Green
Card Fever, directed by Bala Rajasekharuni,
is an exposé of the illegal and unethical traps
of the immigration process in the United States, as
seen through the experience of an Indian named Murali
(played by Vikram Dasu). When the film begins, Murali
is in Columbus, Ohio. He has dropped out of a dance
troupe, hoping to find a job and to get a green card
in six months. Although he has a place to stay, the
apartment is a way station for the continual traffic
of Indians overstaying their visas. When he tries to
apply for a job, his passport is seized by Parvesh
(played by Kaaizad Kotwal), who operates Project Mitra,
an underground organization that pretends to get green
cards but in actuality works as an employment agency
that nets a percentage of the salaries of the illegals.
In Murali's case, Parvesh's cut at first is 100 percent.
At one of the employment sites, a marriage bureau for
Indian Americans seeking large profits for weddings
arranged with the illegals, Murali meets Bharathi (played
by Purva Bedi), a sassy Americanized Indian who does
not want her parents to marry her off as if she were
merely a piece of property. In a defiant mood because
of her parents' mercenary ambitions, she is rude to
Murali, who in turn is polite and does not get flustered
when she is impertinent. Impressed that Murali is so
well mannered, Bharathi is delighted when he happens
to visit a pet store where she is a part-time clerk.
Soon she attends the birthday party of her American
boyfriend Patrick (played by Nick Baldasare), but he
and his friends are rude, showing their ignorance and
stereotypes of the customs of India. Bharathi then
flees from the party to visit Murali, a man more after
her own heart, and she starts to behave nicely. However,
Parvesh and an attorney Chan (played by Robert Lin)
are organizing a scam to sue Americanized Sikh Omjeet
Singh Purewal (played by Deep Katdare), who in turn
is trying to bust up the illegal activities of Project
Mitra. Parvesh prevails on Murali to testify falsely
in court against Om but unwisely does not give him
his passport so that the judge will have some basis
to authenticate Murali's identity. Soon, Murali is
escorted out of court, arrested as an illegal; on his
way to jail, Bharathi hands him a paper containing
the word "LIAR." While in jail, a prison
guard subjects Murali to physical abuse, which brings
him to his senses. When he reappears in court, he exposes
the scam. The INS judge (played by David Alan Shaw)
then remands the case to INS attorneys for future litigation,
offering Murali a work permit so that he can stay in
the country to testify against Parvesh and Chan. Murali
and Bharathi end up in each other's arms at the end
of the film. The Political Film Society has nominated Green
Card Fever as an exposé that warns
illegal aliens and others to beware of the scams that
trap those with little knowledge of the labyrinthine
maze of the immigration process in the United States.
MH
I
want to comment on this film
