If you want migration to work, look at the success stories

The “techies” include Kanwal Rekhi, founder of TiE, the India-US entrepreneurs club to foster startups; Vinod Khosla, the founder of Sun Microsystems and one of the most successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley and “company men” like Shantanu Narayen (Adobe) and Satya Nadella (Microsoft); the “healers” or the “medicine men” that include the polymath doctor of alternative medicine and mindfulness and best selling author Deepak Chopra; the younger but comparably gifted doctors, writers and researchers, Siddhartha Mukerjee, Atul Gawande and Abraham Verghese; the “influencers” or those that have impacted public policy — the scholar, journalist and CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria; the lawyer Neal Katyal, former Governor and President Trump’s Ambassador to the UN in his first term Nikki Haley, and “Gen Next” — a cluster of brilliant millennials who were born in America.

All the people profiled by Ahamed are supremely talented. They would have succeeded in any environment. But the accolades they have received did not fall like Manna from heaven. Their success is the result of familial support, education, hard work and an enabling environment. Fareed Zakaria talks of his mother as his rock of support in whatever he did which allowed him to explore options at will. Several point out that education provided them the confidence to circumvent the subtle and not-so-subtle barriers of caste, class, racial and religious prejudice that they faced in India and the US. For instance, Kanwal Rekhi narrates the insistence of investors to bring in a “White CEO” to manage the company he had founded. All confirm that Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour work rule is the sine qua non for their “genius”. And everyone acknowledges the debt of gratitude they owe to the enabling culture in the US that allowed them to realise their “genius”.

None of these individuals came to America through the “Dunki” route. Notwithstanding that, their stories are timely because migration is currently a front and centre subject of political debate. This is for numerically understandable reasons. Pope estimates that 5 per cent of America’s workforce is undocumented and illegal; that 2.5 million people crossed the Mexican-US border in 2023, up from 5,00,000 in 2022; and Europe received 3,80,000 illegals in 2023 — the highest number in over a decade. In consequence, governments have tightened border controls and the rules related to visas and asylum. Peremptory deportation in military aircraft is, however, still a Trump exclusive.

The irony, as explained by Pope, is that the current force of anti-immigration sentiment is happening “at the same time that immigration is becoming more essential”. She writes that “thirty of the largest economies in the world suffer from labour shortages and (that these) unfilled jobs cost an estimated $1.3 trillion in lost GDP in 2023 alone”. She lists several reasons for the imbalance between “legal migration and economic need” — the paucity of channels for legal access; the difficulty of accessing these channels; the spread of disinformation and criminal networks; the misalignment between labour market demand and visa issuance; the low priority accorded to “skills training to meet this demand” and the challenge of landing a job through “ethical, safe and legal pathways”. Leaders in both “source” and “destination” countries, she recommends, should collaborate to remove these systemic blockers.

It is in this effort to remove such blockers that Ahamed’s book acquires importance. Indian-Americans are the richest ethnic group in America with a per capita income of $1,00,000 compared to $75,000 for other Asians and $53,600 for the rest. This is based on a poll done by Pew in 2018. Further, the American Association of Physicians has estimated that 10 per cent of US doctors are Indian in origin. These statistics and other data confirm that Indian Americans across multiple domains are a valuable asset to the US and that they have enormous intellectual heft, financial resources, global networks and social influence.

Ahamed’s book brings to attention the role that this community can play in cracking the political conundrum of migration. Her narration suggests that the larger swathe of the Indian Americans and not just those profiled would be willing to leverage their talent and personal experience to help remove the systemic blockers identified by Pope. The responses of those interviewed conveys a subliminal awareness that had they confronted anti-immigrant sentiment that has engulfed the Western world they might have not got the breaks they did. Their talent would have prised open the door but they may not have been allowed in.

The search for a better future is an integral human impulse. It cannot be stopped. This is not to suggest illegal migration should be condoned; simply that force is a blunt instrument for correcting the present imbalance. “Migration can work for all” if governments in “source” and “destination” countries collaborate with successful immigrants to develop a “non-zero sum” proposition for those looking for better pastures and those determined to protect their nativist turf.

The writer is chairman and Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Social and Economic Progress