Manu Joseph: Migrating to the US has long been a rite of humiliation

Long before Donald Trump, from the time I remember, migration to the United States was a rite of humiliation. From being masters in their home towns, atop the social pyramid, they became something else in America that can be captured by an expression Indians once used commonly: “second-class citizens." As another form of compensation, possibly, some of these immigrants also acquired an exaggerated swag—that they succeeded in America because they were bright and “worked very hard," compared to other groups. It is this popular but dim analysis that American politician Vivek Ramaswamy appears to have aired in a recent tweet: “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long… A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ… I know multiple sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity… and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates…" The truth reveals itself if you trace the lineage of successful individuals of ‘Indian origin’ who claim to have done well because they “worked hard." Elite Indians in the US, it seems, want Trump’s America to make a distinction between Indians and Mexicans, and all the other immigrants who face his ire, including “irregular" Indian immigrants.