Soaring Illegal Immigration of Indians into the United States
Illegal immigration from India to the United States is soaring. A record 96,917 Indians were detained while attempting to enter the US illegally from October 2022 to September 2023, representing a 50% jump from the corresponding period in the prior year. Vast majority of the arrested Indians came from Prime Minister Modi's state of Gujarat while others came from the state of Punjab. There are about 725,000 undocumented Indian immigrants in the US – the third-largest population of illegal immigrants after Mexicans and El Salvadorans – according to a Pew Research Centre report.
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| Illegal Immigration to the US From India. Source: Strait Times |
The number of Indians attempting to cross into the United States illegally has accelerated in recent years on Prime Minister Modi's watch. These immigrants take the Latin American route to reach the US-Mexico border before making a run for the US. They cross the Darien Gap, a dangerous thick forest region between Colombia and Panama, taking three days to a week while taking huge risks ranging from lack of food and drinking water, wild animals and violent gangs.
There are multiple drivers of mass illegal migration of Indians to other countries. These include increasing violence under Mr. Modi's Hindutva rule and lack of jobs for thee growing working-age population. Human traffickers are exploiting these conditions to profit from vulnerable groups most impacted by political and economic problems in the country.
Christians, low caste Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs are among the main targets of the far-right Hindu mob attacks across India. In 2023, the Modi government’s discriminatory and divisive policies led to growing violence against minorities, creating a pervasive environment of fear and a chilling effect on government critics, Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2024.
India's labor force participation rate (LPR) has been declining for several years. Centre For Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data shows that the labor participation rate fell to 39.5% in 2022-23, from an already low 40.1% in 2021-22. This indicates that more than half of India’s working age population is not employed. This is especially the case for women 90% of whom are out of the labor force. India’s LPR is among the lowest in the world. The global average LPR is 60%.
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| Labor Participation Rate in India. Source: CMIE Via Reuters |
The rapid GDP growth claimed by India is not creating enough jobs for its massive young population. The much-hyped "Make in India" initiative of the Modi government is just not working well enough to keep pace with the demand for jobs. Manufacturing’s contribution to India’s GDP has declined from 17% two decades ago to just 13% in 2022, according to the World Bank. India has added only 5 million factory jobs since Mr. Modi was first elected, for a total of 65 million such jobs now, according to the Wall Street Journal. Unable to find jobs in cities, a very large number of Indians are going back to subsistence farming to eke out a meager living.
Indian economist Ritesh Kumar recently wrote a piece for Nikkei Asia titled "Few are benefiting from India's rapid GDP growth". His conclusion: What India really needs is a growth trajectory that is inclusive, sustainable and can foster shared prosperity across all segments of the economy rather than benefiting only a privileged few.
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Comments
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/tennis-star-called-racist-comments-about-india-following-three-week-stay
Professional tennis player Dejana Radanovic was accused of being racist after making comments about India following three ITF tournaments in the country.
Radanovic, the world No. 245 in women’s tennis, slammed the "food, traffic and hygiene" of the country on social media.
"I didn’t like India – the country," she wrote on another Instagram Story. "I didn’t like the food, traffic, hygiene (worms in the food, yellow pillows and dirty bed linen in the hotel, not knowing how to use roundabout etc.)
Another post in Munich, Germany read, "Hello civilization. Only those who have experienced something like India for 3 weeks can understand the feeling."
Radanovic, who is from Serbia, addressed the comments that she was racist by saying she was simply commenting about the country itself, not its people.
"I didn’t like India – the country," she wrote on another Instagram Story. "I didn’t like the food, traffic, hygiene (worms in the food, yellow pillows and dirty bed linen in the hotel, not knowing how to use roundabout etc.)
"If you come to my country, Serbia, and you don’t like all those same things, that means you are a racist??? What the hell that has to do with racism?! I have friends all nationalities and colors so don’t go there cause it’s an absolute NONSENSE!"
Radanovic continued with her Stories, saying she enjoyed the people of India.
"95% of the people who go to India from anywhere else in the world cannot adopt [sic] to that kind of life! Of course it’s different when you are born there and used to it! How does not liking mentioned things mean I didn’t like the people? Quite opposite, I liked the people there a lot."
@JayantBhandari5
The fastest growing economy in the world, India, is sending shiploads, trainloads and planeloads of people to the USA. What would the US fast food chains do without Indians?
https://x.com/JayantBhandari5/status/1804692050274820477
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A new $72,000 migrant smuggling route to the US starts with a charter flight, and many Indians are waiting to board - The Economic Times
https://m.economictimes.com/nri/migrate/a-new-72000-migrant-smuggling-route-to-the-us-starts-with-a-charter-flight-and-many-indians-are-waiting-to-board/articleshow/111167134.cms
When a Legend Airlines Airbus A340 landed at San Salvador airport on July 15 after an 18-hour flight from the United Arab Emirates, its crew quickly realized something was wrong.
Salvadoran officials refused to connect the jet bridge to allow the roughly 300 passengers, all Indian nationals, to disembark, according to three former crew members on the flight who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Several passengers told the cabin crew they planned to travel onward to Mexico and cross the border there illegally into the U.S., one crew member said. Others said they were going on vacation to the Mexican border city of Tijuana, another crew member said.
Salvadoran officials were already on high alert when the flight landed. Several months earlier, U.S. and Salvadoran authorities had noticed an unusual pattern of charter aircraft landing in El Salvador carrying primarily Indian nationals.
The planes were arriving full and leaving empty, a U.S. official said. And some passengers claiming to be tourists brought only a backpack for weeks-long trips. U.S. authorities later discovered that nearly all of the charter passengers disembarking in San Salvador had crossed the border into the U.S., the official said.
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About 9% of irregular crossings at the U.S. border in the 2023 fiscal year involved migrants from outside Latin America, or about 188,000 people, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security data. A decade ago, people from outside the Americas accounted for barely 1% of irregular arrivals.
The Biden administration attributes the historic levels of migration to global economic and political instability. Trump has blamed the high border crossings on Biden's policies.
Indian nationals were the largest single group from outside the Americas encountered at the border last year, comprising about 42,000 arrivals. Migrants from 15 West African countries accounted for another 39,700, with most from Senegal and Mauritania.
The Biden administration has been working with some regional governments as well as travel companies to curb the flow of migrants.
In March, it began revoking U.S. visas for owners and executives of charter airlines and other companies thought to be facilitating smuggling. The State Department's Jacobstein declined to name individuals or companies affected or how many had faced restrictions. Reuters was unable to independently establish which companies had been targeted.
In May, the administration warned commercial airlines to be on the lookout for passengers who might be intending to migrate illegally to the U.S. Apprehensions on the border in April fell 48% from December, U.S. government data show, which U.S. officials attribute in part to tougher enforcement by Mexico.
El Salvador's Vice President Felix Ulloa said in an interview that his government has "permanent, constant, and effective" collaboration with the U.S. to fight irregular migration. The introduction of visa requirements and $1,000 transit fees on citizens of India and many African nations last October has "drastically reduced" the number of migrants transiting through San Salvador, he said.
But as some routes for illegal migration get squeezed, others open up.
@ArifCRafiq
Vivek is apparently going to be sending a lot of Indians back home:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/16/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/
https://x.com/ArifCRafiq/status/1813373927739048264
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https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/16/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/
After Mexico, the countries of origin with the largest unauthorized immigrant populations in the U.S. in 2021 were:
El Salvador (800,000)
India (725,000)
Guatemala (700,000)
Honduras (525,000)
India, Guatemala and Honduras all saw increases from 2017.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/22/india/young-indians-chase-american-dream-intl-hnk-dst/index.html?cid=ios_app
In just four years, the number of Indian citizens illegally entering the US has surged dramatically — from 8,027 in the 2018 to 2019 fiscal year to 96,917 during 2022 to 2023 period, government data showed.
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-sends-back-illegal-indian-immigrants-on-chartered-flight-ahead-of-polls-6877764
Washington:
The US hired a chartered flight to deport Indian nationals who were staying in the country illegally, the Department of Homeland Security has said, noting that this has been done in cooperation with the Indian government.
The charter flight was sent to India on October 22, the department said on Friday. "Indian nationals without a legal basis to remain in the United States are subject to swift removal, and intending migrants should not fall for the lies of smugglers who proclaim otherwise," said Kristie A. Canegallo, a senior official performing the duties of Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security.
The statement said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues to enforce US immigration laws and deliver tough consequences for those who enter unlawfully and encourages the use of lawful pathways.
Since June 2024, when the Securing the Border Presidential Proclamation and accompanying Interim Final Rule went into effect, encounters between ports of entry along the southwest border of the US have decreased by 55 per cent.
In fiscal year 2024, the DHS removed or returned over 160,000 individuals and operated more than 495 international repatriation flights to more than 145 countries, including India, the statement said.
It said the department regularly engaged with foreign governments throughout the hemisphere and around the world to accept repatriations of their nationals without a legal basis to remain in the US.
This was one tool among many that the US used to reduce irregular migration, promote the use of safe, lawful and orderly pathways, and hold transnational criminal networks accountable for smuggling and exploitation of vulnerable people, it said.
Over the last year, DHS has removed individuals from a range of countries worldwide, including Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Egypt, Mauritania, Senegal, Uzbekistan, China, and India.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/03/india-undocumented-immigrants/
JALANDHAR, India — Billboards crowd the small lanes of this northern Indian city, calling out to those who dream of a different future. A sign in the Punjabi language beckons: “Let’s go to America.”
An immigration agent, driving on an overpass amid the sea of billboards, reflected on the city’s brisk migration business. “Most of these agents would have tried sending clients through an illegal route to the U.S.,” said the Punjabi agent, adding that he himself had sent 60 such clients along routes that hopscotch through various countries before arriving in Mexico or Canada, where the migrants walk across the U.S. border.
Indians have come to make up the third-largest group of undocumented immigrants in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2021 estimates, which put the number of such Indians at 725,000. India is the only country in the top five outside Latin America, and since 2011, the number of undocumented Indians in the United States has grown by 70 percent, the fastest growth of all nationalities. Figures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show that the number of undocumented Indian immigrants increased the fastest between 2020 and 2023.
The immigrants are often from middle-class families. They frequently sell their land to pay for the journey — which families say can run $40,000 to $100,000 per person — hoping that working in America will triple their wages, produce a secure future for their children and yield a higher value in the marriage market for their sons.
These migrants are “not the desperately poor” and often come from the most prosperous states in India, said Devesh Kapur, a South Asian studies professor at Johns Hopkins University who focuses on the Indian diaspora. But faced with a shortage of attractive jobs and a struggling agricultural sector, they find that the wealth they have in India is not enough to transform their lives, and this creates “a culture of migration,” he said.
The migrants pass along a chain of countries chosen because of easy visa requirements, according to interviews with more than a dozen families and their agents in three states in western India. In each place, agents provide the migrants with their next plane ticket as they move closer and closer to Latin America or Canada. From there, depending on how much they pay, they walk or are transported to the U.S. border. If asked questions, they are told to say they don’t feel safe in India.
The trek — along what’s called the “donkey route,” after the Punjabi idiom “dunki,” which refers to hopping — can involve up to a dozen countries and take over a year.
“The danger of the route is not worth it,” said L.K. Yadav, a senior police official in Punjab who set up a team to investigate donkey cases. The country’s youth, he said, have been “misguided with distorted facts” about the journey.
Gursewak Singh, 28, said he spent nine months last year waiting in a New Delhi hotel, then one month in a Dubai hotel and, finally, one month in the Istanbul airport, with hundreds of other Indians waiting for their agents’ directions. “We were like birds in a cage. The airport lobby area became like a village meeting place,” he said. Then, Gursewak recounted, his bag, with his passport, was stolen in the airport.
It was a costly setback. To pay for the journey, he said, he had sold an acre of land for $30,000 and raised $6,000 more by mortgaging two other acres and borrowing money from relatives.
On a recent day back home in India’s Haryana state, he opened Snapchat on his phone. It was filled with images of friends who have reached the United States, dancing at the Mexican border while their families back home set off fireworks and cut a cake in the shape of an American flag. “I feel, let me go, too,” he said.