This is an article from the February 2025 Civitas Examiner (Volume 2, No. 1) and was written by one of our students, Apurva G. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue. To read more Civitas Examiner stories or to submit your own, click here.
I’m currently sick with the flu—something that I’ve always considered myself impervious to, as if sheer willpower alone could stop the tiny microbial invaders from getting a hold of me. And yet, here I am, trapped in the feverish limbo between wakefulness and sleep, where reality blurs at the edges and time loses meaning. In these hazy hours of discomfort, I’ve found myself turning inward. What better time for self-reflection than when you feel like your body is waging a war it just might lose?
Introspection is no mystery to me; perhaps it is my greatest friend and my dearest foe. My friends say that I am admirably in touch with my emotions. I wonder if I ever feel the way that others do. The soaring heights of love and the cavernous depths of despair seem unknowable to me—but that is unnecessary for what I’m trying to tell you today.
In my introspection, I realized that when I picture my mother, she is rarely ever in a t-shirt and pants. In my mind’s eye, she is always draped in a Punjabi dress, its fabric flowing like a second skin that belongs to her more than any Western attire ever could. It’s not just a garment—it’s a presence, a statement, a tether to something larger than herself. And perhaps, in ways I’m only beginning to understand, a tether to me as well. She came from India shortly after marrying my father, following him across an ocean when he secured a job in the U.S. He was one of thousands of Indian engineers who arrived during the technological boom of the 2000s, lured by the promise of opportunity and a better future.
She never really acclimatized—or, perhaps more accurately, never Americanized. When I go to my Indian friends’ homes, their parents wear sundresses or polos around the house, mirroring the suburban fashion of their new (well, perhaps now old) homes. My mother could never—she prefers the cotton and silk of the dresses she brings in her overweight suitcase from her yearly trip to India over the polyester that pervades Macy’s.
But my 4:30 AM thoughts didn’t stop there.
What I really want to say is this: when I saw Elon Musk’s recent call for more H-1B visas—the same kind my parents came here on—it struck me as ironic. He justified it by claiming that Americans lack education and have high salary demands, as if immigrants were nothing more than a convenient labor force to exploit.
And that made me laugh.
For someone aligned with an anti-immigration party, his call for more H-1B visas is blatant self-interest. On some level, he must understand that immigrants have built this country. They always have. The roads, the railways, the technology, the medical breakthroughs—immigrants have been at the heart of American progress since its inception. The Italians, Poles, Irish, Japanese, Chinese, and Indians. And yet, figures like Musk, and the politicians he aligns himself with, continue to vilify them when it’s convenient, painting them as threats, burdens, or invaders—until, of course, their labor is needed.
Immigrants only have two identities in this country: too much or too little. Too unskilled, too uneducated—until they take the jobs no one else wants. Too foreign, too unwilling to assimilate—until their culture is repackaged for mass consumption. Too burdensome—until their taxes pay for the very systems that refuse to protect them.
My parents, like millions of others, came here chasing the American Dream, only to find that the very country that prides itself on being a nation of immigrants is the first to turn on them when political winds shift. And yet, they endure. My mother, in her flowing Punjabi dress, remains unshaken in her identity, refusing to trade authenticity for acceptance. Who says she is not an American? My mother, like so many engineers, doctors, and scientists who came before her, built her career on a visa system that treated her as temporary, disposable—useful only so long as it served corporate interests.
Musk’s words are just another reminder of a truth I’ve long known: for people like my parents, America extends a hand only when it benefits from doing so. And as soon as it doesn’t, that hand is quick to close into a fist.
What a hypocrite. What a country.
