Today’s New York Times carries an article about DBDs who live in Iselin, NJ (which is near Edison), who are being affected by the same anti-boarding house ordinances which Virginia is using against Hispanic day-laborers. Complaints from neighbors, usually about things like litter, imperfect lawns and the like are being investigated vigorously– but are they being pursued a little too vigorously? How much of this is icky bias and how much is ignorance regarding brown proclivities to live in extended family arrangements? And really, what is it that four DBDs living in a four-bedroom home could be doing, which is so suspect?
With the workweek behind him, Deepu Dass focused on a pesky bald spot in his front lawn here. As he sprayed the patch with water, urging the grass toward the perfection achieved by several neighbors, he said confidently: “I planted seeds.â€
Two of his three roommates chatted behind Mr. Dass on the porch…The men — all Indian immigrants here on worker visas without their families — rent rooms month to month in this white, four-bedroom Cape Cod, where the kitchen shelves are stocked with food in bulk and the walls are decorated with reminders of home. “That’s Kerala,†said Mr. Dass, pointing to a silkscreen of a village fishing scene from his home state. “They call it God’s own country because it’s so beautiful.â€
Absolutely. But that snide pride in the state from whence my parents came is for another post. Or five.
There have been up to six men sharing the house, whose owners include Suresh Kumar, president of NexAge Technologies USA, a nearby software company where the tenants work. But the unusual arrangement — and the unsightly lawn — caught the attention of local housing inspectors, and in May Woodbridge Township cited Mr. Kumar for several violations, including an unauthorized boarding house and an illegal multifamily dwelling. He has until Aug. 16 to resolve the situation, which may mean kicking his workers out.
I don’t get it. Everyone I know owns a rental property. Many of us rent such properties. A good number of us do so with roommates…where is this arbitrary line which divides the bad from the good? On the flawed lawn, which is apparently what got poor Deepu et al in trouble?
Mr. Kumar’s were among more than 300 notices of violation that the authorities handed out from January through May to homeowners in the 10 communities that make up Woodbridge Township, part of a stepped-up inspection effort the mayor announced last year…But in a twist to the familiar tales of suburban authorities breaking up illegally subdivided homes crowded with Hispanic day laborers, the mayor’s crackdown here has hit another group of immigrants: middle-class Indians who rent rooms or parts of rooms to Indian students, technology workers and others seeking a first foothold in this country.
Desi homeowners have been gifted with almost a quarter of the notices.
(The mayor) said that housing inspectors were not singling out any ethnic group and that none of the inspections had prompted arrests by federal immigration authorities or the police, as they have in places with many day laborers. Indian-American community leaders said they had good relations with the mayor, and there has been no suggestion that the residents of these houses are here illegally.
But the mayor’s rationale for the crackdown — to clean up potentially dangerous living situations, like a house in Iselin found to have as many as 10 people living in a basement, and another house that was used as an unlicensed day care center — is similar to those cited by leaders in heavily Hispanic areas.
Like Northern Virginia!
Sharmila Rudrappa, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of “Ethnic Routes to Becoming American: Indian Immigrants and the Cultures of Citizenship,†said it was common for Indian families to live in joint households both in their homeland and in the United States…
“It’s a way to ease immigration,†Professor Rudrappa said. “You help family out. Family members coming from India might not know how to drive, and grocery stores can be unnerving.â€
This entire zeal to get up in peoples’ bidness is unnerving. Taxpayers should have the right to have three generations under the same roof, period. Landlords who rent homes to young single people aren’t doing anything illegal, either (and if they are, the Davis city government has a lot of work to do, since that’s how many of my friends spent their final years at college– in a house with a few other students). Littering the neighborhood is inexcusable; so is being an inconsiderate jerk about parking too many cars around one’s home. Those issues are valid, unlike the issues some of Iselin’s old-timers have with these furriners. Anyone in NJ want to tell us more than the grey lady did?
::
They are affecting desi families:
Rakesh Patel, 34, a technology worker at a New York investment bank, said he had his three-bedroom, two-story house built here seven years ago “for family and friends.†He and his wife, two children and his parents moved from a cramped apartment in Edison. Mr. Patel’s cousin’s sister has joined the household, and Mr. Patel’s sister and three family members may soon come to stay for a while. Other relatives often visit for months at a time.
While my parents never had the opportunity to do that, most of my other cousins, especially my family in Murrrland and New York, did. I remember those three bedroom apartments in the boogie down that had just as many siblings. The eldest was married with two children, the middle sibling was half of a newlywed couple and the youngest sib was single. That’s seven people. They didn’t even have cars. How was their share-and-care arrangement harming the nabe?
Such dwellings are part of our history as second gens. My father used to tell me that he came to this country alone, and if it hadn’t been for the kind white people who befriended him, he would have had no resources for figuring out the most basic questions. That’s why he said that it was our moral duty to do whatever we could to help the “new”, once we were established.
“Why not?†asked Mr. Patel, noting that he also stayed with his uncle when he first came to the United States from India in 1996. “I pay $9,000 a year in taxes.â€
Tom Rokita, who lives across the street from the Patels and several other large South Asian families, said that cars had lately clogged the neighborhood, and garbage had drifted onto his well-tended garden.
“The mayor is clamping down on the violations very nicely,†said Mr. Rokita, who has lived in Iselin 45 years. Of his neighbors, he said: “I have no problem with them. Except for the litter.â€
After an anonymous complaint, inspectors paid three separate visits to Mr. Patel’s home in May. Mr. Patel was surprised by the visit and said he had had a good relationship with town officials in the past, when he worked with them to make sure his basement met local regulations. It is now a place where his children play, and where his father, age 59, does his morning yoga.
Finally, inspectors determined that everyone living in the house belonged to one family, and found the property to be “in compliance.â€
No shit.
Mayor McCormac conceded that many of the complaints had been unjustified and, as in Mr. Patel’s case, turned out to be cases of cultural differences in the definition of family more than illegal subdivisions.
I apologize for not including that part of the NYT story in my post– especially when it tickled my umbrage nerve and would have provided more context.
I realize my post didn’t answer any questions. Go here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=iselin,+nj&ie=UTF8&ll=40.552744,-74.352379&spn=0.055172,0.160675&z=13&om=1
Oak Tree Road begins in Iselin and runs west into Edison which is ridiculously large, as you can see by the fact that it’s name is centered in the lower left of the screen.
Click on this if you don’t feel like copying and pasting from the last comment.
what I should be doing inside my own home.
campuses are not authorized to issue SSN’s—come on, brown students are terrorists, aren’t they :)?—and most big campuses in CA have severe housing shortages. most grad students never make it into university housing—which is usually cheaper, not more expensive. it was true of me and practically every grad student i have known in my university as well, and most of us were funded by the university. the above paragraph can be wrong on every count in the most prestigious universities of your country.
that said, i must add that #54 doesn’t convey the correct tone for a grad student experience—which is usually very good. officially there are many problems, and despite how much a select few and/or the govt want to clamp down on foreigners, universities are universities. there is usually lot of goodwill, fair play and cooperation at the ground level—i hope that remains. it is understated, but probably the biggest strength of the US. and this, not language, is the reason so few dbd’s want to go to continental europe to build their career (which will contribute to their society, which the cont. europeans keep forgetting).
Technically Iselin is next to Edison, but it’s actually Iselin that people (desis) are referring to most of the time when they think of ‘Edison’…that’s because all the main desi shopping areas and concentrations of markets, restaurants, jewelry stores, etc. are actually in Iselin (the famous ‘Oak Tree Road’). But few people use that name in everyday converstaion. In my family for example we say ‘let’s go have lunch in Edison today’ when what we really mean is Iselin. That’s very common in Jersey. Both Iselin AND Edison have huge desi populations. I am surprised that they are teaching Hindi and not Gujarati there…maybe because of the Bollywood glamour associated with Hindi and better teaching books and materials available.
Lastly, there is a LOT of latent racism in the area. It was predominantly white middle and working class about 25 years ago, and it’s changed completely. It’s not as desi as Southall in the UK but it’s still VERY desi.
Sort of. The very first big concentration of shops was in Iselin. The various other strip malls are mostly in Edison.
Having gone through the no SSN/ no lease / no credit card / no DL I know how painful the whole exercise can be. Did you know that the SSA checks with Immigration to ensure that your visa is valid before issuing the card. If there a transmission error in that process(bound to happen) you are screwed. A mate of mine had to wait 9 months to get an SSN due to a transmission error.
Anna’s dad seems to have been a wise man – did the genes skip a generation 😉
Many ABDs wont experience the stress and pleasure of uprooting oneself and moving to vastly different country. Am currently reading “Ten pound Poms” which is a moving story about the english migrants. Migrants often forget to document their experiences which is a real shame. Hope that DBDs keep a daily journal so that future generations may understand the joys and travails of immigrant existence. Verbal sharing is good but the written word is heaps more powerful.
Paying it forward is a lovely desi practice. Randomizer – my bro is coming to A&M this year – may I give him your contact details?
You know, I think you could be right…I’m not sure where the border between the two towns is, I always thought the desi parts of Oak Tree Road were all in Iselin, but I guess they do extend into Edison. When I think of Edison I’m thinking more westwards, Route 1 and all that.
I’m trying to remember back, a long time ago, to when I took sociology in college. I believe there was some finding along the lines that a majority ethnic population more or less ignores a minority population until the minority reaches some “visible” percentage of the population. Then, once that threshold is reached you see a lot of backlash. I don’t remember what the percentage was though!
From a citation I found, it looks like around 17% of Iselin is identified as “Asian-Indian”. Assuming this data comes from the last census, and that the population percentage has probably increased some by then, it sounds like receiving a quarter of the citations would be about what you would expect drawing randomly from the Iselin population. So, I’m not seeing evidence of a particular racist targeting, at least from the numbers.
These sorts of crack downs happen a lot in college towns as well. Any place where there are rentals with a relatively large number of people, will get backlash from the people who own nearby complaining about whatever they can come up with. Somehow the large number of people is okay if it’s family, but the definition of “family” is usually nuclear family. So, you can have a mess of kids, but don’t let your uncle stay… or something like that. At least that seems to be what’s going on in N. Virginia. That does seem to have an anti-immigrant flavor. So, maybe this is going on in NJ as well.
Hahaha, very phunny. The sad truth: he’d probably agree with you, since I still haven’t gone to law school
With all due respect to my less irate, cooler-headed peers…while I see the logic of comparing the % of desi residents to the number of violations, when the article plainly states this:
I still get angry and angry me thinks it’s a coincidence. This entire C.F. may not be overtly racist, but it’s ignorant. If certain Americans can’t relate to the concept of “joint families”
a) that’s their problem
b) where did all that bullshit about family values suddenly go?
6 months to get a cell phone
Don’t you guys have prepaid cell phones?
The other thing that the illustrious angry non-desi residents of Edison/ Iselin forget about is that Iselin (and Edison, though to a lesser degree) were pretty much run down you-know-what-holes before the Indian community moved in. Does anyone here remember what Oak Tree Road used to look like 20 years ago? I do. Today it is a bustling, vibrant community where desis and non-desis are welcome and hang around. Yes, the traffic sucks. Yes, they need more parking. Blah blah blah, without the revenue coming in from those shops I would love to see what taxes would really be like in those two townships. The desi community has been nothing but good for central NJ except for one small, sad fact that many “long timers” cannot get over no matter how they try: they’re brown. That’s why the cops are always looking for opportunities to ticket as much as they can on OTR and the streets surrounding it.
The bottom line here is that you have a status quo being changed, and that’s never easy no matter what, especially to those who are on the short end of the change. But it is changing, and much like the glorious British Empire had to pack up and ship out of all those nice places it once owned, time waits for no man (or woman, because I know here I’ll get called out if I don’t throw this in 😉
Anyways, this is going to be an interesting story over the next 5-10 years as the community in the area continues to grow. Years ago, when I was a wee lad, there were like 3 desi stores on OTR. Now, it is moving up and down the street in both directions, especially towards Edison proper. I am really interested to see how this will affect the demographics in the long term (i.e. if you’re going to see more and more “white flight” or not).
On a brighter note, Ming Restaurant which is up OTR a bit, is just fabulous. It’s next to Mughul for those who don’t know, which is also great, but Ming is where it’s at.
Oh, and ANNA hope the ankles is better soon!
Building codes and zoning laws are used to keep out the ‘undesirables’. Housing associations in major indian metros are equally guilty of similar practices. Some have rules that you cant cook certain foods. For folks like myself who love their karimeen / chala this is really painful. Minority backlash is reality and one that desi immigrants and their offspring will face in increasingly over the next few years. Does anyone know if the desis (ABD/DBD) normally vote? Does the same middle class apathy as displayed in India continue?
They’re also afraid of their kids not being able to get into an Ivy if the desis take up the valedictorian & salutatorian spots. The funny thing is that I am sure that many of the Iselin/Edison residents are probably only a generation or two from living in extended/multigenerational European immigrant families.
Well, Anna had pointed out on her recent Brian Lehrer appearance that the politics of the ABDs on this board are very different from the politics of DBDs, on immigration for instance. We’re only one generation away too.
“That’s the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin’ it-self“
I agree with that observation. But it doesn’t follow automatically that Indian revitalized the area. Many, many towns in North Jersey look way more prosperous today, after 20 odd years of decent economic growth, than they did 20 years ago. Come to think of it, while we’re on the topic of shared housing and therefore college towns, any oldtimers here struck by how wealthy college towns compared to what they used to look like back in the day?
re: cookiebrown @68
I have cousins in Edison/Iselin, so I’ve seen its growth over the years. I’m 22 now, living in Hoboken, NJ (just across the river from nyc) which has seen its share of growth, but nowhere near the factor Edison has seen. Hoboken went from kinda dumpy to pretty nice. Edison/Iselin brought Subzi Mandi, jewelry stores (i’ve heard 100+ just on the oak tree road strip?) and parking lots packed with cars from all over the northeast (read: sales tax, revenue for the city).
I grew up in Southern California and the same thing is happening on Pioneer Blvd in Artesia, but . There’s a lot of resentment, racism (ahem, ‘cultural differences’) and unwillingness to change. But the people just keep getting permits and building, and generally the towns are realizing how much of an asset these areas are. Still, some friends of my parents opened a Hindu temple in a residential area in Norwalk, CT. The every now and then late night garbas (8pm late for the old garba ladies) frequently resulted in slashed tires for the cars parked out front. One thing’s for sure, the status quo is sure as hell changing and the rest of the country had better be ready to change with it.
A desi-born desi veering towards death by dissertation, in case anyone wonders. Although now I’m a DBAC3D- a desi-born american confused displaced diasporic desi. Anyway, living in the tri-state area in Jercity (or Jersey City to non-residents), I had plenty of fellow desi flatmates. We didn’t have to mow our lawn or shovel the snow because the landlady(RIP)’s lafanga son took care of those functions in lieu of payment for living in his mother’s house and watching tv all day at the age of 45. We got soc’s by going to the SSA and waiting in a short line. I assume H1B workers have to do this as well, no? Wouldn’t having a SS number be a precondition to getting a paycheck? I don’t know.
As for mowing lawns, my father always complains that in India, people keep their streets filthy and their home interiors immaculately clean. Bourgeois response, no doubt, but pace Partha Chatterjee, the outside is not civic space, it is that place that is not-home.
No doubt there are anti-Indian and Anti-immigrant issues lurking not too far from the surface in Iselin (yeah, we always call it Edison too), but I think Sari Virgin has correctly identified the bottom line:
“Any place where there are rentals with a relatively large number of people, will get backlash from the people who own nearby complaining about whatever they can come up with.”
We own a single family home. We will probably at some point become a single multigenerational/extended family home. We have several such homes on our street. Nobody has an issue with such. However, once a home gets rented out (which does happen on occasion), all the neighbors, including me, get leery. Why?
(1)Renters and remote landlords generally do not take care of rental properties the way homeowners do – I certainly didn’t as a former renter, nor did members of my family as former landlords. People who own homes generally take pride in living in a house/neighborhood that has curb appeal. (2) When a home is divided up into multiple household units (let’s assume legally for the sake of this argument) you generally get more trash, more vehicles, more noise and more foot traffic than if you had the same number of people living in one household.
Goriwife at #71– everything you said is true. But complaints about rentals only seem to inspire politicians and national media attention when a growing immigrant population is the target of the complaint. Poor white people live in overcrowded rentals and trailers in my hometown (outside Pittsburgh) and there are complaints sometimes, but it never goes farther than the zoning board or the town council– no organized campaigns, no New York Times articles. There may very well be legitimate grounds for some complaints, but I don’t think that robs the issue of its political dimension– about which we should all be speaking out.
@melbourne desi #58 –
All your bro has to do is register with the Indian Association at A&M , and they will take it from there regarding hosting. This site should be a great place to start. If he needs more info, he get in touch with me at my site, and i could help him with any questions he might have.
inspiring politicians to what end? to prevent it?
Once you own a home and are paying mortgage , the “love” for your hood takes a protective leap. I sued to have liberal views on renters and overcrowding. Used to.
The question is, if it were a bunch of swedish gymnasts renting places, would the reaction be the same?
Thank you.
Right. I’m talking about the xenophobic headline-grabbers like Tom Tancredo, or the mayors in Hazleton, PA and Riverside, NJ (and more towns keep adding themselves to that list).
That is exactly the question.
Agree 100%.All of us tend to get into the NIMBY mode ( Not In My Backyard)
And as far as I know, the answer is probably not. I saw a microcosm of this in Bridgewater, NJ, when the temple there was attempting to expand their housing complexes for the priests. The city planning commission had to authorize this as it was considered public housing. (temple is a public place)
There was a clear undercurrent of racism, as churches had no expansion issues at all, of course their models were differnt, they don’t need the reverends to live onsite, as Hindu temples usually have. But the big questions were, “will these new priests coming, bring their kids as well? will they go to our school, will it bring more traffic to rt 202/206?”
I have a house in Jersey City which I rent out desi grad students. It started with five guys and sometimes when I happen to stop by randomly, I see more luggage and the reason they give is, “some guys are staying because they’re in transition to find a new place”. I know they wouldnt find a nice landlord like me anywhere else 🙂
My friends Father-in-law is the head chef there. the food is alright but Rasoi is by far the best restaurant in that area cuz it doesnt believe in “fusion” and has that punjabi dhaaba taste that I love. Try TANGRA, Queens, for the best Indo-chinese food in the tri state area!
Only if they had trampolines in the yard.
with this, you never know.
Oh, and if they left fresh herring out in the sun to dry before they pickled it.
randomizer – thank you.
Runa – Not true. Folks on an H1B and L1 do get paid even if they dont have SSN. However on their payslips it is shown as ‘SSN applied for’. The company deposits the money in a trust account. Some companies provide advances on salary for as long as it takes to get an SSN.
HMF : great point about the Swedes.
A good way to fight such harassment would be to plough a rotten used car into the houses of a few complaining neighbours. Claim loss of control!!That should shut them up or alternatively they will move – Fighting words 😉
We need to learn to fight back – everywhere.
Melbourne desi,
Yes, you are right.I meant in general even on H1 you need an SSN because I thought I saw a question from a commenter on whether SSNs are issued at all to H1s!
That exact scenario works only for Billy Joel.
I just stumbled upon this and don’t have time to read all the comments above, but– it’s not just New Jersey. It’s happening in NY too (Queens, close to Nassau County). A relative runs an IT company and has a bunch of DBDs living in a rented house while they’re waiting for job placement. The neighbors complained about the lawn and the health inspector came along. I can’t verify if the lawn really was that horrible though.
I haven’t read all the comments above, but I’d like to say that this is true – Iselin is my hometown, and my family has been unfairly attacked more then once about the upkeep of our lawns.