Not Your ‘Good’ Immigrant

India is the third-largest source of undocumented immigrants to the U.S. — not just doctors, engineers, and academics. Why don’t we talk about it?

GettyImages-826979538 not your good immigrant
Asylum seekers walk along Roxham Road near Champlain, New York on August 6, 2017, making their way toward the Canada/US border (GEOFF ROBINS/AFP via Getty Images)

Tanvi Misra

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April 4, 2019

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6 min

On Devon Avenue in West Rogers Park — Chicago’s Little India — sari shops glimmer and portly uncles slurp chai in restaurants. Ritu Patel’s family lived nearby in the 2000s. Her dad worked at a gas station and her mom at a Dunkin’ Donuts. The Patels’ story is a quintessentially American story of migration — except that she didn’t find out that she was undocumented until 2011, at age 16, when she had to submit paperwork for her first job.

Over the years, Patel managed to piece together her story. Her father arrived first, on a valid visa. Once he got settled, her mother joined him. Two or three years after that, in 2001, an aunt and uncle flew with 6-year-old Patel to Canada. Though her memories are fuzzy, she recalls staying in a basement for a few weeks and being smuggled across the U.S.-Canada border in the back of a truck, to her parents, whom she no longer recognized.

“Next thing I knew, someone was picking me up and hugging me and I was like, ‘Who is this person?!’” she said.

India is now the third-largest source for undocumented immigrants. Yet, this group’s diverse experiences with the U.S. immigration system are not well understood. Instead, Indians are “high-skilled” workers, rich doctors, or IT professionals — “good” immigrants who contribute disproportionately to the economy. The stories of those who don’t fit these tropes are often rendered invisible.

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