By T N Ashok
NEW YORK: US planes destined for Punjab’s Amritsar landed on Wednesday noon with 205 undocumented Indians as part of President Donald Trump’s deportation plans as India confirmed their identities without comment and six more planes are due to land in the country shortly.
Over 18,000 undocumented Indians are to be deported to India by the US in the coming months as part of President Donald Trump’s election pledge to deport over 17 million illegal undocumented workers in the USA. Per Pew research center 725,000 Indians are working in the USA now on H-1B visas which the GOP wants to abolish but Elon Musk of DOGE does not want to scrap and Prez Trump supports him.
The deportation of undocumented Indians is part of the mass deportation plan of the US President Trump who vowed on his campaign trail that aliens would be deported to combat the higher incidence of crime, violence and smuggling of fentanyl drugs especially on the streets of New York and other major cities and adding pressure on state governments finances in rehabilitating them in camps.
Trump was a hard-core critic of the open borders policy of the Democratic government which allowed migrants into the country on grounds of their seeking asylum from despotic regimes in their countries – essentially from South America (Venezuela), North America (Mexico and Canada) and Central America (Guatemala).
The deportation of the illegal Indians staying in the US without papers comes a week ahead of the Indian premier Narendra Modi’s scheduled visit to the United States on or around Feb 12th to discuss the latest developments in geo-politics such as relations with China and Russia. The Russian president Vladimir Putin is expected on a scheduled visit this week for discussions before Modi take his Air Force one to the US.
Much was made out of Indian premier Narendra Modi’s absence in the coronation of Trump on Jan 20th in the rotunda in the Capitol Hill where the foreign minister Dr S Jaishankar represented him.
Opposition circles were agog with theories that while Trump had announced that his best friend Modi would meet him during his visit prior to the US elections in November and that he was under instruction from the then President Joe Biden not to call on Trump and therefore gave the goby to meeting Trump who eventually won the presidential elections.
While President Trump invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to his inauguration and Jinping gave the visit a go by not to be embarrassed at a time when his country was threatened with 60% tariffs and instead his highest-ranking vice premier was nominated to represent him.. Trump was visibly upset that despite his announcement PM Modi did not call on him during his November visit to the US and therefore hurt and did not invite him for his inauguration.
That being said, a lot of importance is being attached to Mr Modi’s visit to the US where the crucial question of the expansion of H-1B visas to skilled Indian engineers as sought by both Elon Musk and former DOGE co administrator Vivek Ramaswamy to fill up vacancies in the technology sectors. The GOP wants the H-1B programme to be scrapped. They want American labour to be encouraged. But Trump has backed Musk’s plan to expand the H-1B programme saying he himself employed H-1Bs on his properties.
The Indian diaspora in the United States is about 5.2 million strong contributing over 2 billion in taxes to the US treasuries.
Birthright citizenship is another issue that may come up for discussion with the US president in view of the large number of H-1B visa holders working in technology sectors which includes IT, Computer Sciences, Academics, IT enabled services and health care sector, a large number of doctors to be and nurses are H-1B visa holders constitute a vast majority of the health care force.
Some 77% of workforce in the Silicon Valley in software are Indian engineers from reputed Indian universities such as IIT’s, the only one recognised by the US government and regional engineering colleges.
Many Indians including Vivek Ramaswamy, Kamala Harris, Nikki Haley and so many others whose parents migrated to the US years ago are important beneficiaries of birthright citizenship. All of them have made significant contributions to the US economy. Ramaswamy is a billionaire who made his fortune in the biotechnology sector, he was married to an Indian and his children enjoy birthright citizenship. So do Nikki Haley’s children. Harris did not have any children but adopted her husband’s children from the first wife as her children.
Migration to USA by Indians was restricted to metropolitan cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata. But the technology boom in the 90s and India’s opening up of the economy to FDI and portfolio investments which was taken advantage by US multinationals, which lacked access earlier, led mass migration from tier 2 cities such as Hyderabad, Bengaluru, the software capital of India and equivalent of the US Silicon Valley, Pune, Nagpur, Madurai, Trichy and Coimbatore, and even smaller cities.
Most of them have become US citizens and their children have become birthright citizens. India might see the new rule as being discriminatory to the new crop H-1B visa holders working in the USA and marrying other H-1B visa holders, or Indian Americans, and Modi is likely to bring up this issue of uncertainty for a skilled work force contributing to the progress and prosperity of the United States.
India has not protested the return of undocumented Indians from the US as the country itself faces problems of illegal migration from neighbouring countries such as Bangladeshi Muslims into Assam, Bengal, and minority Burmese Rohingyas into eastern states.
India foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has therefore said New Delhi is open to the return of undocumented Indians in the United States. His comments came following a meeting with U.S. foreign secretary Marco Rubio in Washington during which illegal immigration was one of the issues discussed.
Indians made up the third-largest group of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2022 behind Mexico and El Salvador, according to Pew Research Center. It estimated their number at 725,000.
Analysts see India’s proactive stand on facilitating the return of illegal Indian migrants in the U.S. as a move to address a key concern of the Trump administration as New Delhi prepares to navigate more complicated issues, including trade and tariffs, diplomatic observers said.
“Among a range of issues, where there are divergences between India and the U.S., this is one area where India can show it is transparently doing something, allowing it greater space to manoeuvre in other areas,” according to Harsh Pant, vice president of studies at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. “In other areas, such as the economy and trade, it is very difficult to do things which the new Trump administration may want India to do, and it would take time
The H-1B visa program, which brings skilled foreign workers to the United States, has been a subject of debate in the U.S. in recent years, with some strongly criticizing the program for negatively impacting American workers. Proponents assert those skilled workers benefit U.S. companies and employers. Indians, most of them professionals working in the technology industry, are among the biggest beneficiaries of the visa program.
India is on a “stronger wicket” where H-1B visas are concerned. “On this issue, India has also been getting support from companies in the U.S. So politically, that is a safer issue for India to handle because there is a domestic support base for India,” according to analysts.
At least 20,407 “undocumented” Indians could be on the Trump administration’s radar. Of these, 17,940 “paperless” Indians were under “final removal orders”, and another 2,467 are in detention under the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
Mr Modi would also be seeking greater access to American technologies in AI, raw materials supply in semiconductors or setting up semiconductor facilities in India with US MNCs like Nvidia, the biggest maker of chips, and exporter. India would also seek to bolster its defence with the latest defence equipment such as high quality surveillance equipment including high tech drones even as it makes efforts to make its own brands.
US is the biggest trading partner of India with figures touching $118 billion in FY 2023-24 and both Biden and Trump had vowed to take it beyond the $250 billion mark by 2030 during their regimes in the presidencies. (IPA Service)
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