This is not the America I came to. Thee is no denial that illegal immigration and terrorism are the two biggest concerns for this nation. No doubt that some terrorists have managed to sneak in by exploiting the legal immigration loopholes.

But is legal immigration really to blame for this?

Besides the illegal immigration, the Government has been trying to ban mainly three types of immigrants — Diversity aka Lottery System, Family Immigration and the Refugees.

In 1991, I came to America on family immigration from India and in 1999 I became a naturalized citizen. And it has been a ride.

Let me give you a little bit of history on the immigration to this country before coming back to my own story. Immigrants have been coming to America since the 16th century. The early immigrants were French and Spanish. Some of these settlers just like today’s immigrants came in search of freedom to practice their faith, their way of life. This included a group of about 100 people in 1620 also know as the Pilgrims (Thanksgiving anyone?). That followed a waive of Europeans who came to America as indentured labor looking for better economic opportunities and then salves from Africa who were forcefully brought here. Around 1850s, Asians including Chinese immigrants started moving here, but until 1920 majority of the immigrants were from Europe. In 1924, the Immigration Act enacted a quota system allowing no more than 2% of immigrants from any nationality because European immigrants preferred immigration from Europe. In 1956, Hungarian Revolution sent 245,000 families to America fleeing the Soviet persecution and 1959’s Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro forced another 409,000 immigrants out of their homes. America was taking in these immigrants because it needed them for the post-war growth. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson decided to do away with the race based quota system set in 1924 and opened the doors to all immigrants — including the family immigration.

To summarize — President Johnson found the immigration quota to be a discriminatory practice.

I guess this is when America started getting “screwed” — at least if we were to follow the new found logic.

Now back to my story. The American immigration in my family started with my father’s younger brother who had a Masters in Engineering but could not find a job in India. Him and several of his friends moved to America based on their education. Back in the days they would give you a green card if you were professionally qualified. Then followed my father’s older brother and his family. Finally, my father decided to migrate and it took us roughly 11 years after filing the application before we could come here. My father was an attorney by profession and we had a decent life in India. But he insisted on us moving here for two very simple reasons — better opportunities, and law and order.

When we came from India, the Govt. of India at that time allowed only $20 per person to be taken out of the country if you were permanently migrating elsewhere. Essentially that was our startup capital in a new country. At the time I was 19 and my first job was washing dishes at a pizza parlor for $4.50/hr. A few months after our arrival, unfortunately my father passed away and my real American journey started. I ended up running the family affairs. I only had a high school diploma from India and being a new immigrant with broken English the only jobs I was qualified for were working as a janitor and washing dishes. My sister who was still a minor at the time joined a local high school and took a part time job at a burger joint. My mother who had a Bachelor’s in Education could not get a job as a teacher because of her Indian education and ended up working at the same burger joint my sister did. This is a typical immigrant story — nothing so unique about it.

My sister was doing great in high school. And I was working two jobs to earn enough so that we can afford to continue on staying in a town with good schools. This required sacrifices such as not owning any furniture for 3 years and sleeping on the apartment carpet, buying anything only when it goes on sale — I guess this was a shit-hole living by the American standards. Despite all these hardships my mother kept on insisting that I should go back to school and get a degree. It took her 3 years to convince me and finally I started my college at the same time my sister did hers. To continue on paying our bills I had to still keep a full time job which by then was upgraded to a home and garden store clerk followed by a soup factory laborer and then eventually a 7–11 clerk. To fund my education I took Pell grants and student loans and my sister funded hers through merit scholarships and grants. I tried dropping out of school twice but miserably failed because of my mother.

The first two years of school taught me two things about America — if you knock on a door hard enough it will open and if you work hard and persist you will succeed. And this lesson was what helped me get my first internship in a software company in the third year of a college and it became a full time job just four months later. The best part, I was getting paid the salary of a full time software engineer $32,000 at the time and I was allowed to continue with my Bachelors in Engineering full time. My American employer, my first manager a naturalized citizen from Iran and colleagues who had migrated from every part of the world fully supported my school schedule and I was allowed to work around it. These were the times when there were only Unix terminals and desktops PCs, and dialup internet was not a common thing. You had to be physically in the office. Two years fast forward, both my sister and I graduated and went on to build our careers in tech. Later we both earned our masters degrees.

One would wonder — may be we were an exception. That is certainly not the case. There are stories similar to ours all over this country. I looked at my cousins who also came to America as what is considered now the undesirable immigrants class. All of them ended up getting their masters or doctorate degrees. One even worked for the federal government as a nuclear scientist. Several of my friends who either came here on family immigration or as refugees went through the same exercise and have flourishing careers. Some who were not fortunate enough to be able to go to college are now successfully running small businesses. They couldn’t go to the college but now their kids are on their way to become well-educated professionals.

Bottom line — most if not all of us un-desirable immigrants, some even from the “shit-hole countries” have made a good use of the opportunity that this wonderful country has given to us. We all are contributing to the American society not only by adding our food flavors but also by paying taxes. I can even show my tax return. Several of us are actively engaged in the job creation, an election agenda that the current administration had.

But does it really matter?