Ramaavan – the musical is a unique take on the epic Ramayana
Browsing: immigration
Yes, we have a Miss World, a Miss Universe, a Miss America, a Miss India – so why not a Miss Immigrant?
Well, I found that title does exist and appropriately enough right in the Immigrant Capital of the World – New York!
What can you, an immigrant who came with nothing but a battered suitcase filled with bits and pieces of a disappeared life, offer this new country? What gift can you give America on its Independence Day celebration? A Punjabi immigrant love story.
Last minute reprieve for international students who may have had to leave the country if they were enrolled only in online classes during the pandemic
In a reprieve for the Dreamers, as they are known, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision finding that the Trump administration’s termination of DACA was judicially reviewable and done in an arbitrary and capricious way that violated federal law.
Once upon a time, Yogesh*, a vibrant young dreamer set out for America with his wife and child on a H1 B Visa to conquer the world. Ten years later, he’s still on the waiting line, still waiting for the elusive green card. Immigration has increasingly become a waiting game, and a numbers game. The sheer math of it all is overwhelming.
The 800 lb gorilla in America is still the issue of immigration and affects so many lives. Be it the construction of the border wall, detention centers, the elimination of chain migration and the visa lottery and the limbo lives of so many green card hopefuls – most of them Indian and the possibility they may still be waiting 50 years later.
Yet as South Asians turn to political activism and support civic organisations that fight for immigrant rights and human rights in America, we see some famous names in the arts taking on these issues on television and on the big screen.
“Our Dreamers are American in every way but on paper. Yet, by cruelly ending DACA, the Trump Administration brought fear and uncertainty into the lives of countless Dreamers. House Democrats are honoring our promise, and their bravery, by ensuring Dreamers can continue to bless our nation.”
Trump’s Build America Visa: Non-Starter or Game-Changer? [dropcap]F[/dropcap]or HI B visa holders, recent months have…
Hers is a true immigrant story of an unknown brown woman who came to America as a 16-year-old student and rose to become a powerful Congresswoman, the very first Indian-American woman in the US House of Representatives in the history of America.
This is an immigration tale, about the woes of the H4 visa spouses. Since 2015 a temporary work authorization has allowed them to work and have a normal life. Now there may be a reversal of fortune and the clock may be turned back.
Ten ticking minutes which won’t ever come back are a valuable commodity.
You could spend them waiting for the subway train to arrive or watching your chicken biryani cook on the stove.
Or you could spend ten minutes having a most happening conversation with the very happening Kumail Nanjiani! Well, that’s what I was lucky enough to do – and I tried to squeeze an hour’s conversation into those ten minutes – and we really talked fast!
‘The Big Sick’ is a story for our times and what makes it kind of cool is that it’s a real life story – it actually happened and is not the figment of someone’s imagination. Yes, immigration, love, breakup and marriage, sickness and coma, terrorism and multiculturalism all come into it but it’s always upbeat, always funny. Big ambitious topics for a sweet little romantic tale but ‘The Big Sick’ pulls it off.
We are a city of immigrants. It is woven into our DNA, into our history and into the very concrete that binds our buildings. When you look at the skyline, think about the people who built it: working people who came here from every corner of the earth and made this a better, stronger place.
For immigrants in New York, there’s a particular comfort in being in the multicultural capital of America under the glow of Lady Liberty’s lamp. The city and state government has come up in support of all immigrants. “If anyone feels that they are under attack, I want them to know that the state of New York – the state that has the Statue of Liberty in its harbor – is their refuge,” wrote NY Governor Andrew Cuomo in an open letter to all New Yorkers.
Without a doubt, she’s a literary rock star.
Jhumpa Lahiri receives the kind of frenzied adulation reserved for celebrities. Her new novel ‘The Lowland’ has created a buzz in the US, with reviews carpeting every media from The New York Times to the most obscure little blog.
She was nominated for both the Man Booker and the National Award – and ‘The Lowland’ had hardly even hit the stores! Her book tour took her to several American cities and social media lit up with Jhumpa talk.
Few writers of Indian origin command this kind of fanfare – except perhaps Salman Rushdie. So is she the next big Indian writer after Rushdie, in terms of international standing?
“When Bobby Jindal first exploded onto the national scene in 2007, the Indian community was rightfully proud. A boy genius had become the youngest governor in American history at the jaw-dropping age of 36. The subsequent buzz about him being a potential presidential candidate in 2012 made him into an even bigger star. At least for Indians, he was truly the anointed one. That, however, was then.
Cut to 2009 when he delivered an extremely awkward, meandering, ideologically driven Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech. Even people in his own party were disappointed and suddenly there was doubt about Jindal’s readiness for a larger platform.”
– Guest blogger Sanjay Sanghoee
“Unable to get a visa that would allow him to start a company after he graduated from Wharton in 2007, Kunal returned home to India. In February 2010, he started SnapDeal—India’s Groupon. Instead of creating hundreds of jobs in the U.S., Kunal ended up creating them in New Delhi.
At a time when our economy is stagnating, some American political leaders are working to keep the world’s best and brightest out. They mistakenly believe that skilled immigrants take American jobs away. The opposite is true: skilled immigrants start the majority of Silicon Valley startups; they create jobs.” – Vivek Wadhwa
A gossamer web of stories ensnares the reader in ‘One Amazing Thing,’ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s new novel, taking you into distant lands, hidden places in the heart and into the hidden strengths people have.
Nine very different people drawn by chance or luck or destiny into the same spot just as disaster strikes. They are all gathered for obtaining visas to India in the basement of the Indian consulate in an unnamed American city when a powerful earthquake strikes. ALSO LISTEN TO A LIVE INTERVIEW WITH CHITRA DIVAKARUNI