As for as my choice of Prerna – and not “coaching” her on the bitchiness of the comment threads these days – it is what it is. People who read our site (and get interviewed by our site) know what they are getting themselves into by being profiled on our site. They don’t HAVE to answer the questions if they don’t want to – and many haven’t. Despite what you may “read” in her tweets, I think she’s handling it just fine – better than other people SM has profiled over the years.

Sepia Mutiny is a group blog w/ over 20 bloggers on the site – and we all write what we want to. And I’ll continue to write about people like Prerna or activists, politicos, music, issues, Muslims or anything really that I think need to be megaphoned into the Desi American community. You call it a puff piece, I call it highlighting issues important to and for the Desi American community. Deal.

FWIW, she does address the Canadian issue in some sfweekly article(if I remember correctly). The law school of a top Canadian university of her choice accepted her but then Canada denied her a visa because of fears she might overstay because of her lack of a permanent residence. Well , I guess US is not the big evil country some activists make it out to be. So that mystery is solved.

She needs to distinguish the feedback she gets from liberals and moderates from the one she gets from rabid right wingers. She just whines about it in her tweets. Even now, I truly hope she gets a a legal visa because of so many of the points raised in this thread, not because she has a fundamental right to it. Hell, I will even sign a petition to show my support based on humanitarian grounds. But I won’t have much sympathy if she continues to self destruct and messes up her case. She said she wants to be a tenured professor. I hope she won’t become one of those my way or the highway tyrants who remain bitter in academia. She is still young. She is studying law.PArt of her job will be to convince the other side to agree to her line of reasoning. I don’t see any evidence that she is emotionally ready to do that.

This is no concept of charity in Indian culture. It’s all about self.

That’s why there are comments like, “a legal immigrant, and the child of legal immigrants – and a law school graduate.” Good for you, asshole. I hope misfortune hits you so you can learn some way to look beyond yourself and your lucky breaks.

Prema Lal’s case is a perfect example of how messed up the immigration system is. The fact that she is “illegal” is a technicality and fault of INS/USCIS, that drags on cases for decades, essentially leaving people in a no-man’s land.

Best of luck to Prema. My advice to Prema would be to get in touch with LBGT community for support as well as her senator.

and so much of her argument makes absolutely no sense–she doesn’t identify as south asian but she isn’t interested in being part of white gay activisim that isn’t really seeking human rights for all, she’s upset that she pays (sales) tax to the states and doesn’t get federal money, she’s angry she’s getting deported but america hasn’t proved its worth to her,she thinks its ridiculous for the INS to treat her as an adult at 21 but she’s an advocate trying to change the world, she’s “highly educated” but doesn’t even seem to know the basics of our legal system and going to law school so she can be a novelist (btw, i don’t think you can be undocumented and actually be admitted to the bar in any state), she’s upset at the treatment she recieves for being undocumented but says immigrants shouldn’t blame their parents for any part of their situation, and what on earth does “the millitary-industrial” complex have to do with citizenship status.

i have a lot of sympathy for illegal immigrants, but absolutely none for this particular one. And i’m kind of offended that SM/taz thought that just because the readers are brown, we’d be sympathetic to this brat. I’ve never understood why most SM posters seem to assume that all browns are in favor of some sort of amnesty (after all, those of us who are here legally are here because our parents had to wait a long freakin time to come over, and had our family members have to wait 10+ years to come over as well, and we paid federal taxes) but assuming, on top of that, that this is a story or individual that deserves support, is really skewed.

and so much of her argument makes absolutely no sense–she doesn’t identify as south asian but she isn’t interested in being part of white gay activisim that isn’t really seeking human rights for all, she’s upset that she pays (sales) tax to the states and doesn’t get federal money, she’s angry she’s getting deported but america hasn’t proved its worth to her,she thinks its ridiculous for the INS to treat her as an adult at 21 but she’s an advocate trying to change the world, she’s “highly educated” but doesn’t even seem to know the basics of our legal system and going to law school so she can be a novelist (btw, i don’t think you can be undocumented and actually be admitted to the bar in any state), she’s upset at the treatment she recieves for being undocumented but says immigrants shouldn’t blame their parents for any part of their situation, and what on earth does “the millitary-industrial” complex have to do with citizenship status.

i have a lot of sympathy for illegal immigrants, but absolutely none for this particular one. And i’m kind of offended that SM/taz thought that just because the readers are brown, we’d be sympathetic to this brat. I’ve never understood why most SM posters seem to assume that all browns are in favor of some sort of amnesty (after all, those of us who are here legally are here because our parents had to wait a long freakin time to come over, and had our family members have to wait 10+ years to come over as well, and we paid federal taxes) but assuming, on top of that, that this is a story or individual that deserves support, is really skewed.

Actually I think Taz did her friend a disservice by highlighting her interview here. Looking at her blog, she provides better explanations in some of the older items of what happened. When people questioned her evasiveness on taxes, it was actually directd to her parents paying income taxes. Her parents did not strike it rich here. In fact, it is questionable if it was worth their trouble to move to the US. It is possible that they left because of anti_indian sentiment in Fiji though as I mentioned earlier, I thought that was limited to just the power structure in politics. Her father is a messed up dude who pretty much not only abandoned her emotionally after bringing her to the US, he also abused her because she would not change her ways. I would call that exceptional factors for the INS making an exception in her case even if some paperwork was forgotten by the family.

The trouble is Lal cloaks this in a much broader immigrants rights framework and dismisses the immigration REFORM movement. I am going to guess that most of us who have commented negatively are probably onboard some kind of reform. However, reading the blog made me more sympathetic to Perna’s case specifically, but less sympathetic to the family’s eligibility to come here. The INS was actually generous to the rest of the family. It seems like the parents barely had the resources to lead a comfortable life. Short of political/human rights asylum, I don’t see a reason why the US should be easy for anyone to get into just because they may get a few more financial opportunies here.

There is nothing the INS can do to counsel undocumented families that sneak across the border. But they can counsel people coming over on temporary visas that they need to follow certain steps so that they don’t mess up the kids lives. Maybe they can have a prove it or lose it type temporary visa where the parents have to obtain certain kind of jobs by a deadline or return to their country so the family is prepared to leave if necessary. (For all I know, they probably have something similar already).

But I can’t get onboard a blanket amnesty because you will just have more families who see downside taking a risk needlessly moving over the US to a life that may not be any better than the one they left. There has to be some kind of obstacle that makes someone assess their current lot in life as so bad that it is worth the risk to illegally immigrate.