The growing number of legal and illegal Indian migrants in the United States is encouraging more illegal migration from India’s vast population of 200 million underpaid and underemployed youths, according to an Indian newspaper.
The article, published by the India Times’ business journal: cited the power of cell phone videos as a lure and goad for many young men who are understandably eager to escape India’s poor economy:
Manpreet Brar, 22, had lost hope of a good future in India after failing to clear any government job exams even after numerous attempts. “I tried landing a job in the police and army but couldn’t secure a spot. My friends who had gone to America were making way more money than I would’ve made here doing anything, so going there seemed like my only option,” he told ET [Economic Times] Online.
The vast majority of Indian migrants go to oil-rich Arab countries. Many go to Canada or Europe, where governments are quietly eager to provide India’s cheap labor to local employers.
But there are so many Indians migrating to the United States that they exceeded the Mexican legal inflow in 2018.
Roughly four million Indians are living in the United States. Of those, about one-quarter were brought into to serve as white-collar contract-workers for the Fortune 500 companies, often by Indian-born hiring managers. At least one-seventh — about 600,000 — are illegal migrants, including many visa workers who have not been sent home after overstaying their visas.
Indian relatives in the United States also help migrants slip through U.S. border controls and asylum laws, the India Times report said.
One young migrant, named Singh, told the newspaper how he used the loose rules for juvenile migrants — dubbed “Unaccompanied Alien Children” — to get from border detention to relatives in Philadelphia:
I was about to turn eighteen but I had given them [goverment agencies] a different date of birth. They tried to get me in touch with my parents [In India] but I refused to call them. I was soon released and my custody was given to my distant relatives who were legal US residents living in Philadelphia.
Relatives, as well as business owners with ties to a shared hometown in India, can also help the migrants find jobs either legally or illegally. Indian “facilitators in the United States are using them as indentured servants saying] ‘Come work for me three to four years, and every paycheck I keep so much until you pay off your [debt],” a border official to told Breitbart in 2019:
That task is set to become more difficult because the administration has implemented many reforms, including a rule that bars asylum-requesting migrants from getting work permits for at least one year.
This Indian migration is strongly encouraged by India’s government, which rationally expects the exported workers to send home much foreign wealth, technology, and jobs — and also to help many additional Indians migrate into foreign jobs.
In February 2019, the Forsyth County News reported from a community of Indian Walmart employees in Arkansas:
Ani Agnihotri, program chair of the USA-India Business Summit … said India has a massive and young population that could provide skilled, English-speaking workers ready to relocate “even at a seven-day notice” and said the majority of doctors in the United Kingdom and about 15 percent in America are of Indian descent.
“India has the youngest population in the world. About 25 percent of the population of India, which is 1.25 billion, is below the age of 25,” he said. “We will be the provider of the workforce of the world in about 15 years, after 2035.”
U.S. labor laws allow U.S. companies to import cheap foreign workers via the H-1B and L-1 visa programs. Since 1990, more than one million Indian workers have rationally worked in U.S. jobs, mostly until they learn how to do the same work from India.
At least 300,000 hard-working Indians have won invaluable green cards from their U.S. employers since 2000, and at least 300,000 more Indian workers — and 300,000 family members — are waiting for green cards while they work in the United States:
So far, the migration strategy has proved spectacularly successful for India. For example, Indian migrants are the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, and Mastercard, and they fill top management, technology, and H.R. jobs in many additional U.S. companies.
Many Indians try to migrate by getting education visas. At least 200,000 Indians are enrolled in the U.S. colleges — and at least 100,000 of them also legally hold U.S. jobs. Since 2017, Trump has curbed the inflow of India’s student-workers.
However, to get student visas, the Indians must first pass language tests — dubbed IELTS. That is a huge obstacle for many seeking to get into the United States or in Europe:
Most Indian migrants are legal arrivals.
The illegal Indian migrants mostly rely on asylum pleas to stay in the United States, according to the India Times reported:
Almost all such migrants from Punjab go to the US in search of better living standards and employment opportunities. The average asylum plea, however, cites a very different reason: They request asylum on political grounds. Requesting anonymity, a man who entered the US in the mid 1990s said, “Even in those days we were told to request political asylum stating that the Indian government does not treat Sikhs at par with the rest of India and targets us for fear of another Khalistan uprising.”
“Overwhelmingly, [they are] claiming asylum, based on political and religious discrimination back in India … [but] every story is pretty much the same,” a border agency official told Breitbart.
Trump’s appointees are rejecting many of those asylum cases following Trump’s reform of asylum regulations.
For example, the man named Singh, who lived with relatives in Philadelphia, has been ordered home. But he is appealing his case and is working as a truck driver to hire immigration lawyers, the India Times said. “I have paid a total of $25,000 in attorney fees and court fees,” Singh told the newspaper.
Trump’s reforms of the asylum courts — and his pressure on Mexico — is helping to send many Indian migrants home:
However, Democrat Joe Biden is promising to welcome migrants — and also to temporarily stop deportations.
His running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) was a cosponsor of the S.386 bill that would have put roughly 700,000 Indian visa workers and family members on a fast-track to citizenship.
Harris is the daughter of an Indian immigrant and has strong support from Indian pro-migration groups.
Biden and Harris are strongly supported by business groups that would gain from the inflow of more Indian workers, consumers, renters, and home buyers.
The Indian population of four million living in the United States is a tiny share of India’s population of 1,380 million. In contrast, the U.S. population is just 330 million.
Each year, 20 million Indians turn 18 and continue searching for better jobs — including jobs in the United States. In contrast, each year, four million Americans turn 18 and begin searching for a job and career.
The flow of migrants from India to the United States creates winners and losers.
The winners include the Indians who get across the border, especially those who bring their children into U.S. neighborhoods and K-12 schools. Other winners include the Fortune 500 and their subcontractors who get a larger supply of compliant and cheap Indian labor to replace American professionals and blue collars.
The losers include the many Americans who lose jobs, careers, and decent housing as more Indians legally and illegally crowd into their workplace and neighborhoods.
The biggest losers are the Indians who get deported home after paying approximately one year’s salary to Indian coyotes. The coyotes are dubbed “donkers” because they run the so-called “donkey” migration routes. The India Times reported:
During his 5-month-long journey from New Delhi to Mexico, [22-year-old Ajay] Saini had many sleepless nights and battled a number of diseases. All he fears now is how his folks are ever going to repay the money borrowed from family and friends.
One Indian who fled home after being caught up in one of many U.S. fraud cases told his tragic story in February 2019 to the BBC:
Veeresh had taken a loan of 1.5m rupees (£16,300; $21,000) to help pay for his [U.S.] education. The first university cost him $30,000 and Farmington [University] cost him an additional $20,000. He had to borrow money from his friend to buy a ticket to come back home.
He still hasn’t told his parents why he returned. “They think I am on vacation. But the truth is that I have no job and a college loan to pay off. My parents would be devastated if they knew the truth.”
His parents are farmers and Veeresh had hoped to help them out by earning an income in dollars, some of which he could send home. “I am the only son. I wanted to take care of my parents. We do not own land or a house. I wanted to go to America to earn better so that I can buy a house for my family in India.”
Read the India Times article here:
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