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Editor's Note: Sree Sreenivasan is the former director of Digital Operations for New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Columbia University, where he taught for two decades. He is now a social media consultant. The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of his clients. Follow their opinions on Twitter.
(CNN) - This is an open letter to my relatives, friends and other members of the Indian-American community who support President Donald Trump. It is not my intention to rant against the government or call for action, but simply to issue a touch of attention.
Some of you have given your support to the government because you thought that your cruel policies would not affect us, but only people who, some, probably do not care or dislike: Mexicans, jihadists, undocumented workers and others. The Muslim ban left them without care. Nor did they care when hundreds of Central American and Mexican children were separated from their parents at the border. They did not even flinch when a six-year-old Indian girl died on the southern border.
But the news published Monday morning about the new government regulation exposes all its cruelty and will affect millions of legal immigrants, including thousands of Indians, who will be punished for using social assistance programs such as public housing and food stamps, however temporary their use, and those entitled by law.
LOOK: Trump administration's new rule makes it easier to limit legal immigration and reject green card applications
For the past three years, I have been saying rather quietly, that Trump's goal - and advisors like Stephen Miller - is to have a nation with zero black and brown immigrants (instead, they want thousands of Norwegians to move to United States), and this hurts people who are already here.
Many of you probably supported Trump for the same reasons I have heard from people I know very well: for the generous tax cuts for the wealthy and / or the harsh speech against terrorism. Indians are not usually very interested in issues related to abortion or weapons or the Supreme Court. He said we were "very, very special people." It seems that he has hired more Indian-Americans to occupy prominent positions than people belonging to another minority. Hello, Ajit Pai, Nikki Haley, Seema Verma, Raj Shah, Neil Chatterjee and many others!
But you can't choose which parts of the Trump era you like as if it were a kind of buffet food. As my mother says, a wise woman, one is responsible for everything she puts on her plates. As many have already pointed out, saying: "I support it for tax cuts, but not for racism," it is no longer an option.
If you continue to blindly support this government after today, you will be complicit in NEW problems that are about to affect millions of people in this country.
LOOK: Trump's administration will allow more prolonged detention of migrant families
I know that some of you may think that it is okay for the government to deny residence to poor people who came here legally. And that is due to a certain type of privileged upbringing and university education that we have brown skin that we do not recognize as such or that we are not talking about; Many of us arrived here with the best university degrees in the world, including the Indian Institute of Technology, the Indian Institute of Management and, as in my case, the University of St. Stephen in New Delhi.
It is for this same reason that so many Indians speak eternally about the statistics that they intend to show to the Native Americans as the richest and most successful ethnic group in this country. But people like Sudha Acharya of the South Asian Council of Social Services (SACSS), can tell us about the number of Indian-Americans struggling to survive only in New York City, who use food assistance and others services provided by this organization. And I can also tell you about the first time I met an indigent Indian-American. Many of you who have been to parties at our house over the years have known him: Ravi is a waiter who lives in a homeless shelter and has several jobs to get ahead. He also does not avoid talking about his situation, mainly so that people know that there are also Indians in their condition.
Thank you for reading up to this point. I know maybe I will lose some friends for writing this. Some relatives may stop talking to me and, maybe, I will receive hateful emails from some Indians that these days seem to dump their outrage online, but I simply had to share my opinion. Unconditionally supporting any leader anywhere in the world weakens us all.
To close, I want to share with you the story of Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat deputy from the Chicago area. He speaks often and eloquently about how he arrived in this country as a child and how his family lived in public housing and, in fact, used food stamps. He became a successful businessman and now walks through the halls of Congress. If this new regulation had been implemented when he was a child, his family would never have been granted residence.
Think of all the good that has come from the life of this representative of Congress, all the positive contributions he and his family have made for this country. If the rules change as the president wants, opportunities for so many people will be lost.
I want to live in a United States that gives us more Raja Krishnamoorthi, not less. And not just because he is Indian.
Translated by Carola Lehmacher-Richez
