Long before Donald Trump, from the time I remember, migration to the United States was a rite of humiliation. Yet, it was exactly what the finest of my generation prepared for. Even the most dignified part of the process, which was the first step, where the bright applied for a student visa to go study something in science, had a lack of grace. An enduring memory of my childhood in Madras is the sight of a half-mile-long queue of the city’s cultural elite for their fateful visa interviews. They were the top rankers, IIT-ians and doctors and those who had got job offers, and they waited for hours in the hot sun (the consulate put up some sort of sunshadesonly years later). These were people who never had to wait too long in queues before, except perhaps at temples, here at the doorsteps of a non-vegetarian nation asking for a better life. For people like me, who had no prospects, and who passed by Mount Road in public buses, it was the first clear sight of what prospects really looked like — a wait outside the American consulate. And the lack of prospects didn’t seem so bad.

But when the bus turned a corner, a familiar fear filled all of us who chose to be artists, hence apparently were of no use to America and the “Free World” — if you were not standing in that queue with a science degree, what was to become of you?

That America is a “land of immigrants” is among the nonsensical aspects of language, on par with “the spirit of Mumbai.” America may have once accepted all sorts of people, but they and their descendants have no particular fondness for immigrants anymore. At a stretch, they only want the very rich and the talented among foreigners, and even among the talented, they only want those of whom there are not enough in America.

So, generations of Indians worked towards becoming useful to America. Maybe there was an innate humiliation in that. Seeking solace, Indians fooled themselves into believing that they were needed because Americans were ‘dumb. But one way or the other, many talented Indians figured that their place in that country was created because there were things Americans did not wish to do anymore, or did not wish to do at such a low cost. And their green cards did not always convert into citizenship. And now, their strategically conceived children who were made to be born on US soil, are in danger of losing their American citizenship, for that is what Trump has sworn to do. He is likely to fail, but it is hard to miss the layers of humiliation in going to a place where too many people wish to go.

For centuries only the poor and the persecuted migrated. It was an act of fleeing. Even the first European migrants to the United States were that, destitute or those who feared persecution. The elite of a society had no reason to move out. Then, in the mid-20th century, the upper classes of poor nations began to migrate to the United States. These were the cultural elite, if not the economic elite, who had an immense head start in their own society. So it was yet another opportunity life gifted them — migrate to a richer nation. There they found better prospects but at a high cost.

From being the masters in their hometowns, where they had to just leave home for the whole social pyramid to assemble beneath them, they became something else, which was defined by an expression Indians used commonly until about a decade ago. They had become “second-class citizens” in the United States. What Indians meant by this was that the American upper classes viewed them the way Indians used to view the lower classes back home.

Everywhere, the migrant is treated badly. The poor are equipped to take it well because they are treated badly even at home, by their own people, and treated poorly at many levels. The Indian upper class is not so suited for poor treatment, and every little discrimination stings them. It was in response to this that many of them began to love India more than Indians themselves back home. When an old elite feels slighted, it compensates by imagining great love for what once made it feel special and chosen. An unspoken history of the world is how America, where the elite of poor nations thronged, created the expat nationalism of several nations.

The immigrants also compensated through a melodramatic swag — that they succeeded in America because they were bright and “worked very hard” when compared to not only other immigrants but also whites and blacks. It is this foolish analysis that American politician Vivek Ramaswamy recently repeated in a recent Tweet, without openly venerating Indians: “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long… A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ… I know multiple sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity… and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates…”

The truth will reveal itself when you simply trace the lineage of people like him and others of “Indian origin” who claimed to have done well because they “worked hard.” The first wave of Indian immigrants did well chiefly because they were the whites where they came from; they had an enormous head start not only against other Asian immigrants but also the average resident American. Their children, in turn, were better placed to similarly harvest their luck. Yet, it is important for the Indian community to go on about their “hard work.” The preening of the lucky so often makes losers feel that it is all their fault when usually it is not.

The elite Indian community there wants America to make a distinction between it and Mexicans, and all other immigrants whom Trump loathes, including “the irregular” Indian immigrants. In this, they are a lot like Mohandas Gandhi in South Africa, long before his saintly phase, complaining to the British about native Africans not behaving themselves.

But then the ruling class of a society does not see people through statistics and their college degrees. It sees through physical appearances. And to them, all Indians look the same. In fact, all immigrants look the same.

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