U.S. Visa Worker Programs Fuel Marriage Fraud in India

An Indian Muslim bride (C) answers questions by religious leaders during the 'Nikah Kabool
SAM PANTHAKY/AFP/Getty
Neil Munro

President Joe Biden’s deputies are extracting as many visa workers as they can from India — even as many thousands of women are being abandoned by their migrant husbands.

“Thousands of Indian women have been abandoned by men working overseas, leaving them trapped in their in-laws’ homes and often defrauded of dowry money,” said the subheadline of a New York Times article posted one week before India’s prime minister meets Biden at the White House.

The Indian men work in Canada, Italy, the United States, and many Gulf states. Many pay their smuggling fees — or buy their visas —  with dowry payments paid by the parents of quickly abandoned brides who are then left in social isolation, according to the June 13 article in the New York Times:

In a number of cases, men have used dowry money to pay immigration agents to land in wealthy countries like Canada, where Sikhs make up about 2 percent of the population. “The boys come, they enjoy, and leave with the dowry money,” [retired judge Rakesh Kumar] Garg said. “Then they get married again in foreign countries for citizenship. It is just treachery.”

…

“One lives here,” said Kulwinder Kaur, who said she was herself tricked into a marriage in 1999, pointing from her terrace toward a door to the right of her house. “Another lives there,” she continued, gesturing toward an entry gate made of bamboo, to the left of her house.

Shiwali Suman, an activist who helps rally abandoned wives in New Delhi, told Reuters in 2019 that abandoned women are socially shunned in traditional India.  “Are we divorced, single, widowed? … What are we actually? We are not able to be categorized.”

in 2019, GulfNews.com posted photos of Suman’s campaign to help the women abandoned by “Non-Resident Indians, or NRIs. One caption said:

[Daughter] Ekampreet gets ready to go to school. Sarbjeet [Kaur] married Daler Singh in 2008. Singh went to South America first, then Mexico, Sarbjeet says. She sold her jewelry for almost $5,000 to help him cross into the United States in late 2010, she says, and borrowed $3,600 from her parents to help him enter Canada four years later.

Meanwhile, U.S. embassy officials in India are touting their efforts to extract more Indians into U.S. universities, where they can get work permits under the Curricular Practical Training and Optical Practical Training (OPT) programs.

U.S. officials are also registering and releasing many thousands of Indians as they illegally cross the U.S. border from Mexico.

Once released, the Indians are free to take jobs within the growing population of Indians living legally or illegally inside the United States. The migrants also need to work because they have to pay back their massive smuggling bills.

Biden’s deputies have largely barred the deportation of migrants who do not commit felonies in the United States.

On June 16, NDTV.com, an Indian news site, spotlighted the U.S. administration’s enthusiasm for more Indian students and workers amid Biden’s effort to expand trade with India:

Asked about what India can expect from the US with regard to diplomacy, immigration and visa issues during PM Narendra Modi’s upcoming visit, [embassy spokesman] Matthew Miller said, “With respect to visas, our consular teams have been making a huge push to process as many visa applications as possible in India, including in those visa categories that are key to the bilateral relationship. This is a top priority for our government.”

…

“One out of every 5 US students visa was issued here in India in 2022. One out of five in the world which is more than the proportion of the Indian population in the world. So, Indians have not only pursued an education in the United States but for decades have shown their excellence in the United States and we are on track to process the highest number of visa applications in our history,” [U.S. ambassador Eric] Garcetti added.

Modi is visiting Washington D.C. this week. He will attend a State Dinner at the White House and will address Congress. The high-level access shows how U.S. officials hope to use India as an alternative to China.

But India has its own priorities, and they include pulling more technology jobs from the United States and sending more Indians to work in U.S. jobs via the OPT and H-1B visa program.

The result is a fast-growing population of Indian visa workers in U.S. jobs. Many are working while waiting for one of the 140,000 green cards each year – amid the continued mass layoffs of American professionals. This huge green-card workforce may reach 1.8 million workers and dependants in the next few years, says an immigration lawyer.

Many Indian visa workers get their U.S. jobs through visa fraud, amid half-hearted efforts by the federal government to protect Americans.

The U.S. provides legalized entry — and work permits — for many women who follow their men to the United States. For example, President Barack Obama’s deputies invented the H4EAD work permit for more than 200,000 Indian spouses, allowing them to take more of the white-collar jobs needed by U.S. graduates.

But many women are left behind in India as the Indian government encourages young men to take overseas jobs throughout the world.

Reuters reported in 2019:

Reena Mehla was 24 when she got married. Five years later, she says, her husband told her he was going to work extra police duty shifts elsewhere in India, and instead hired human smugglers to take him to the United States.

Rahul Kumar now lives in the Bronx. Reena wrote to India’s Ministry of External Affairs, the U.S. Embassy, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, searched Facebook, and eventually found him.

She scrolls through dozens of emails she sent to foreign officials and the letter showing his passport was revoked; according to the U.S. Justice Department immigration court hotline, his status in that country is pending. Then she pulls up one of their wedding pictures and kisses it.

The U.S. demand for more human resources from India, and the resulting family splits, mirror the U.S. policy towards southern migrants.

U.S. border rules encourage young men from Central America to break up with their families and seek jobs in the United States. They usually send their remittance money back home, and often, they hire coyotes to bring their wives and children up to the United States.

This year, Biden’s border chief announced that he has the legal power to bring 100,000 left-behind women and children up from Central America.

Extraction Migration

The federal government has long operated an unpopular economic policy of Extraction Migration. This colonialism-like policy extracts vast amounts of human resources from needy countries, reduces beneficial trade, and uses the imported workers, renters, and consumers to grow Wall Street and the economy.

The migrant inflow has successfully forced down Americans’ wages and also boosted rents and housing prices. The inflow has also pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of business sectors and contributed to the rising death rate of poor Americans.

The lethal policy also sucks jobs and wealth from heartland states by subsidizing coastal investors with a flood of low-wage workers, high-occupancy renters, and government-aided consumers.

The population inflow also reduces the political clout of native-born Americans, because the population replacement allows elites to divorce themselves from the needs and interests of ordinary Americans.

In many speeches, Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver workers to wealthy employers and investors and “equity” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elite opinion about “the values of our country” Mayorkas claims.

Migration — and especially, labor migration — is unpopular among swing voters. A 54 percent majority of Americans say Biden is allowing a southern border invasion, according to an August 2022 poll commissioned by the left-of-center National Public Radio (NPR). The 54 percent “Invasion” majority included 76 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of independents, and even 40 percent of Democrats.

 

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