Opinion: Biden Or Trump, It's Still A Long Wait For Indian 'Dreamers' In US

For the 725,000 Indian immigrants living in the U.S. without a visa, the third-largest group of undocumented immigrants, President Joe Biden's recent executive order on immigration brings much-needed relief. It eases the path to employment and citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, or 'dreamers', that is, undocumented residents who were brought to the US as children. Around 2,000 of such "dreamers" in the US are Indian, and they are now eligible to apply for employment-based visas, like the H1-B. The executive order also lifted some application requirements for undocumented spouses of US citizens. However, for the nearly 1.6 million Indian citizens residing legally in the U.S., neither Biden nor Trump have delivered meaningful reforms, though both presidential candidates have indicated support for high-skilled, employment-based immigration from India.

Dip Patel is a "documented dreamer." Brought to the US as a child by Indian parents on H1-B visas, he faced self-deportation (voluntary departure from the country in advance of legal proceedings) at the age of 21 if he did not qualify for an employment visa. "When I was in high school, I realised that every decision and choice that I was making would impact my ability to remain in the country," he said. "Later, I would learn that this is something that's affecting not just me but thousands of people like me." 

Narrow Avenues

Patel founded Improve the Dream, a youth-led grassroots organisation, to advocate for around 2 lakh "documented dreamers" in the US, most of whom are Indian-American. These are immigrants like Patel who face self-deportation because their parents did not receive a green card - for which the wait could be 134 years - before they turned 21. The H1-B lottery, the primary pathway to remaining in the states for 'documented dreamers', had an approval rate of 14.6% in FY2024.

"With the current lottery system, the chance of visa approval is very low, and that's going to go down even more, since there's going to be many more DACA recipients applying," says Patel. "And that's absolutely not to say that they don't deserve that opportunity - rather that the administration must prioritise [systemic reform]." Indians were granted 74.1% of H1-B visas in 2021, which remains the primary mode of immigration from India to the US.

"Nothing good has happened in 34 years," says Charles Foster, senior immigration advisor to George Bush and Barack Obama, and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (famously portrayed in Mao's Last Dancer). "I've known Biden since I supported his first presidential campaign in 1988, and his heart is in the right position. [But] Congress has not enacted major legislation on immigration since 1990."

Immigration Still A Sticky Issue

Congresswoman Deborah Ross, member of the House India Caucus and immigration subcommittee of the Judiciary committee, is one of the staunchest advocates in the Congress immigration reform. "The good news is that we now have bipartisan, bicameral legislation to include 'documented dreamers' with the original dreamers...that passed the House twice. But we are not moving on immigration issues because of the political fights and the fights over the border," she said. Patel added that "any sort of immigration bill is very, very hard right now [due to Republican opposition]".

The pressing issue is the annual cap of H1-B issuances to 65,000 a year, and country quotas on green cards of 7%, which means that no single country can receive more than 7% of the annual employment-based green card allotment. For the 1.1 million Indians stuck in the green card backlog, this could mean a lifetime of waiting; for the thousands of Indian applicants in the H1-B lottery, it could mean deportation.

"The problem is that the right wing of the Republican Party is not willing to admit that we need more workers and more skilled workers in this country," says Rep. Ross. "I absolutely believe voters that care about positive immigration reform are being completely overlooked. I have a growing Asian-American and Latino community in my district. Every time I talk to the Chamber of Commerce, I hear about this issue. It's the number one issue for the hospitality and restaurant industry."

'I Need Staff'

Kiran Verma, one of the most celebrated Indian chefs in America, who was invited to the White House by the Obamas, says: "I have been running Kiran's in Houston for over two decades and never has the situation been so dire with a dearth of trained manpower. I need chefs, I need wait staff, I need managers. It used to be so much easier to get them from India. Now, even the best talent can't come because the process is so cumbersome."

Trump, however, is even less likely than Biden to be an ally for Indian immigrants, even if they are college-educated. "He said things like this even before his last term, but his actual record shows that he made it worse for legal immigrants," said Patel. "He walked back his claims about green cards the very next day." Project 2025, the recently released policy playbook for a second Trump presidency, proposes to use backlog numbers to trigger the automatic suspension of application intake for large categories, among other restrictions on immigration.

The question remains whether positive immigration reform will be a decisive factor in the election, particularly at a time when support for Biden among Indian-American voters has declined by 19% since the debate. Even for Indian-Americans who support Trump, immigration remains an important issue. Jugal Malani, CEO of Unique Group Industries and president of India House Houston (and organiser of Howdy Modi in 2019), says that while he does still support Trump in 2024, "I absolutely support immigration reform: this country runs on immigrants."

The Risk Of Losing Talent

Rep. Ross said, "I was in India less than a year ago. And what I heard was that the younger people in India, many of whom have come to my district for advanced degrees and to do amazing work, now don't think it's worth it. And so they're staying in India, and India, frankly, likes that." Indeed, there was a 38% drop in overall H1-B applications for FY2025. "We're going to lose talent - and when we lose talent, we lose our competitiveness," she said.

Verma agrees. "My journey would not have been fulfilled had the immigration laws been the same as today. The promise of the American dream must go on. I hope we can fix the issue with whoever comes to power this November in the White House," he says.

(Maya Prakash is a New York Times award-winning writer, and a student at Williams College, Massachusetts and Oxford University.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author