Just Politics

[ergo sum]

For Indians, Trump’s America Is a Land of Lost Opportunity
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/world/asia/india-trump-america.html?module=WatchingPortal®ion=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=15&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F04%2F23%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Findia-trump-america.html&eventName=Watching-article-click&_r=0

MUMBAI, India — Generations of Indians have admired the United States for almost everything. But many are infuriated and unnerved by what they see as a wave of racist violence under President Trump, souring America’s allure.

The reaction is not just anger and anxiety. Now, young Indians who have aspired to study, live and work in the United States are looking elsewhere.

“We don’t know what might happen to us while walking on the street there,” said Kanika Arora, a 20-year-old student in Mumbai who is reconsidering her plan to study in the United States. “They might just think that we’re terrorists.”

Recent attacks on people of Indian descent in the United States are explosive news in India. A country once viewed as the promised land now seems for many to be dangerously inhospitable.


Further alienating Indians, especially among their highly educated class, is the Trump administration’s reassessment of H-1B visas given mostly for information technology jobs. More than 85,000 are granted a year, the majority to Indians.

“America was the land of great opportunity,” Sanket Bafna, 21, said as he emerged one afternoon last week from an exam at K. C. College, where he is studying financial management. “It’s not the same land.”

This year, undergraduate applications from India fell at 26 percent of United States educational institutions, and 15 percent of graduate programs, according to a survey of 250 American universities by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

The number of applications for H-1B visas also fell to 199,000, a nearly 20 percent decline, according to data kept by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.