I participated in the Braver Angels Long Island Alliance Immigration Debate speaking FOR the resolution. Following is the Debate Resolution and my full 4-minute argument.
Resolved: Immigrants who arrived in the country before a certain date should have a path to legal status.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to begin with a story — my own. In many ways, it is the quintessential immigrant story. I arrived in America in April 2000 with my heart full of hope and my head full of impossible dreams. Raised in a middle class family in India, I was not the proverbial tired, poor, or hungry — but I was tired of the orthodoxy and the misogyny, and hungry to carve my own path in a freer world.
I came as a Software Engineer on an H-1B visa. It took me ten years to earn my Green Card, and another eight to become a U.S. citizen. America’s immigration system is generous — the alphabet soup of visas is proof of that — yet when it takes nearly two decades for a law-abiding immigrant to become a citizen, the system is no longer working as it should, which has led to many of our current problems.
In 2001, when the dot-com bubble burst, I lost my job and had just thirty days to find another or lose my legal status. I did find one, but I often think — what if I hadn’t? Back then, I still had family ties, I knew the India I’d left behind. If I had to go back, I would have survived. But if I were deported today, I would be utterly lost — because America is now my only home.
That experience taught me something profound: being sent back soon after emigrating is very different from being uprooted decades later which tears through not just the immigrant’s life but the American family they may have built here. This distinction must guide any logical and compassionate immigration policy.
Growing up in a developing country also showed me that a nation is only as functional as its people. Many poor countries are trapped in corruption because their people have adapted to broken systems to survive. Immigrants bring both their strengths and their dysfunctions. Not every poor, tired or hungry immigrant is noble — we are all shaped by survival pressures. The question is: how does America help newcomers shed the dysfunctions of the systems they fled, while keeping their vitality and cultural richness?
Mr. Chairman, I believe the way to facilitate this is that immigration should be a drip, not a flood. When immigrants arrive gradually, they blend into the American fabric and strengthen it. But when they come in overwhelming numbers, they risk changing that fabric itself — and that serves no one.
The border flooding we saw under the Biden administration troubles not only many Americans, but also law-abiding immigrants — including many undocumented friends of mine — who love this country deeply and want strong, fair borders.
That said, two wrongs do not make a right. The reactionary measures of the Trump era also betray the America we believe in. Many of us came here to escape government overreach and arbitrary power. To see long-settled immigrants face upheaval without due process offends our sense of American decency. We are citizens now — taxpayers, community builders — and we breathe uneasily when we see that same caprice take root here.
Having thought deeply about this issue, I propose a practical, compassionate path forward, a compromise so we can move forward from our current quagmire. Let us come up with a cutoff date (it could be Jan 21, 2021 or earlier). Those who entered illegally after that date, and are not clear-cut asylum cases, should return to their home countries, where they are still likely to have ties and support. Those who entered before that date and have no criminal record should be given a direct path to legal status.
This must be a one-time policy enacted swiftly to avoid more ties being formed here, paired with strong border enforcement, so we both resolve today’s crisis and prevent tomorrow’s.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, I want to speak of compassion. Whatever we do as a nation must reflect human decency and America’s moral leadership in the world. Even when deportation is necessary, we must do it with dignity and care.
In closing – for better or worse, America has become the country whose promise is both believed in and sustained by immigrants. The American story is the immigrant story. By setting a fair cutoff date — and by combining compassion with order — we can honor that story and begin to heal the national wound this debate has left open for far too long.
Thank you.
Swati Srivastava is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also a trained facilitator for Crossing Party Lines moderating conversations that bring people together across their political divides. Swati is also an environmentalist and lives in a Net Zero Energy home with her husband. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com