Saheb Sahu, FAAP, MPH
I just finished a book titled “Streets of Gold” by two professors of economics, Ran Abramitzky (Stanford University) and Leah Boustan (Princeton University). The authors are referring to the streets of America. Mining a treasure trove of big data over more than a century, they show the surprising continuity between past and present pattern of immigrant integration in the United States. Their data show that most immigrants, even across widely different backgrounds, achieve success over one to two generations, much as in the past.
I will quote here some of their important findings:
“In the pace of their economic progress, immigrants of the past were very similar to immigrants of today. Immigrants in the past did not rise from poverty to comfort as quickly as we believe nor are today’s immigrants climbing the economic ladder any more slowly than past immigrants.”
“The true ascent for immigrant families happens in the next generation. The children of immigrants achieve incredible economic success, a pattern that has held in the United States for more than a century.”
“The story that emerges when we let the data speak is a happy one, a tale of economic prosperity and cultural integration.”
“In 2020, forty-five million people in the United States were born in another country- about one in seven residents, or 14 percent of the population”.
“The dream that propels many immigrants to American’s shores is the possibility of offering a better future for themselves and their children. Using millions of records of immigrant families, we find that the children of immigrants surpass their parents and move up the economic ladder both in the past and today. If this is the American Dream, then children of immigrants achieve it- big time.”
“The mobility advantage shows up in every historical period and from nearly every country of origin, and is particularly strong for the poorest families.”
“Around 30 percent of immigrants in the United States have a college degree (2018). These highly educated immigrants originally come to the United States on temporary student visas. After graduation, they can work for a few years for a US company on a program called Optional Practical Training (OPT). Another route to the country is the temporary H-1B visa program, available for occupations with “highly specialized knowledge”, often in science and technology fields; after sponsoring workers on this temporary visa, employers help some of these workers enter the green card lottery for legal permanent residence.”
“We believe that immigrants contribute to our economy through science, innovation and vital services; that children of immigrants from nearly every poor country move up to the middle in the next generation.”
Migration in Indian Context
Non-Resident Indians (NRI) are Indian citizens who are not residents of India. Overseas Citizen of India (OCI)) are people of Indian birth or ancestry who live outside and also are not the citizens of Republic Of India. According to a Ministry of External Affairs report, there are 32 million NRIs and OCIs residing outside India.Overseas Indians comprise the world’s largest overseas diaspora. Every year 2.5 million (25 lakhs) Indians migrate overseas, which is the highest annual number of migrants in the world.
Indian migrants have settled in most of the countries around the world. The top ten countries with people of Indian descents are-
1- USA-4.6 million
2-United Arab Emirate-3.4 million
3-Malaysia-3million
4-SaudiArabia-2.6 million
5-Myanmar-2million
6-United Kingdom-1.9 million
7-Canada-1.7million
8- Sri Lanka- 1.5 million
9- South Africa-1.5 million
10- Kuwait- 1 million
The United States has the largest Indian population in the world outside India. In contrast to the earliest groups of Indians who entered the US workforce as taxi drivers, laborers, farmers, or small business owners, the later arrivals often came as professionals or completed graduate studies in the US and moved into professional occupations. They have become very successful financially, thanks to their education, and are thus the best-off community of immigrants in US. They are well represented in all walks of life, but particularly so in academia, information technology, and medicine and even in politics.
Persian Gulf
Indians command a dominant majority of the population in Persian Gulf countries. After the 1970s oil boom in the Middle East, numerous Indians from Kerala migrated to these countries, taking advantage of close historical ties as well as the lack of ample skilled labor. Major urban centers such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Manama were experiencing a development boom and thousands of Indians worked there in construction industries.
This work was done on a contractual basis rather than permanently, and working age men continued to return home every few years. This has remained the dominant pattern as the countries in the Persian Gulf, especially United Arab Emirate, Bahrain Qatar and Kuwait has a common policy of not giving citizenship to non-Arabs, even if they are born there.
The Persian Gulf region has provided incomes many times over for the same type of job in India, and these incomes are free of taxation. NRI population in these Gulf countries is estimated to be around 20 million.
The states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala are the major sources of Indian migration to the Gulf countries. Migrants from the northern and highly populated Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are largely made up of semi-skilled and unskilled laborers, whereas migrants from Kerala and Tamil Nadu tend to have higher levels of education.
Internal Migration in India
There are an estimated 139 million migrants with in India, according to the World Economic Forum.
In India, the inter-state migration pattern reflects the inequality in the regional development. Some states which have higher investment and resources for development experience high in- migration. At the same time, the backward states like U.P, Bihar, M.P, etc. are experiencing heavy out-migration.
In some of the more developed states like Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab, Delhi, etc. there is significant in-migration as well as out-migration. People from these developed states are able to migrate out of the country; hence there is a shortage of workers in these states.
Migration from Odisha
According to Census 2011, around 1.3 million people from Odisha migrated to different parts of the country to escape poverty. The number is definitely much higher in 2022. Of them, the majority are in Andhra Pradesh (14.6 per cent), followed by Gujarat (13.6 per cent), West Bengal (11 per cent) and Maharashtra (nine percent). Most of these migrants are from rural areas, going for manual labor with better pay.
Why you should migrate?
Education and migration are two of the oldest actions against poverty. Poor people, who are desperate and bold enough to leave their villages and move to a nearby town or city or to another state or country, usually earn a better living. They themselves may not escape poverty during their lifetimes but their children do. Their children get a better education, get a better job than their parents and move into middle class. The two economist professors (Abramitzky and Boustan) have analyzed one hundred years of big data about immigrants to the United States and have come to the following conclusion: We find overwhelming evidence that the children of immigrants move up the ladder, regardless of which country immigrants come from-including Mexico and other parts of Latin America.We can come to very similar conclusions about Indian migrants, even though we don’t have such robust data. Most Indians who migrated to towns or cities or to another state or to another country have improved their economic status.This was true during the colonial times, when the Britishers recruited Indian laborers for overseas plantations and it is true now for people going to Gulf States for work.
Conclusion
Poverty, all over the world, predominantly is a rural phenomenon. In 2021, the percentage of the people living in Rural India was 64 percent compare to 42 percent for China and 14 percent for USA. In 2021, the per capita income in India was projected to be $2200.0(US dollars), compare to $5200.0 for China and $ 68,000.0 for US. The Human Development Index (HDI) is a better index to measure overall poverty of a country. The HDI in 2021, for India was 0.645 (131 in the world), 0.761 for China (85 in the world) and 0.926 for USA (17 in the world).
The HDI index for the state of Odisha was 0.606, 32 out of 36 states and union territories. The best HDI among the Indian states is that of Kerala with 0.790. Large numbers of people from Kerala have migrated to the Gulf countries since early 1970s. The poverty rate in Kerala is less than one percent, compare to national average of 26.5 percent, and 29.3 percent for Odisha. Kerala has achieved this feat, because of education and migration, both inside India and out of India. India is a poor country (the polite term is developing country) and likely to stay poor for quite some times. For Oriyas things are even worse.
My personal advice to the young people of India, especially to the college students, is get the maximum education you can get, especially in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, delay marriage, if married delay having children and think of migrating to a better city in India or outside India. Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Netherlands and Canada are the top choices for educated Indians for finding jobs outside India. You will make more money in the United States but getting a work visa is very difficult. If you can manage to come to US for post graduate studies, your chance of getting a work visa will be much easier. But the cost of studying in USA is very high. However 40,000 Indian students are coming to US on student visa each year.If you are not well educated, try to migrate to one of the Gulf Countries for work and better pay.
Bottom line, if you are unhappy with your present situation, be bold, take the risk and migrate to a better place for a better life for yourself and your children. GOOD LUCK!
PS- Dr Saheb Sahu is a retired pediatrician settled in USA. His parents were small scale farmers in rural Odisha (5 acres). He is a graduate of Kamgaon Middle School, C.S. Zila School, G.M. College (Sambalpur) and AIIMS (New Delhi).
Source
- Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan. Streets of Gold; America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success. PublicAffairs, New York, 2022
- Wikipedia.org 8-18-22
