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The last 2-3 days have been flooded with media stories on the Indians deported from the United States. In an earlier opinion article, Vir Sanghvi had written something similar – stop feeling bad for those Indians being deported, and that’s perfectly true. Indians who choose to illegally migrate tarnish the name of our country abroad. In one of the speeches in his first term, when PM Modi visited Amsterdam, he had referred to Indians residing abroad as “rashtra-doots”; but we certainly do not want these kinds of rashtra-doots from India. In fact, there are about 7.25 lakh illegal Indians in the US and form the third-largest group of illegal immigrants. Although this is less considering India’s population, one should be surprised as to how these people ended up on the other side of the world.
Illegal immigration comes at a huge cost not just for the country where they end up, but also for the host country, which in this case is India. The more illegal immigrants you have, the more difficult it will be for genuine travellers to get a visa. The Indian passport has been steadily dropping its ranking, primarily due to people who overstay their visas, and never intend to return. It is almost impossible for a college graduate without a job to get a US tourist visa today. In fact, because Indians also tend to enter the US illegally from Mexico and Canada, it has also become too difficult for ordinary Indians to obtain visas for those countries, and in fact, most of the countries in the Americas, those who do not have a US or Canadian visa. Ecuador, a small country in South America was until recently visa-free for Indians. Today, in order to obtain an Ecuadorian visa, you need to submit a police clearance certificate. In this regard, it would not be incorrect to say that these visa approval decisions inherently come from Washington DC and not from their own country, effectively making all these nations “vassal states” or “colonies” of the United States. It can be argued that these countries can judge a socio-economic background of an applicant instead of blindly rejecting, but we can’t expect too much from dumb visa adjudicators who do not have enough knowledge on the demographics of the country and its illegal migrants.
One could say that the government should take this individually with every country, especially with the United States, where many genuine travellers intend to visit, but are unable to do so because of a few thousand Indians who are hell bent on tarnishing this image of our country. In order to achieve this though, India needs to have something substantial to negotiate. At the very least, India must, without any delay, intake all declared illegal immigrants who have been confirmed as Indian. In the past, we refrained or delayed from doing so as this turns into a national issue in the Parliament, as we just saw. However, if we simply stop accepting our own illegal migrants, the United States can stop issuing visas to Indians with provisions derived from the Ronald Reagan era Immigration and Nationality Act section 212(f). Originally meant for Cuban nationals, its purpose is to deny entry for those aliens who could be “detrimental to the United States”. Thus, nothing stops Trump and his creative ingenuity to mend the act to be used in this way.
Another solution is to heavily crack down on agents who facilitate this “dunki” business. Today, illegal migration of Indians abroad is not a criminal offence in India. At max, we may confiscate the passports of deportees and heavily scrutinise them for their next passport application, but a stronger action would be to enact a law in the Parliament to make it a criminal offence to illegally immigrate or facilitate illegal migration. With this new law, the state police shall have greater power to go after these agents. Proving agents guilty in the court could still be a challenge, but simply making this a criminal offence would deter many to choose this path. Obtaining an Indian passport today is way easier than what it was 20 years ago, and illegal migration has been its undesirable side effect. We could also enhance the requirements for obtaining a non-ECR passport, but that shall likely be met with a protest. India should prove that it can tackle illegal migration from its soil. Only the Indian government can increase the reputation of the Indian passport. If one detests illegal Bangladeshis and Rohingyas on Indian soil, the same rules should be applied to illegal Indians on foreign soils. There should be no sympathy for them.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.