 spouses with work authorisation until well into the green card process.

There is no prospect of working on the H-4 visa per se. The State Department’s guidance on a range of non-immigrant visas notes: “A person who has received a visa as the spouse or child of a temporary worker may not accept employment in the U.S. with the exception of spouses of L-1 visa-holders.”

“Therefore, these women are financially dependent on their husbands for anywhere from two to nine years,” Ms. Shah pointed out, adding “H-4 women are middle-class and have status in the U.S., but immigration laws can make them indigent and undocumented at the whims of their husbands.”

So how many individuals are affected by this law? Since around 2004, the USCIS has set the annual cap for H1 visas issued at approximately 65,000. Even if one were to conservatively assume that 50 per cent of these visa-holders were married, it suggests close to 32,500 spouses or partners on H-4 visas a year.

Given that the H-4 visa is often of six-year validity, it would not be far off the mark to assume that there are well over 1,00,000 individuals stuck with this visa, possibly over 1,50,000. Further, the most recent USCIS data quoted in a study by the Brookings Institution suggest that 58 per cent of the H-1B visas are granted to Indians. This means that well over 50,000 Indians are in this position.

This includes only H-1 spouses. There is a host of other visa-types, for example, I-visas for journalists, all of which are subject to the USCIS work ban for their spouses — except L-1s, usually issued for senior executives who are on intra-company transfers from other nations. If the spouses of visa-holders in these categories were also counted, the number of frustrated, but often talented, individuals unable to work would perhaps grow exponentially.

To truly come to grips with the intensity of the problem faced by individuals trapped in the H-4 visa quagmire, a glimpse into the corrosive nature of the visa’s work restrictions is useful.

Rashi Bhatnagar, a H-4 visa-holder in the U.S. who was willing to have her real name used in this story — all others have been changed to respect privacy concerns — set up a Facebook group called ‘H-4 visa, a curse,’ after facing the deadening reality of joblessness, having enjoyed years of a successful career in India. Though she had a master’s degree from India, she had numerous doors of opportunity slammed on her in the U.S. after she had to relocate to this country to join her IT-worker husband.

However, Rashi counts herself among the fortunate few, whose spouses have a senior role, some leverage with their employer and hence some hope for flexibility, such as an early or expedited green card application. For most other “H-4s,” the mathematics of the waiting time for the right to work is debilitating, killing off their most productive work years from their late twenties to late thirties.

In the EB2 category of temporary, non-immigrant workers, a H-4 visa spouse would typically wait for six years before a green card application is made and then potentially another six years for the issuance of the green card. This makes a total of around 12 years, time spent languishing in the aisles of Walmart, making small-talk with vendors on street corners, engaged in the soul-destroying household chores and the limited joys of child-rearing.

In the EB3 category, the six-year wait for the green card process initiation is compounded by an even longer eight-12 year wait for the green card itself, requiring the H-4 visa-holders to hold their life in suspended animation for a staggering 14-18 years. Over the passage of such a length of time, all hope of resuscitating one’s passion to pursue a meaningful career is likely to be extinguished, with only a sense of lonely desperation left in its wake.

Part 2

To better understand the impact of the U.S.’ H-4 visa, the non-working visa given to the spouse of a work-authorised H-1B visa holder, The Hindu conducted a limited survey via a Facebook page that is a portal for H-4 visa holders. Along with the administrator of that page, Rashi Bhatnagar, who is herself on an H-4 visa, respondents were asked about the circumstances they found themselves in after they arrived in the U.S.

The responses not only hinted at a wide range of personal and health setbacks for female Indian H-4 visa holders but also testified to this visa’s impact on those from other nations, grown children of H-4 visa holders and, in some rare cases, male H-4 visa holders.

Take the case of Kathy, who used to be Senior Principal at a firm in the United Kingdom. After she and her children moved to the U.S. to join her husband, they had to put their oldest daughter through college with absolutely no access to financial aid because they were not permanent citizens of the U.S.

To make matters worse, when her daughter finished college she found herself, like her mother, stuck at home and unable to earn a living using the skills acquired at university. “She sits in her room all day, on her own,” Kathy worried, adding that her daughter had few friends and got very depressed.

Kathy herself fared poorly and it took a drastic toll on her health. Initially she and her daughters had private health insurance, but after she was diagnosed with a pineocytoma, or non-malignant brain tumour, she was dropped from her insurance. Apart from the compelling case that such instances make for reform of the H-4 visa restrictions, they underscore the need for the sort of health insurance reform that President Barack Obama has pushed through. As for Kathy, she and her daughter have no health insurance, no prospect of working and face a daily routine of social isolation and despondence.

Another striking case that the survey revealed was of Rahul, a male H-4 visa holder who followed his IT-professional wife to the U.S. For him, too, the stark reality of U.S. employers’ unwillingness to sponsor an H-1B struck home after many months of a frustrating job search. Cut off from friends and family and no longer the sociable, buoyant person he used to be, Rahul turned to alcohol — at a heavy cost. Caught in a downward spiral of depression, he attempted suicide several times. “I hurt myself very badly during one of these attempts and had to be hospitalised after calling 911,” he said. However, he showed resilience and tried to bounce back from that low point. He returned to India to change his field from sales and marketing and gain a greater IT focus. He even found work in a U.S. firm’s India office in the hope that the firm would apply for a work visa for him.

“Unfortunately the recession hit in 2008 and the company did not do well,” said Rahul. He had to resign himself to the prospect of staying on in India and battling the spectre of alcoholism that had arisen once again, not to mention thoughts of depression and suicide. Meanwhile, his wife and three-year-old child live out their lives in the U.S. without him.

Among most respondents to the Facebook survey, health issues arising from depression and a sense of hopelessness appeared to be common. One respondent, Joyita, said she was constantly visiting neurologists and physical therapists for treatments related to psychological turmoil “which have their roots in H-4 visa’s work restrictions”.

Even where physical symptoms were absent a sense of utter despair replaced the initial optimism that these spouses of H-1B workers had felt. Shauravi, for example, felt that she could not afford an MBA or other professional degree given the lack of funding opportunities. But the alternative, to “be at home for whole day without working and be very dependent to my husband ... has made me very weak just thinking about it”.

Another respondent, Ketaki, worried that the only degree she could afford was of no interest to her and lack of friends and complete dependence on her husband in a new environment had made her lose her self-confidence. Similarly Lavanya, who left a senior post in the Indian government, found herself struggling to keep up her self-esteem when she could not find any job, not even one that required far lower skill levels than those she possessed.

For several survey respondents their vulnerability had led to abuse within the marriage, in some cases resulting in complete familial breakdown. Priya told The Hindu that after suffering numerous beatings by her husband, she managed to file a police complaint and had him arrested. However, because as an H-4 spouse she had no access to bank accounts and other paperwork — all of which were controlled by her husband — she was unable to afford an attorney to fight the case. She was left praying for a denial of visa renewal for her husband for she had no other means to reach out to her family back in India.

A similar case was Poorvi who, despite overcoming financial hurdles and completing a U.S. academic degree, faced marital trouble, loneliness and spousal abuse that ultimately led to divorce.

The severity of personal problems faced by individuals in this position begs the question of why the spouses of H-1B, I, and a range of other visa holders have been denied the right to work, while L-1 visa holders’ spouses were granted the right some time ago,

Sheela Murthy, an expert on immigration law, told The Hindu that there had occasionally been talk in official circles about granting H-4 visa holders the right to work, but “that was before the economy tanked”. Apart from the sheer political pressure that any government would face if it tries to push through such a reform, it could also lead to some uncomfortable questions as to why the spouses of other visa holders — including the A, B, C, D, G, and F visas — could not similarly be given the right to work .

The H-4 case may be a “strong but not a winning argument”, said Ms. Murthy, noting that another fact pertinent to this case was that India ranks among the top 10 nationalities of illegal immigrants in the U.S.

On lobbying the White House and Capitol Hill for relaxing the work restrictions, she said: “I do not think we have been able to make the case clearly and strongly, with statistics and numbers, and have a very limited and strong message, to take up the drumbeat that gets both Houses of Congress on board.” There was still something missing in the strategy and articulation, she suggested.

In the end there is a complex argument to be made that must consider all of the difficult questions relating to the politics of post-recession unemployment, the plight of spouses of other visa holders, and the broader context of comprehensive immigration reform and illegal immigration.

Yet even as the weight of these unanswered questions stalls progress on H-4 visa reform, thousands of individuals in this category will continue to live with their broken dreams.

(Concluded)

Brain drain or not, the right to emigrate is fundamental

S A Aiyer

Socialists like health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad won't admit it, but they rather liked the Berlin Wall. They think it's morally right to keep citizens captive at home, unable to migrate for better prospects. Azad has proposed not a brick wall but a financial one: he wants all doctors going to the US for higher studies to sign a financial bond that will be forfeited if they do not return.




Sorry, but the right to emigrate is fundamental. States can curb immigration, but not emigration. The UN declaration of human rights says in Article 13, "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own." Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights incorporates this right into treaty law. It says: "Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own. The above-mentioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those provided by law necessary to protect national security, public order, public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others." The public health exception relates to communicable diseases, not a shortage of doctors.



Hitler didn't give German Jews the right to migrate. Communist East Germany thought it had a right to shoot citizens attempting to escape over the Berlin Wall. The Soviet Union mostly had strict curbs on emigration, but allowed the mass exit of its Jews to Israel after the 1967 war in which Moscow backedthe Arabs. Moscow imposed a "diploma tax" on emigrants with higher education, to claw back the cost of their education. Israel often picked up the bill, leading to sneers that the Soviet Union was selling Jews. International protests obliged Moscow to abolish the tax.



Like the Soviets, Azad wants to claw back sums spent on educating doctors. Like East Germany, he seeks to erect exit barriers by denying Indian doctors a 'no objection certificate' to practice in the US. The right to emigrate does not enter his calculations: Azad does not want this azaadi!



Many Indians will back him, saying the brain drain imposes high costs on India. Well, all principles have some costs, but that's no reason to abandon them. Azad wants curbs just on doctors, but the principle applies to all Indians. Would India be better off if it had kept captive at home economists like Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati? Three Indian migrants to the US have won Nobel Prizes-Gobind Khurana (medicine) Chandra Shekhar (physics) and V Ramakrishnan (chemistry). Had they been stopped from leaving India, would they have ever risen to such heights?



Cost estimates of the brain drain are exaggerated or downright false. Remittances from overseas Indians are now around $60 billion a year. NRI bank deposits bring up to $30 billion a year. Together, they greatly exceed India's entire spending on education (around $75 billion). Even more valuable are skills brought back by returnees.



Remittances skyrocketed only after India made it easier in the 1990s for students to go abroad. One lakh per year go to the US alone. The number of US citizens of Indian origin has tripled since 1990 to three million, and the US has replaced the Gulf as the main source of remittances.



The brain drain has anyway given way to brain circulation. Youngsters going abroad actually have very limited skills. But they hugely improve their skills abroad, mainly through job experience, so returnees bring back much brainpower.



Indian returnees were relatively few during the licence-permit raj, because omnipresent controls stifled domestic opportunities. But economic liberalization has created a boom in opportunities of every sort, so more Indians are returning. Azad should note that the fast expansion of private hospitals has attracted back many doctors. Scientists, software engineers, managers and professionals of all sorts have flocked back. This carries a simple policy lesson: create opportunity, not barriers.



Millions of Indians will not come back. Yet they do not constitute a drain. They have become huge financial assets for India through remittances and investments.



They have also become a foreign policy asset. Three million Indian Americans now occupy high positions in academia, Wall Street, business and professions. They have become important political contributors, and two have entered politics and become state governors (Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley). Indian Americans have become a formidable lobby, helping shift US policy in India's favour, to Pakistan's dismay.



However, these are secondary issues. The main issue is human freedom. The UN declaration of human rights recognizes the right to migrate. This fundamental freedom has more value by far than the financial or foreign policy value of the diaspora. Never forget this in the brain drain debate.

Some Myths Work

 

UP and Sindh, joined by history, divided by secular democracy

 

Tahir Mehdi (The writer works for Punjab Lok Suhag, a research and advocacy group in Pakistan, with an interest in understanding governance and democracy. He also writes a regular blog in Dawn.com)

The two regions of the subcontinent, Uttar Pradesh in India and Sindh in Pakistan, have both a unique bond and a disconnect. First, the bond: a huge number of Muslims from Uttar Pradesh migrated in 1947 to Sindh. People with Urdu as their mother tongue comprise 21 per cent of Sindh—every fifth inhabitant of Sindh belongs to second or third generation migrants from India, in particular from UP. References to forefathers’ villages, towns or jagirs still moisten many eyes and inspire nostalgia. They all had migrated willingly or unwillingly in pursuit of a peaceful society and prosperity. Their children’s textbooks kept on reminding them over next decades that the cherished dream could never be realised with Hindus roaming around and dominating everything.

The same Uttar Pradesh recently elected members for its 403-seat state assembly. Muslims still live in that province that has a population higher than Pakistan. UP’s population, according to the 2011 census, is 199.6 million. Of these, 19.8 per cent are Muslims. Or, every fifth inhabitant of present-day UP is a Muslim. Muslim candidates were serious contenders for around half of the general assembly seats. In fact, 68 of them went on to become MLAs; 64 Muslims stood second in the constituencies they contested in.

Almost every party fielded Muslim candidates. The Samajwadi Party’s Adil Sheikh defeated assembly speaker Sukhdev Rajbhar, former minister Nand Gopal Gupta was drubbed by SP’s first-timer Haji Parvez Ahmed and four-time BJP winner Inder Dev Singh lost to Mohammad Ghazi. No one cried foul, no allegations of rigging were hurled, no conspiracy theories of undermining Hindutva made the rounds and, above all, no one smelt the infamous ‘foreign hand’ behind the defeat of caste Hindus at the hands of ‘pariah’ Muslims.

The Samajwadi Party raised its tally from 97 (in 2007) to more than a simple majority of 224; the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party crashed from 206 seats to a humble 80. The massive reversal was caused by a four per cent swing in votes, and critics attribute SP’s ascendancy to winning the Muslim vote. Remember that UP is where the capital of Urdu culture, Lucknow, is located; so also the epicentre of Hindutva politics, Ayodhya, and the hometown of secular Indian nationalism (read Congress), Rae Bareli. It’s here that minority Muslim voters have so decisively swung political fortunes. But we were always told that in a democracy where Hindus outnumbered us, we would be forced to live miserable lives on the margins. I was flabbergasted. Does it not turn our history into a farce?

I am not saying that everything is exceptionally bright across the border. People in India too face mammoth challenges—but wait, I think I should not be apologetic about what I want to say and subdue my argument before actually forwarding it, to avoid being labelled unpatriotic. I better say it loud and clear.

Thousands of Hindus migrated from Sindh to India after Partition and are spread all over India. Today, many are prosperous. But, willingly or unwillingly, a few hundred thousand did not migrate. Non-Muslims in Sindh are around 9 per cent of the population, or half the percentage of Muslims in UP. Have you ever heard of a non-Muslim contesting elections and winning too?

They couldn’t even think of such a feat till 2002, when non-Muslims were corralled into reserved seats under the separate electorate system, while Muslim candidates vied for their co-religionists’ votes alone. Two elections ago, we moved to the joint electorate system; since then, only one Hindu candidate for a national assembly seat has polled votes in thousands—Mahesh Kumar, a Pakistan People’s Party nominee. He lost to Arbab Zakaullah of the Pakistan Muslim League by a margin of over a hundred thousand. Rajveer Singh, a Pakistan Muslim League-Functional candidate for the provincial seat of Umerkot, too stood a distant second to the PPP’s Ali Mardan Shah. Dr Daya Ram of the PPP is the only Hindu elected on a provincial seat to date.

That is the disconnect between Sindh and UP. One’s faith in democracy is unwavering, while we have heaped scorn over it for its inability to deliver, and instead have been beating dead horses hoping it would take us to a cherished future. We were told that democracy doesn’t work for us Muslims. It is alien to our culture, and comes to fruition when pollinated by secularism alone, which is heretic. Let me confess today: if being secular means having faith in democracy, I profess it, as I have seen it work miracles.

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China's richest keep firm eye on exit door

By Olivia Chung

HONG KONG - "Get rich - then get out" is the life message being grasped by China's wealthiest citizens two decades after former leader Deng Xiaoping supposedly declared that "to get rich is glorious".

About 60% of rich Chinese people intend to migrate from China, according to a report jointly released by the Hurun Report, which also publishes an annual China rich list, and the Bank of China. A separate study by US-based Bain & Company and China Merchants Bank in April of 2,600 high-net worth individuals - those who hold more than 10 million yuan (US$1.6 million) in individual investable assets (excluding primary residences and assets of poor liquidity) - found that about 60% of those interviewed had completed immigration applications to other countries or had plans to do so.

About 14% of the rich Chinese people, each of whom has a net asset of more than 60 million yuan, said they had either already moved overseas or applied to do so, according to the Hurun findings, which were based on one-on-one interviews with 980 rich Chinese people in 18 mainland cities from May to September.

Another 46% said they planned to emigrate within three years, variously citing higher-quality education available for their children overseas, better healthcare, concerns about the security of their assets on the mainland and hopes for a better life in retirement.

The most favorable destinations by rich Chinese is the US, with 40% of respondents claiming it was their first choice, followed by Canada and Singapore. Encouraging them in their quest, the United States continues to lower its threshold for businesspersons’ immigration.

Some 70% of the 4,218 visas issued under the US Immigrant Investor Program, known as EB-5 visas, issued in 2009 were applicants from China, data from the US Department of State show. In 2010, more than 70,000 Chinese applicants obtained permanent residency in the US, accounting for 7% of total applicants, placing second behind only Mexican applicants, according to the US Department of Homeland Security.

Canada allocated more than 1,000 of its targeted 2,055 immigrant investors to Chinese people in 2009 and last year, 2,020 Chinese applicants obtained permanent residency in Canada through investment, accounting for 62.6% of the total immigrant investors to Canada, data from Citizenship and Immigration Canada showed.

Kathy Cheng, an investment immigration consultant based in Shenzhen, next to Hong Kong, attributed the popularity of the US to it not having a cap on its investment visa program. The minimum amount required for investment immigration to the US is $500,000, and among all destinations that offer investment immigration, the US is alone in not imposing a quota.

“Recently, the US is trying to overhaul the immigration laws to attract rich or high-skilled foreigners. The moves have attracted the attention of some wealthy Chinese, who can afford to live elsewhere," she said to Asia Times Online by telephone.

Two US senators, Democratic Chuck Schumer and Republican Mike Lee, last month introduced a bill that would give residence visas to foreigners who spend at least US$500,000 to buy houses in the country. The proposal would allow foreigners immigrating to the United States to bring a spouse and any children under the age of 18. The provision would create visas that are separate from current programs so as to not displace anyone waiting for other visas.

The US Ambassador to China, Gary Locke, the former US commerce secretary who took on his latest post in August, said the US will make its investment and commercial environment as open and appealing as possible to increase Chinese investment in the US to create more jobs for Americans, which is the foremost priority of the Barack Obama administration.

"We will help Chinese companies and entrepreneurs better understand the benefits and ease of investing in the US by establishing factories, facilities, operations and offices," Locke told US business leaders in Beijing in September.

In May, President Obama said the US needs to overhaul its immigration laws to secure high-tech foreign talent to address a shortages of scientists and experts in the high-technology sector. In the same month, the Obama administration extended the Optional Practical Training program to allow students graduating in fields that include soil microbiology, pharmaceuticals and medical informatics, to be able to find a job or work in the US for up to 29 months (instead of 12) after graduation.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said recently at a Council on Foreign Relations event in Washington, that to spur job growth, the US should allow foreign graduates from US universities to obtain green cards (permanent residency), ending caps on visas for highly skilled workers, and setting green-card limits based on the country's economic needs not an immigrant's family ties.

Of the 980 people interviewed by Hurun Report and the BOC, about 35% said they have assets overseas, which on an average accounted for 19% of their total assets; 32% of those surveyed said they have invested overseas with a view to emigrate and half said they did so mainly for the sake of their children's education.

A mainlander who has manganese mines in his home province of Guangxi said he was applying to emigrate to Canada from his home region in southeast Guangxi, mainly due to take advantage of better education overseas for his two-year-old son.

"An increasing number of parents in China prefer their children to receive education overseas instead of with the examination-oriented education system in China," said the mine owner, who asked not to be identified.

However, a source close to him said the mine owner had assets worth millions of dollars and "underground" businesses; given changeable government policies, emigration was the best way of protecting some of this wealth.

"Despite Beijing's currency rules, the wealthy have many ways to move their money out of the country. Besides, part of his money comes from smuggling, though his business is far smaller than Lai Changxing," said the source.

Lai Changxing was extradited to China from Canada in July after a 12-year exile there. He is expected to face charges for smuggling to a value of US$10 billion, bribery and tax evasion.

Under Beijing's capital rules, anyone leaving China can carry with them a maximum of 20,000 yuan (US$3,100) or the equivalent of US$5,000 in foreign currency. However, it is commonly known that wealthy Chinese are free to leave the country with briefcases full of cash.

Ye Tan, an independent economist and commentator in Beijing, said the growing gap between the rich and the poor in the mainland, which has aroused discontent among the less well off, has made some of the wealthy feel uncomfortable.

"The lack of security sense about the safety of their assets among Chinese wealthy is like a huge black cloud hanging over their heads," Ye was quoted as saying in the Hurun survey report.
China has 960,000 "yuan millionaires" with personal wealth of 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million) or more, according to the GroupM Knowledge - Hurun Wealth Report 2011. The figure is up 9.7% from a year earlier. China has 60,000 "super rich' with 100 million yuan or more, up 9% on a year earlier.

Average monthly income in China is only about 2,000 yuan, despite double-digit economic growth for about the past three decades.

China's Gini coefficient, a commonly used measure of wealth inequality, reached 0.47 in China last year, according to the National Development and Reform Commission, above the international warning level of 0.4, which is considered to be the level that could trigger social unrest.