In January 2022, four members of a family, from the western Indian state of Gujarat, froze to death at the US-Canada border. The couple and their two children had paid a hefty amount to traffickers to be smuggled into the US for what they thought would be a better life. Instead, they perished in the cold.
In the run-up to the US presidential elections, Donald Trump promised to deport such undocumented/unauthorised immigrants, which he terms “illegal”. The US has been “removing” “inadmissible or deportable” migrants since the 19th century, but the deportation rhetoric has never before been stronger.
In 2022, Pew Research Center, a self-proclaimed non-partisan think tank, estimated 725,000 unauthorised Indian immigrants living in the US, a number second only to people from neighbouring Mexico and El Salvador. This number along with the 18,000 identified by the Indian administration as living ‘illegally’ in the US, have often been referred to in news and discussions about the matter.
Bogey of ‘illegal’ immigrants:
But Indian government officials, the media and Trump routinely use the word ‘illegal’. It is also famously the favourite bogey of different ruling dispositions in India, who regularly flag “illegal immigrants” as the reason behind everything – from the so-called demographic shift to crime.
Paradoxically, the undocumented Indian in the US, in the eye of Trump’s anti-immigration storm, is likely to hit India hard.
The US is the second most popular global destination for Indians of all ilk.
Indians professionals received 72.3 percent of H1-B visas in the 2023 fiscal year, while the number of irregular Indian immigrants arriving at a border or an airport was 97,000. Both these figures indicate the continuing popularity of the US as a favoured destination for Indians.
The basic lacunae in both the Indian and the US governments’ responses has been the inability to view undocumented workers as productive members of the host community, as remittance earners back home and as people embedded in families and kinship networks.
In the US, households led by undocumented persons paid US$ 75.8 billion in taxes, indicating their contribution to the US economy. India received US$ 111 billion in remittances from documented and undocumented Indians from the US in 2024. Irregular immigrants are more likely to send higher proportions of their earnings back home, which, in simpler terms, translates into India benefitting immensely from those who live undocumented in the US.
The promised mass deportations are also set to wreak havoc in communities, breaking apart thousands of mixed-status households and separating US citizen children from their undocumented parents.
Far-reaching consequences:
India has already agreed to work with the US government to get 18,000 people it recognises as Indians back. Indian students admitted to US universities on partial or no funding have started to quit their off-campus part time jobs, held to support their education, and at times, also families back home.
While the F1 visa allows them to work on-campus jobs, inadequate funding forces many students to take up jobs in supermarkets, cafes and bars. Fearing that this may become a cause for deportation, students are now quitting their jobs and trying to scramble together enough funds from other sources to continue with their courses.
Why the undocumented route:
Most of those aspiring for the American dream outside of regular channels are from Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat. They pay exorbitant fees to agencies for an arduous and dangerous entry into the US. Often, the fees are generated by selling agricultural land in states where employment for educated youth is in short supply.
Rising unemployment, inflation and the rise of intolerance in society propel Indians to travel to and live undocumented in the US, the UK and Europe. These are complicated by other reasons such as the inability to communicate in English during visa interviews, the aggressive campaigns by agencies which promise smooth entry into desirable destinations and the lure of a better life without awareness about the dangers en route.
In a briefing, Trump mentioned that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to do “what is right” in the matter of undocumented immigrants now in the US. Trump and Modi have been close allies for nearly a decade now. They have also been echoing each other in grandstanding against undocumented individuals.
Indians are regularly deported from different parts of the world for being undocumented. Recently, 200 Indians were sent back from Jamaica. Indians deplaned in France over alleged concerns of being undocumented were sent back in 2023, while in 2024 the US repatriated 1,500 Indian nationals.
Unlike previous occasions, however, this time the US’ promise to deport Indians is likely to bear severe consequences for India because the numbers of those likely to be deported are far higher, with considerable economic implications.
About author:Samata Biswas is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator, Department of English, The Sanskrit College and University, Kolkata.
This is an abridged version. Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.
