02-11-2009, 01:40 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Immigration boom ends</b>
pioneer.com
Rajeev Srinivasan
With the financial meltdown, the immigrantâs dream of making it big in a foreign land has begun to turn sour. Indians working abroad have started to feel the heat and are returning home in droves. <b>The worst-hit State is Kerala: Thousands of Keralites are being rendered jobless in the Gulf countries</b>
The relatively free movement of labour across borders for the last few decades has generally had a positive impact on many countries because of the large remittances sent home by expatriates. In India, Kerala has been the biggest beneficiary, its relative prosperity sustained by its sons and daughters toiling away in the Gulf countries or in hospitals around the world. But it looks like the global recession is beginning to seriously hurt international migration, and many migrants are being forced to go home again.
Immigration is a sensitive issue, and passions run high, often bringing out the worst in people: And racism surely is a part of it. <b>An Indian immigrant named Navtej Singh Sidhu was set on fire while sleeping on a park bench in Italy recently. Racist violence against Roma (or Gypsies) is increasing â although they have lived in Europe for centuries, they are discriminated against as outsiders and non-Whites. Russian skinheads have been convicted of killing 20 migrants â mostly non-Whites</b>.
Migration is cyclical: In the good times, people want to have outsiders come in and do the dirty, dangerous and difficult jobs they themselves disdain, but then they expect these gastarbeiter to disappear quietly when times get rough. That is easier said than done, as they have set down roots and their children have grown up in the host countries.
The Americans hit upon a perfect solution in the 19th century. They wanted Chinese labour for their drive westwards towards the Pacific, in particular for building the continent-spanning railroads. But they didnât want these people âpollutingâ their societies. So they were forced into ghetto Chinatowns. They were not allowed to own property, marry White women, or bring Asian wives. In other words: Come, toil, and die. <b>The Asian Exclusion Act was law. </b>
Indians too suffered â some found their hard-won US citizenship revoked, and in the Komagata Maru incident,<b> a shipful of immigrants from Punjab was turned away by the US and Canada</b>. Even more notorious was the decision to turn back a shipful of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. After immigration reform in 1962, though, Americans have been far more liberal.
Immigration has become a worldwide phenomenon in the last few decades. <b>Some 200 million people â that is around three per cent of the worldâs population â are now migrants. There are 20 million overseas Chinese and a comparable number of overseas Indians.</b> In several Western countries, immigrants account for more than 10 per cent of the population. And they send a lot of money home. According to the World Bank, remittances were around $ 283 billion in 2007. <b>Both India and China get around $ 30 billion each. </b>
No wonder people still migrate. The saga of Latin American immigration to the US â as in the tragic film El Norte â is well known. Despite the perils of dealing with brutal âcoyotesâ (smugglers who have been known to rob, rape and murder), sadistic border patrol agents and the constant fear of being deported, or worse, they still keep coming, wading across the Rio Grande. Or at least they used to, until recently. The Economist reports that emigration to the US from Mexico has slumped by 42 per cent in 2008 as compared to 2006. News of the recession has spread.
Historical data shows that previous recessions have dramatically reduced immigration into the US. After decades of high immigration, post-Depression America allowed practically nobody to immigrate legally. There was a notable spike in legal immigration in the 1990s, and levels have continued to be high in the 2000s. But this is likely to change. The welcome mat is getting a little frayed, and, with Democrats in power, protectionism is definitely in the air.
There are at least a couple of provisions in Americaâs $ 900 billion stimulus package that are protectionist â one deals <b>with H1-B visa holders, another was the now-diluted âbuy Americanâ provision in the Senate version of the Bill. The H1-B provisions, which were also diluted, mandate that companies that use such workers will be under far more scrutiny than before</b>.
In effect, and coupled with the noises being made in the wake of the Satyam scandal, this means that outsourcing itself is under attack, and that there should be âAmerican jobs for American citizensâ.<b> The H1-B techie can take it to mean, âWelcome to America, now go homeâ.</b>
Well-paid technology workers will be forced to return to India. This is in conjunction with significant problems in the Gulf countries, specifically Dubai, which doesnât have any oil. Construction, finance, trade â they are all taking a beating. Kerala is full of stories of people returning under economic duress.
<b>Apparently 40 Indian international schools have shut down; it is said that families are driving to the airport with all they can carry, abandoning their cars (and their car and home loans) and flying back to India. There are reports that 10,000 people have already left for India, and 55,000 construction-related jobs are in jeopardy.</b> The Harvard Business Review said last September that four million Keralites are in the Gulf countries and in 2007 their remittances accounted for <b>20 per cent of Keralaâs GDP. </b>
The story of Keralaâs mass migration has been described as the âKerala modelâ of development. But that is an exaggeration. It is just a money-order economy. Will Kerala show severe withdrawal symptoms? Furthermore, whatever will the Kerala economy â notoriously lax in creating jobs â do with all these able-bodied people who are returning home?
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pioneer.com
Rajeev Srinivasan
With the financial meltdown, the immigrantâs dream of making it big in a foreign land has begun to turn sour. Indians working abroad have started to feel the heat and are returning home in droves. <b>The worst-hit State is Kerala: Thousands of Keralites are being rendered jobless in the Gulf countries</b>
The relatively free movement of labour across borders for the last few decades has generally had a positive impact on many countries because of the large remittances sent home by expatriates. In India, Kerala has been the biggest beneficiary, its relative prosperity sustained by its sons and daughters toiling away in the Gulf countries or in hospitals around the world. But it looks like the global recession is beginning to seriously hurt international migration, and many migrants are being forced to go home again.
Immigration is a sensitive issue, and passions run high, often bringing out the worst in people: And racism surely is a part of it. <b>An Indian immigrant named Navtej Singh Sidhu was set on fire while sleeping on a park bench in Italy recently. Racist violence against Roma (or Gypsies) is increasing â although they have lived in Europe for centuries, they are discriminated against as outsiders and non-Whites. Russian skinheads have been convicted of killing 20 migrants â mostly non-Whites</b>.
Migration is cyclical: In the good times, people want to have outsiders come in and do the dirty, dangerous and difficult jobs they themselves disdain, but then they expect these gastarbeiter to disappear quietly when times get rough. That is easier said than done, as they have set down roots and their children have grown up in the host countries.
The Americans hit upon a perfect solution in the 19th century. They wanted Chinese labour for their drive westwards towards the Pacific, in particular for building the continent-spanning railroads. But they didnât want these people âpollutingâ their societies. So they were forced into ghetto Chinatowns. They were not allowed to own property, marry White women, or bring Asian wives. In other words: Come, toil, and die. <b>The Asian Exclusion Act was law. </b>
Indians too suffered â some found their hard-won US citizenship revoked, and in the Komagata Maru incident,<b> a shipful of immigrants from Punjab was turned away by the US and Canada</b>. Even more notorious was the decision to turn back a shipful of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. After immigration reform in 1962, though, Americans have been far more liberal.
Immigration has become a worldwide phenomenon in the last few decades. <b>Some 200 million people â that is around three per cent of the worldâs population â are now migrants. There are 20 million overseas Chinese and a comparable number of overseas Indians.</b> In several Western countries, immigrants account for more than 10 per cent of the population. And they send a lot of money home. According to the World Bank, remittances were around $ 283 billion in 2007. <b>Both India and China get around $ 30 billion each. </b>
No wonder people still migrate. The saga of Latin American immigration to the US â as in the tragic film El Norte â is well known. Despite the perils of dealing with brutal âcoyotesâ (smugglers who have been known to rob, rape and murder), sadistic border patrol agents and the constant fear of being deported, or worse, they still keep coming, wading across the Rio Grande. Or at least they used to, until recently. The Economist reports that emigration to the US from Mexico has slumped by 42 per cent in 2008 as compared to 2006. News of the recession has spread.
Historical data shows that previous recessions have dramatically reduced immigration into the US. After decades of high immigration, post-Depression America allowed practically nobody to immigrate legally. There was a notable spike in legal immigration in the 1990s, and levels have continued to be high in the 2000s. But this is likely to change. The welcome mat is getting a little frayed, and, with Democrats in power, protectionism is definitely in the air.
There are at least a couple of provisions in Americaâs $ 900 billion stimulus package that are protectionist â one deals <b>with H1-B visa holders, another was the now-diluted âbuy Americanâ provision in the Senate version of the Bill. The H1-B provisions, which were also diluted, mandate that companies that use such workers will be under far more scrutiny than before</b>.
In effect, and coupled with the noises being made in the wake of the Satyam scandal, this means that outsourcing itself is under attack, and that there should be âAmerican jobs for American citizensâ.<b> The H1-B techie can take it to mean, âWelcome to America, now go homeâ.</b>
Well-paid technology workers will be forced to return to India. This is in conjunction with significant problems in the Gulf countries, specifically Dubai, which doesnât have any oil. Construction, finance, trade â they are all taking a beating. Kerala is full of stories of people returning under economic duress.
<b>Apparently 40 Indian international schools have shut down; it is said that families are driving to the airport with all they can carry, abandoning their cars (and their car and home loans) and flying back to India. There are reports that 10,000 people have already left for India, and 55,000 construction-related jobs are in jeopardy.</b> The Harvard Business Review said last September that four million Keralites are in the Gulf countries and in 2007 their remittances accounted for <b>20 per cent of Keralaâs GDP. </b>
The story of Keralaâs mass migration has been described as the âKerala modelâ of development. But that is an exaggeration. It is just a money-order economy. Will Kerala show severe withdrawal symptoms? Furthermore, whatever will the Kerala economy â notoriously lax in creating jobs â do with all these able-bodied people who are returning home?
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