In this searing cultural meditation, Khalid Mohamed revisits Bob Dylan’s protest song on migration, linking art, scholarship, journalism, and lived realities to expose how exploitation of migrant workers continues, globally and relentlessly, across decades and borders.

Bob Dylan’s protest song on immigrants remains a timeless commentary on migrant labour, exploitation, and global inequality. As Khalid Mohamed connects music, literature, journalism, and statistics, the essay foregrounds migrant workers, urbanisation, construction labour, human rights, economic migration, and social injustice in India and worldwide, revealing art’s enduring political conscience.

It’s just  a protest song, you might say. Yet it remains the most imperishable articulation of the rank inhumanness and exploitation of the no-exit situation in which the migrant workers find themselves in, at the expense of politicians, policing forces and the bullying employers, be it in developed or underdeveloped countries the world over.

I’m alluding to a singer-writer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, but did not attend the uber prestigious ceremony.

Right, so it was way back in 1967, that Bob Dylan’s iconic plaint became anthemic, stirring the conscience of those who possess that fast-vanishing quality. The song stated:

I pity the poor immigrant

Who wishes he could have stayed home

Who uses all his power to do evil

But in the end is always left so alone

That man whom he cheats

And who lies with every breath

Who passionately hates his life

And likewise fears his death

I pity the poor immigrant

Whose strength is spent in vain

Whose heaven is like ironsides

Whose tears are like rain

Who eats but is not satisfied

Who hears but does not see

Who falls in love with wealth itself

And turns his back on me…..

I pity the poor immigrant

Who tramples the mud

Who fills his mouth with laughing

And who builds his town with blood

Whose visions in the final end

Must shatter like glass

I pity the poor immigrant

When his gladness must come to past

At the outset, Dylan’s protest evoked mixed and arbitrarily argued reactions. Because of the damning words, the song was interpreted by scholar Richard F. Thomas as a "plaintive song of empathy, for the poor immigrant who just doesn't fit, and whose preoccupations – that man 'who falls in love with wealth itself and turns his back on me' —keep him from joining the world of the singer."

Time magazine called it a melancholy portrait of a misanthropic, mal-contented wanderer", citing the lyric "who passionately hates his life and likewise fears his death."

Gordon Mills wrote empathetically in the cult youth magazine, Rolling Stone ,that Dylan" suggests the immense sympathy he has for those who have dared to cut the rope and be free from the life of being one, 'who lies with every breath, who passionately hates himself, and likewise fears his death.' The immigrant, having seen through the enormous paradox of wealth and poverty on this earth, seeks another way. The song ends with open tenderness for those who have made the journey."

Eminent scholar of English, David Punter, wrote that it is unclear who the audience that the narrator of the song addresses are, but that the lyrics seem to be "less about a concern for the immigrant himself than about the plight into which his situation places all of us". He suggested that the opening verse, which says that the "poor immigrant...uses all his power to do evil "is indicative of "depthless irony.”

According to Punter, "We are not, surely, supposed to mistake the immigrant for a terrorist, but instead to sense the interior struggle of resentment, and hence a questioning of what this 'evil' might actually be: an evil emanating from the immigrant, or more probably the impossibility of escaping from prejudice, of always being 'pre-judged' and feeling the distorted need to live up to these negative expectations."

John Berger in his profoundly emotionally moving book, The Seventh Man, published in 1975, expressed his adherism to leftist (now a dirty word’): “Those who have left and succeeded in the city and come back, are heroes…They hint that there are secrets which can only be divulged and discussed with those who have been there.

“One such secret concerns women. Another concerns certain men who must never be insulted or crossed. Another is how long it takes to walk out of the city. Another is about buildings into which it is absolutely forbidden to enter. What is not a secret at all are the wages. All the things to be bought, the amount that can be saved, the variety of cars, the way women dress, what there is to eat and drink, the hours worked, the arguments won, the cunning which is needed on all occasions.”

Berger recognizes that they are boasting when they talk. But he accords them the right to boast, for they have returned with money and presents which are a proof of their achievement. The author recognises himself that after visualizing himself entering their ‘conspiracy’ that he will come back having achieved more than they, for he is capable of working harder, of being shrewder, and of saving more quickly than any of them.

The lately deceased photographer, Sebastiao Salgado, political activist of Brazil, went into self-exile, settled in Paris, and dedicated his entire life span to opening up the wounds of workers, travelling to as many as 120 countries, including India. Berger was impelled to conclude, “More than ever I feel the human race is one. There are differences of colour, language, culture and opportunities, but people’s feelings and reactions are alike. People flee wars to escape death, they migrate to improve their fortunes, they build new lives in foreign lands, they adapt to extreme hardship..”

These quotes have been chosen purely subjectively for a reason. The condition of migrant workers, especially since the start of the new millennium has indicated a universal resonance.  

According to a comprehensive report in Hindustan Times, a total of at least 10,000 infrastructure and private construction projects have been underway in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, encompassing the Coastal Road, the Navi Mumbai international airport, seven metro lines and the concretization of 400 kilometres of road in Mumbai.

The reporters point out that while these “portend the emergence of a glittering new city, the weight of building it rests squarely on the shoulders of migrants from within and outside Maharashtra, who comprise the bulk of the labour force in the construction sector. Most migrants arrive in the city seeking escape from extreme poverty and lack of opportunities. But once here, they encounter precarious working and living conditions, and often the cost of fuelling the dreams of a new city by paving with their lives due to lack of safety measures.”

For evidence, you can just look out of the window, that the Dylan anthem is as true as every breath we take. His song resonates. But as all bad things must pass, the immigrant workers human condition their count in numbers rises higher than the sun at noon.

On official records, which often if not always play down the purely factual,  in 2025, India has an estimated 150 to over 200 million internal migrant workers, representing approximately 30 per cent of the total workforce. Compelled by urbanisation and economic necessity, the workers are essentially concentrated in the informal economy, particularly in construction and manufacturing,  contributing 10 per cent to India's GDP. 

Roughly, over 600 million people (approx. 42 per cent of the population) have migrated within India.

The state-wise statistics are cited as: Maharashtra (20 million), Delhi (15 million), and Tamil Nadu (10 million).

Of these, the migrants are from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh. And while overall migration is high for women--largely due to marriage--men dominate work-related migration. 

There you are then, Bob Dylan’s song writings true more than it ever did. Migrant work don’t need our pity though. Above all, they need our compassion.