The Indian Kerfuffle: Part 2

Part 1

White Americans who do not work with large numbers of foreigners have no idea the extent to which America is simply an economic opportunity zone for newcomers. They may, as Scott Adams expressed in some bewilderment on X, simply see their relatively nice Indian neighbors as decent, upstanding citizens who in no way detract from the neighborhood and appear to contribute to society in all the ways that matter. They’re earners, they pay taxes, and they comport themselves in civilized fashion. What more could one want?

Unbeknownst to the person good-naturedly waving to their Indian neighbor across manicured lawns, these well-groomed newcomers share a deeply-rooted sentiment with their rather more unkempt fellows swarming over the southern border. It is expressed in a refrain familiar to anyone who works in American industry. When queried about what they’re going to do with their time off, the response is, without fail, “I go to my country,” or “I go home.”

In case you had any doubts, “my country” is not the United States, and “home” is not their residence in America. And whether the foreigner is Somali, Guatemalan, Mexican, or Indian, there is fervor in those responses that indicates urgency and emotional attachment for the place they’re headed similar to that expressed by people who have been trapped, unhappy sojourners in an alien land. Further, the higher the immigrant’s earnings, the more often they indulge this need for “going home”—often for months at a time. In the manufacturing world, I’ve never seen any other ethnic group be approved for as much leave and for such lengthy periods of time as I do Indians.

Wider knowledge of this should help lay to rest any argument in favor of immigration that rests on the idea that our newcomers will be fine as long as they assimilate. Not only do most foreigners I encounter not regard their new residence as their real home, if they have the funds to support it, their ambition is to have their children spend time in their parents’ country of origin. They don’t want their progeny to lose the cultural connection. And again, the more money they have, the oftener this re-conditioning will occur.

You’d think the degree to which some of these places are shitholes would tarnish the immigrant’s memories of home, but it doesn’t. When I asked a young Eritrean who I was helping get certified on the forklift if he missed Africa, he teared up. Where had he been last before being transported to America? A Somali refugee camp. Similarly, when I queried a young El Salvadorian woman about what she missed from home (pre-Bukele), she stated quite emphatically “Everything!” When I pressed further and inquired what she liked about the US, she couldn’t have articulated this single word more clearly. “NOTHing.”

I think the “proposition nation” crowd does not understand what constitutes hiraeth for most people–what it is about home that tugs on the heartstrings and produces intense feelings of yearning for a specific place, no matter what it looks or smells like.

It also appears from immigrant behavior that what America offers the brown huddled masses, other than enough dollars to return “home,” isn’t enough to compete with any shithole in the world.