Ethnic Cleanser
The CATO institute estimates that the wait time for Indian Immigrants to get Employment Based Green Cards stretches out for 150 years. No one can live that long. No one can hold on to a job that long. Every single Indian Immigrant (and their family - including U.S. Citizen Children) who has attempted to immigrate to the United States will eventually have to leave - even if they have put down roots in the United States. This enforced involuntary departure is happening to Indian immigrants and Indian immigrants only. This is not happening to immigrants from any other community.
Ethnic cleansing is defined as “the elimination of an unwanted ethnic group or groups from a society, as by genocide or forced emigration”. What Senator Durbin is doing to Indian immigrants by blocking S.386 - The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act meets that definition. It is Indian immigrants and only Indian immigrants who have made their home in the United States who will eventually have to involuntarily leave.
“Cheap Indian IT Workers”
We heard that Senator Durbin went around telling other Senate Democrats that S.386 - The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act would only benefit “cheap Indian IT workers”. Many Senators and their staff who heard about Senator Durbin’s racist tripe were so offended that they reached out and told us what Durbin was doing. How much less offensive would it be, if Senator Durbin had substituted “The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act” with “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” and substituted “cheap Indian IT workers” with “illegal Mexican farm labor”?
However, like all racist stereotypes, the stereotype that Senator Durbin is peddling falls apart when you actually look at the data. In study titled “Higher‐paid Immigrants Forced to Wait Longer Due to Per‐country Limits”, the CATO institute estimates that removing national origin discrimination on employment based green cards will result in raising the average wage of an employment based immigrant by $11,592 - which is a 12% increase.
Even if Senator Durbin’s racist stereotypes about Indian Immigrants were supported by data (which it isn’t), and Indian immigrants were indeed “cheap Indian IT workers” - every single one of them came here lawfully to make a better life for themselves and their family. What’s wrong with that?
The only reason Senator Durbin thinks the lives of Indian immigrants and their children's lives are not worth the same as the lives of undocumented Mexican immigrants toiling away in the fields to support their family - is because of Senator Durbin’s prejudice against Indian immigrants.
“Why don’t you just leave?”
Over the last 15 years of politely working with his office, a common refrain we hear from Senator Durbin’s office is “Why don’t you just leave?”. For some reason Durbin’s staff don’t ask this question to undocumented immigrants or DREAMERS - but they ask this question to families who are here lawfully, and following all the rules - but happen to be of Indian origin.
Senator Durbin knows as well as anyone else, over the decades people have spent in the United States, people put down roots. In most cases the Children don’t even remember their country of birth. Given Durbin’s alleged support of the DREAM act and DREAMERS, this should be common sense to him. It is common sense to everyone else - because no other currently serving Senator has ever asked us to leave.
For 15 years, our members have been asking Senator Durbin to add the children of legal immigrants into the DREAM act, because just like DREAMers, the children of legal immigrants too will have to eventually deport to a country they cannot remember. Since the children of legal immigrants from India (and only India) are affected by the problem, Senator Durbin has never added protection for these children in his DREAM Act.
“Per-country limits (National origin quotas) are fair because they apply equally to everyone”
In the South, there also used to be laws that applied equally to everyone that said, you could only vote if your grandfather could vote or you had to take an impossibly hard test to gain the right to vote. These laws were intended to disenfranchise African-Americans whose grandfathers were slaves and couldn’t vote. These laws which applied equally to everyone in theory, served the discriminatory purpose of preventing African Americans from voting. These were called Jim-Crow laws.
Everyone in Congress knows that per-country limits are unfair and racist - despite the “Jim-Crow” type rationalizations that Senator Durbin likes to make. All countries are not the same size. And even if per-country limits were somehow fair and equitable, how do employers stay within Senator Durbin's national-origin quotas when hiring? Does Senator Durbin want employers to say “Immigrants from country X need not apply?”
Per-country limits are racist. They make no sense. There is no way to enforce them in an economy where private employers do the hiring in a non-discriminatory way. Everyone in Congress recognizes this - except Senator Durbin. This is why the House and Senate versions of The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act are the most co-sponsored bipartisan immigration bills in Congress.
Senator Durbin has only one reason to support racist per-country limits - he is a racist. Not only is he a racist, as was made evident at the non-constituent coffee when he gleefully joked about “waiting for years” for a Green Card, he is a sadist who takes pleasure in the suffering of Indian immigrants.
“Let them eat cake”
On the rare occasion Senator Durbin’s staffers have shown empathy towards our members, our members have been asked to wait for “Comprehensive Immigration Reform”. Somehow, according to Senator Durbin, the DREAM Act cannot wait for “Comprehensive Immigration Reform”, but when the fully documented children of immigrants from India are at risk of being deported to a country they cannot remember, they are being asked to wait for “Comprehensive Immigration Reform”. When our members politely inquire as to which exact “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” bill Senator Durbin is talking about - the answer is an awkward silence because there is no such bill.
Hate Groups
The Southern Poverty Law Center has carved out a niche for themselves, monitoring hate groups and has designated “NumbersUSA” and the “Center for Immigration Studies” (CIS) as anti-immigrant hate groups.
It therefore should come as no surprise that NumbersUSA and CIS (and their employees) are big fans of Senator Durbin’s work in blocking S.386 - The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act. Both Senator Durbin and these hate groups share a common hate of brown skinned Indian immigrants. You might however find it shocking to see the coordinated way in which these hate groups came out in defense of Senator Durbin when Immigration Voice spoke up against his bigotry against Indian Immigrants.
We believe this was coordinated by Senator Durbin. While the thought of Senator Durbin working with anti-immigrant hate groups might come as a shock to many people who were deceived into thinking that Senator Durbin is a messiah of immigrants, as actual immigrants who have been trying to get things done in Washington - this does not surprise us in the least. We have known about Senator Durbin’s bigotry for the last 15 years, and know him to be the most anti-immigrant Senator currently serving in the Senate.