"Bakkshlled Singh in particular being a marvel of physical beauty. He stands 6 feet 2 inches and is built in proportion."

All the talk of Manny Malhotra playing for the Vancouver Canucks in this year's Stanley Cup Finals and Brandon Chillar of the Green Bay Packers winning a Super Bowl ring (albeit while being hurt) got me thinking not just about this history of South Asian athletes but South Asians in North America in general. It got me thinking about Robin Bawa, who in 1987 became the first person of South Asian descent to play in one of the pro sports leagues (the NHL.) It also got me thinking about the first documented record of people from the Indian subcontinent arriving in the United States on April 6, 1899:

"There are four Sikhs who arrived on the Nippon Maru the other day were permitted yesterday to land by the immigration officials. The quartet formed the most picturesque group that has been seen on the Pacific Mall dock for many a day. One of them, Bakkshlled [sic] Singh, speaks English with fluency, the others just a little. They are all fine-looking men, Bakkshlled Singh in particular being a marvel of physical beauty. He stands 6 feet 2 inches and is built in proportion. His companions-Bood [sic] Singh, Variam [sic] Singh and Sohava Singh-are not quite so big. All of them have been soldiers and policemen in China. They were in the Royal Artillery, and the tall one with the unpronounceable name was a police sergeant in Hong Kong prior to coming to this country. They hope to make their fortunes here and return to their homes in the Lahore district, which they left some twenty years ago.-San Francisco Chronicle April 6, 1899, p.10"

It got me thinking about Bhagat Singh Thind, who was a US Army veteran in World War I but was denied US Citizenship in a case that went to the United States Supreme Court.

It got me thinking about Dalip Singh Saund, who in 1956 became the first person of South Asian descent to be elected to the United States Congress.

Then it got me thinking that too many people of South Asian descent don't know the history of South Asian peoples in North America so I had better post this on my blog so someone can read it sometime somewhere soon.

Immigration, Canadian-style

In a blog post on May 12th, I weighed in on a Slate article about our immigration policies and compared it to the Canadian model, which is more welcoming to highly-skilled immigrants and got some positive thoughts in a blog post on The Economist:

"...the United States really should be more open to high-skilled immigrants. They're good for the economy, and an uptick in demonstrably uncontroversial immigrants might mitigate anxiety about the group as a whole."

What if we were the bottom of the (brain) drain?

Great article in Slate Magazine about how flawed our immigration policy is against the most qualified applicants:

"The country does not cap the number of "family-based" green cards, available to relatives of U.S. residents. But it does cap the number of "employment-based" green cards—the ones often needed by entrepreneurial super-immigrants—at 140,000 per year."

I've seen this flaw many times over as I've seen numerous immigrant families in which the one successful sibling emigrated to the United States and subsequently sponsored the not-so-successful/educated siblings to come over without any issues getting them here but plenty of adjustment issues once they got here.

The Slate article gets to the heart of what New York Times columnist Tom Friedman always asks about why foreign students upon receiving a Ph.D. from an American university aren't given a green card along with their degree. Personally I wouldn't mind seeing something similar to the Canadian system, which has a separate and distinct category for working professionals wanting to emigrate to Canada.